A little background: FI and I had decided to invite only our
closest family to the wedding. We set the cut-off at people we see once every
two years, so my great aunt would be invited (we’re close) but
her adult children would not (I barely know them and don’t care much for them). My aunt was talking about how she was looking forward to traveling with her
daughter A to the wedding, and then on Christmas Eve she cornered me and
basically said that she expected an invitation for her other daughter J, in
addition to A (I posted about it in this thread: http://forums.theknot.com/discussion/1047662/sticky-invitation-situation-wwyd). My solution was to address her invitation to Aunt Sally and
Guest, and if she came back and said she had already booked travel for both
daughters I would tell her that’s fine.
So today she sent this email that says, “Here are some
addresses for your wedding invitations!” Then she listed the addresses for:
Herself
Daughter A
Daughter J [Note that J’s husband D will not plan to attend]
Another aunt and uncle I haven’t spoken to in 10 years (but
she keeps telling me I should invite them)
Favorite aunt and uncle who will actually be invited, and
their children
The email ends with a little PS on the etiquette of
addressing invitations.
I am fuming right now. My aunt is always in everyone’s business, and she
thinks she’s Miss Manners but has no problem being rude or passive-aggressive
when it suits her. I have no intention of sending an invitation to A or J, because
then we would have to invite their SO’s and they’d probably want to bring the
kids too, and their brother would probably expect an invitation as well. We
just don’t have room for those extra people. And on principle, I’m not going to
do it just because my aunt is trying to push me into it. At this point I
could not care less about whether my aunt thinks it’s rude of me to address her
invitation as “and guest”.
So my question is, WTF do I do with this email? It’s a lot
easier to beandip in person, or when there’s other stuff in the email that I
could respond to and gloss over the issue, but there isn't. I have no idea how to respond to this. Do I just say
thanks, and then wait for the reaction when my cousins don’t get an invitation?
Or do I try (again) to let her know that we don’t intend to invite all the
extended family? Is there some magic wording for that?