My apologies in advance. I have a LOT to get off my chest.
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My fiance and I have been engaged for almost two years, but we decided to wait until after he finished school before we got married. From the moment he put the ring on my finger, everything with his family has been a complete and total nightmare.
Shortly after we announced our engagement, I was fired from my job. The circumstances of my termination aren't really that exciting, but regardless I felt that I had been unjustly let go. (I have since appealed my termination and had it overturned, on my record it now reads as a "voluntary resignation".) Working with my union, I began to fight my termination, and I began looking for a new job. Unfortunately, in the three months that it took me to find a new job, his parents' opinion of me had already been destroyed. They began telling my fiance that I was not a "good choice" for him, and that I was "bringing him down." They even went as far as inviting him over, so that they could try to set him up with somebody.
Then, just as suddenly as they stopped liking me, they started to like me again. FMIL would call and text saying that I should come over because she had just bought candies and cookies, and that she wanted to have a movie night and take me to Disney World. I went from being Public Enemy Number One to be infantilized by FMIL, and her family just acted like I was supposed to take this kind of treatment without saying a word.
To make matters worse, my FFIL barely says a word to me. Whenever I am with my fiance for a visit, we could be having a group conversation about something I could interject with my thoughts, and FFIL will just continue talking like I hadn't said a word. He's even gone as far as responding to my questions or ideas by addressing somebody else at the table rather than myself. The only kind words he has ever spoken about me are about how happy he is that his son got his act together and finished school since he has met me. But he has now said this same thing so many times now that it has no lost all feeling behind it.
Now that we are getting closer to the actual wedding day, I can just feel more than ever how little his family cares for me. Six months ago, I asked FMIL and FFIL for their guest list. I have asked once a month since then, but I still have no guest list. My grandmother and mother are beginning to get calls from relatives out of state wondering where their save the dates are, but other than his closest relatives I have no idea who is coming from his side. Right now my list is to about 79, his is 13.
I asked both of my FSILs to be in my wedding party and they accepted. The very next day, one of them took it upon herself to be my fiance's Best Woman. He did not ask her to, she told him she was. I was really hurt. I am only child, so one of the things I was really looking forward to about getting married was having sisters. I wanted them to be my bridesmaids because I thought it would be a great bonding experience. I have also since learned that the same FSIL has told my fiance that he could "do better, physically." Now on top of being hurt by her decision and by what she has said about me (she doesn't know that my fiance told me that), I am having to fight her on choices for my wedding. (She wants to wear a tux, and I want her to wear the same dress as the bridesmaids but in black.)
A few weeks ago, my fiance was visiting his parents and he thought it would make a good anecdote to tell his mother (a huge Disney fan) about how much a wedding their would cost for our estimated guest attendance. Within a couple of hours of leaving, my fiance got a text from the same FSIL about how her parents were fuming and refusing to pay for our wedding. We have never asked them to pay for our wedding, in fact my mother has been gracious enough to pay for it. Frankly, my mother and I are already pretty much expecting to need to cover the RD ourselves, too.
Every time my fiance so much as eludes to the wedding around his parents, they go on this long diatribe about how they had a small civil ceremony followed by a reception, and how they only spent $500 dollars on their wedding, and about how we should not be having a "big, fancy wedding" and be saving up for a home, instead of renting. He has explained to them at least a dozen times now that we are not paying for the wedding ourselves (and usually receives a response about how they won't pay for it).
In order to get married in the church, we needed a copy of my fiance's baptismal certificate. We remembered FMIL telling us once that her mom had a copy of it. So, my fiance sent her a text asking if she could call his grandmother and get it, and she started texting him back joke after joke about how he is the "son of satan" and about how she never had him baptized because "the church would have crumbled down." We figured she had been drinking, and decided just to call her the next morning. My fiance left her a message telling her what a big deal it was, and how it would make it that much easier to get married in the church (since I'm Catholic). FMIL called him back three days later and told him that he could never get married in a Catholic church because her mother is Jewish, and that makes her and her children Jewish. (Which isn't necessarily true, but that's beyond the point.)
As you can see, I am dealing with so much resistance from his family. It is driving me nuts, and while I wouldn't leave my fiance for anything in the world, I really just need some advice on how to deal with a very difficult future-in-law problem.