FI has a cousin who's in her 40s. She has a 22 year old son from a previous relationship who lives with her, her husband and their 10 year old son. We sent one invitation to cousin + husband (M) and one to 22 year old + date, even though they live at the same house, just because the son is an adult. Maybe etiquette-wise that was wrong, but it was innocent. We did not invite the 10 year old because we didn't invite any kids.
FI called to follow up on their RSVP yesterday, but M was at work and made it clear he wanted to discuss something. We figured they had some other conflict and would have to decline. If only!
M talked to FI for 45 MINUTES today, telling him that we were totally out of line to send two separate invitations as if they weren't all one family and for not inviting the 10yo. When FI explained that I did the invitations and things are different in the US, M flipped out screaming "who cares, we're in CHILE!" Ok, but I am still from the US, and our wedding is a joining of our cultures, asshole. The parents have issues with the 22yo in general, especially his GF, and were pissed that we "invited her" even though we invited all the young cousins with "guest" and never directly invited her. It's not my fault you hate your son/step-son and his GF.
FI explained that the invitations were not meant as some subliminal message of taking the son's side in that whole debate (doesn't make sense to me either, but this is what M was saying) and that we were not inviting any kids because that's just not the vibe of our wedding. He also explained that if we invited their kid, we'd have to invite others.
I get that parents might choose not to come if their child can't come, but it's one thing to decline and another to scream at us that we are rude and that "if your wedding's not appropriate for kids then I don't think it's the kind of thing we want to go to." M also brought up a whoooole bunch of totally unrelated things about how FI thinks he's better than everyone, and he doesn't care about the family, and just really horrible, untrue, hurtful things.
If it weren't family, we would have told them to f*ck off. But FI feels like standing our ground would have caused a huge rift in his mom's side of the family (and he's right), and he didn't want our wedding to be the cause of that. So we are now inviting at least 4 and possibly 6 kids 10 and under, which is a bummer because I never wanted kids at my wedding, and these people feel like they've won. I cannot fully explain without going into detail just how crazy their arguments were...no logic at all, and just totally out of left field rage from people that we usually get along with and like!
So FI is sad because things will never be the same with these people, and he feels like what if other people think he's as awful as the things they said, and I'm sad because he's sad and because we now have brats at our wedding. Oh, and to top it all off, when we called back to say "we've discussed it, and family's important to us, so since we never meant any harm we hope you will ALL come, including the 10yo," they told us they'd think about it and get back to us. Screw you.