My fiance and I are stuck in the middle over inviting or not inviting my sister's new in-laws to our wedding.
Apparently for awhile, my sister's mother-in-law has been asking whether or not she and her husband were going to be invited to my wedding. My brother-in-law, while he's a great guy... tends to bend over backwards to make his mom happy. Whether rational or not, the MIL drives my mom crazy.
Initially (a few weeks ago), my sister had texted me that her husband was wondering if we needed his parents' address. Prior to this, I had not discussed their inclusion with them at all... so they were essentially presuming that they were on our guest list. I replied that we hadn't planned on it and we weren't sure if we had enough room. I mentioned this to my parents and they were somewhat ambiguous about it and said that they'd prefer not to invite them, but it was ultimately our decision.
Separately, at a family GTG at my parents' house, they had a discussion with just my fiance (did not include me) and convinced him to add the in-laws to the guest list. Part of their reasoning was that they were having a hard time with quite a few serious illnesses in their family and needed a happy event to look forward to... which my fiance sympathized with. My fiance told me about this and I agreed to add them.
This past weekend, my mom and I started addressing envelope labels for the invitations and I mentioned the change to her and she got really mad! She began ranting about all the things that the MIL had done during my sister's wedding events that had ticked her off and that she didn't want to have to deal with her at my wedding. My mom is concerened that the MIL may end up monopolizing my sister (a bridesmaid) and her husband (kind of a DOC for us) the whole weekend and potentially try to invite herself to other wedding-related events that weekend like the rehearsal dinner or day-after brunch which were limited to just close family and wedding party. I'd rather make the day easier for my mom and risk offending my sister's in-laws at this point...
My fiance is blaming himself for this mess and has been stressed out and anxious about it all weekend. He's going to meet with my sister and her husband tonight and try to figure out a tactful way to tell them that we can't invite his parents without lying... my sister knows that my mom doesn't like her MIL, but my fi wants to avoid revealing that because it would really tick my sister and her husband off. Right now, our reasoning is that our guest list is already too big (we've invited just over the capacity of our venue... not including potential +1's for some of our friends), we've cut some of the extended family on my fi's side and we are not inviting any of my fiance's sister's in-laws and want to be consistent and fair. My fiance is afraid that he needs to trump up some tale of family drama on his side to justify it to make my sister and her husband... and probably the in-laws... happy.
In a perfect world... my mom would just deal with it and see relating to my sister's MIL as an opportunity to grow in holiness
TIA!