My Fiance and I have been engaged since December 23rd 2010. Our wedding is July 9th this year. We are running into an issue with the bestman/groom's brother and who he would like to bring to the wedding. Here is the background:
1) When we got engaged the brother was married. The wife was awful and he announced in May that they were going through a seperation. Since we live in MD they need to be seperated for a full year before officially divorcing.
2) He met a very nice girl in October and they have been seriously dating since. She has a 6 year old little girl who is wonderful and last week they decided to all move in together. (Yes- he is not officially divorced yet but we are happy that he is happy.)
3) So for his situation with 'bringing' someone to the wedding. Originally we thought he would bring his wife... clearly that is out of the picture and has been since they announced the seperation. Since he is the bestman and brother we are inviting him with his new girlfriend.
4) We told him we do not want children at the wedding unless they are immediate family so we were not going to invite his girlfriend's daughter. All was okay until yesterday...
He asked us if we would rethink our decision and allow the daughter to come. He treats her like a daughter and would really like her there... blah blah blah.
He is where I am stuck and not sure what to do:
We originally wanted no kids except those in the wedding (my 2 nieces and they will have a nanny available to take them away if need be) The only other kids there are my FI first cousins that are 8 and 10. We didn't want to invite them either BUT their parents were really upset at the last wedding and we didn't want to fight that battle. Now we are faced with another 'kid' situation and I am sure it will not be the last. How should I handle this? In all honesty, I don't want the daughter there... She isn't family (yet) and with our wedding coming closer the guest lists have been set and I don't want to have to think about another crying kid. The nanny thing really isn't an option because they are traveling 6 hours to get to the wedding and I am not adding another 2 people to the list. We are working on cutting our list by 20 as it is!!!
So what is the etiquetter here? Should I bite the bullet and just say yes? Do I have a right to be annoyed? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? I'm not pro in this field but I would love some outside opionions to help me deal.
Thank you in advance