I have a bit of a sticky question that needs answering. My fiance and I are looking to finalize our guest list for our very small wedding (we're trying to keep it under 50 or so people). My mother asked me why we weren't planning on inviting anyone from my dad's side of the family.
Personally, I have a lot of issues with my Dad's side of the family.
Firstly, his parents: My father's parents are extremely racist people. When I was in elementary school, they asked my mom why she let me be friends with a "damn jap" (my best friend at the time was the Japanese girl whose family had moved to the US a year before), and my friendship with this girl has remained a point of contention ever since. Later, after 9/11, they started using a number of racist terms for people of Middle-Eastern descent. My fiance's family is half-Lebanese, and take pride in their cultural heritage. They also made some extremely racist comments about African-Americans the last time I saw them, mostly related to O.J. Simpson's publishing attempt, "If I Did It" (as I recall, the worst of the comments was, "Of course he did it! It's how his people solve things! They never evolved!") My fiance's step-father is African-American, and a very, very nice person.
As you can tell, this is a really bad combination. In my experience, my grandparents go one of two ways when dealing directly with people of ethnic groups they dislike: They either criticize the person to their face or blatantly ignore them (or make their displeasure known in other blatant ways).
On top of that, they refused to attend my HS graduation on the basis that I intended to go to college (and study an "unladylike" subject on top of that; did I mention they're also sexist?) They've been unsupportive of my college education on the basis that I should have gotten married and given them great-grandchildren as soon as I was done with HS.
With all of this, I feel I shouldn't invite them. I cannot in good conscience sentence my fiance's entire family to their blatant racism, and their lack of support of my reasonable life choices to this point is frankly insulting. However, I've been informed that I am "obligated" to invite them regardless.
On top of that, I'm also obligated to invite my dad's siblings. I like his brother (and his brother's wife), but they are in dire financial straits at the moment and I don't want them to put out the time and money to come to a distant wedding and spend money on a gift. My dad's sister and her family are people I haven't seen in over 6 years and I really dislike my dad's brother-in-law, as he is alcoholic and abusive to his wife and children, but I can't well invite the cousins and Aunt without him, now can I?
I'm having trouble being diplomatic about this without being all, "I'm not inviting YOU because you're racist and I'm not inviting YOU because I like you but I don't want you to put yourself out and I'm not inviting ANY of YOU because your husband is a jerk."
Any advice?