I recently became engaged and am just starting to work on my
guest list. I am not sure what to do in regards to inviting my father’s side of
my family etiquette wise. I would like to keep family drama at a minimum so I
would like some honest opinions about what to do with this situation.
My dad has 5 siblings and for the past couple of years my
father’s side of my family has basically been at each other’s throats. The
drama started when my grandma (dad’s mom) had to be put into a nursing home due
to not being able to live on her own anymore. She suffered from Alzheimers
disease along with a long list of other health issues. No one could agree on
what was best for my grandmother and there was a lot of crazy family drama that
I won’t go into.
My grandmother passed away last May and everything has just
gotten worse. I, along with my parents, am no longer on speaking terms with any
of my dad’s siblings except for one Aunt and her husband because of their
actions. My understanding is that it is proper to send
invites in circles, meaning that I would have to invite either all of my dad’s
siblings or none at all. I would love to invite my Aunt and Uncle that I still
speak to but not the others. I only want people that support me there on my
wedding day and not people that are disrespectful to me and my parents. On the
other hand, I also do not want to make matters worse by not inviting the rest.
Things also get more complicated because the family drama
also involves my cousins. Some I would like to invite and others that are
basically dead to me. I don’t want to be over dramatic, but some of these people
I don’t even consider family anymore. Some cousins I still get along with and
would love in invite but they are the children of the Aunts and Uncles that I don’t
want to invite. I think that I might make things worse if for example, I invite
the children of Aunt B but not Aunt B herself, and then invite Uncle C but don’t
invite his children (all my cousins are adults though so they would get their
own invite regardless).
I guess my main questions is, should I still follow the
invite in circles run taking into consideration that some of these people I don’t
even consider family anymore. I would hate to make things worse by cherry
picking family but I also only want people that I care about and still care about me there. I doubt that some family would show up anyway (it’s
out of state for most of them) but I don’t even want to give them the invitation,
or risk having them show up just to cause trouble. I don’t trust these people
and I don’t ever want to see them again on a normal day, let alone my wedding
day. I know that family is family but I also believe that you can’t treat
people like shit when they are mourning their grandmother and expect to be invited to their wedding.
This is really stressing me out and I would love some unbiased advice.