Are we wrong for not inviting my MIL and SIL to our micro wedding ceremony?

I hate these threads, OP told she is completely being unreasonable and then pulls out the drip drip drip abuse card when things aren’t going her way, if MIL is abusive why is she invited at all?

Yeh I think you are unreasonable then and it would be so hurtful to your husbands mum if she wasn't even asked yet your mum is going.

Pretty hurtful indeed.

And apparently the signing by witnesses is no big deal at all, and not the important part of the wedding. Which is why DH insisted on asking his aunt to do that rather than his mother. Don't expect his mother ever to forget that decision.

Even neglectful or unpleasant parents seem to expect to be invited to their children’s weddings so I can imagine she is embarrassed/angry/hurt. Especially as she was replaced by the aunt. Your fiancé however, is entitled to choose who he wants as long as he is prepared to accept the consequences. He really ought to have foreseen how bad these could be for you and taken that into account.

I am sorry that you are being blamed but sadly it is inevitable. Even many of the posters here are ignoring your posts and positioning you as either directly to blame, or deliberately colluding with your fiancé in order to exclude her. It is a bitter pill to swallow to accept that you might have let your children down and don’t have the status that you feel you deserve. It is much easier to blame the partner unfortunately.

Marriage is a long relationship so many of us do choose the most diplomatic option even if it is not actually our favourite option. It sounds as though you did try to do that by wanting to wait for the bigger room. I don’t see you as being in any way to blame for this situation.

The faux naivety is really grating. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of not inviting his mother and sister, it was obviously always going to cause a shitshow…

If you really made this decision to save yourselves £160 words fail me. I'm guessing that this decision will cost you a hell of a lot more than that. I wonder how much your DH's mum has spent on him over the years? Really shocking.

So why invite his apparently awful mother to any of the wedding at all? And what about sister? What’s her crime?

Then, you are completely wrong not to invite mil and sil, irrespective of how much you get on with them.
They have every right to be upset

If it is down to abusive childhood etc, why have them at any part of your wedding(s)

Yeah fine, fair enough, but you can't really say you're surprised MIL is upset or that it simply slipped your mind.

OMG "we didn't intentionally exclude them"!!! How stupid do you think we all are? If you don't invite your mother to your wedding, you are very deliberately excluding her. Not inviting your mother to your wedding is in my view the child's equivalent of disinheriting one's son or daughter. If you encouraged your soon to be husband to do this, of course MIL and SIL will think of you as the daughter-in-law from hell.

Nah - it's two witnesses and a photographer. That's why it's 3.

If you've been on MN longer than 2mins, you should know to put all crucial information in to the OP.

Drip feeding over 8 pages means there will be lots of people that miss the things you've added because virtually everyone told you YABU.

Of course it is an very odd choice (of your dp) to make, to exclude his own mother from the ceremony. That goes without saying.

If he'd gone NC with his Mum, then completely different, but as he has continued to have a relationship with her, she IS still his Mum.

You saying you wouldn't minded if she was there just makes it a very strange decision to save £200 by choosing the room that can only have 3 witnesses. In the context of all the other things you are paying for (you mention a meal and a party and I guess you'll be having a new dress and potentially hair, make up, flowers, maybe transport, maybe a photographer?) it seems a very, very strange way to try and save £200. What about other close family ? Your Dad, Grandparents, cousins, any siblings he has, his cousins, maybe best mates?
As has already been suggested, people close to you would potentially have been happy to contribute towards their meals or something if they were being included on the wedding.
Or, if you HAD to have the tiny room, then each choosing one witness would at least be more 'fair' or reasonable.

The fact you've included 2 members of your family but his own mother isn't there makes you (both) unreasonable.

So to save £160 you have destroyed your family’s relationship, unbelievable.

@WhereYouLeftIt I agree that this might have brought things to a head, forced the issue and be for the best in the long run as it sounds like the DP should be no contact with his mother anyway. But your wedding is a hell of a time to choose for that!

Why not? 3 is a bit of an odd number, granted. In our area it's called a " you and two" ceremony and it's booked up well in advance so presumably quite popular

Should’ve gone to Gretna Green. I think you’ve messed up OP

So, to summarise:

"She always prioritised his stepdad during his childhood, even when [his stepdad] was abusive to him." "He actually lived with his auntie for a time as a teenager" which suggests living with his mother&stepdad was either intolerable for him, or, his stepdad wanted him out and his mother was again prioritising her husband over her son. He presumably moved back at some point but his home life was again unsatisfactory, which is "the reason why we moved in together so early on." Despite not providing a loving home for her son, "They feel like I took him away from them". (Because, there is a type of person who, even when they don't want 'something', get very possessive should anyone else show interest in the 'something'.)

Rather than drawing a line and forming a new adult-to-adult relationship with her son and you, the woman he lived with, his mother instead pushed the two of you away by "always excluded[ing you] during Christmas and other occasions" and never being particularly welcoming.

On top of all that "His mum told him she downed a bottle of vodka when she found out she’s having him" , effectively telling him she tried to abort him. What a lovely thing to tell your child!

Did I read your posts right, @JanineR ?

Honestly - fuck her. She was an appalling mother then and she remains an appalling mother now. She treats her son and his fiancee like this and then expects to be prioritised? Pfft! I'm surprised your fiance talks to any of the family apart from his beloved aunt at all., never mind involves them in his wedding. It would probably be best for him to put some distance between himself and his birth family, who give him nothing but grief.

Well. OP if your DP has no wish to have his mum at the wedding ceremony, I'd be asking myself why I wanted to have a closer relationship with her when he is distancing himself.
Step right back, let him deal with the fallout.

Gosh the conflicting messages escalates. OP doesn't think the ceremony is the important bit of the wedding, but is planning on a Catholic blessing in two years time, which her fiance is going to get baptised for. I really think the invitees is a side issue, you both need to think about what your priorities are.

If you are serious enough about a Catholic marriage that your fiance is getting baptised for it why are you doing the register office? Catholic weddings are legally binding. You don't have to do them separately. Why skip the Catholic wedding and go straight to a blessing? Have you discussed this with a priest/

The problem is @JanineR YABU as you haven't communicated with your DP BEFORE you invited his aunt about what an awkward position this puts you in.

He is being unreasonable because he hasn't owned his decision and communicated that to his mother & sister. He needs to be transparent with them.
He has insisted on the smaller room with limited capacity.
He has insisted that his aunty be invited to the ceremony.

You need to insist that he tells DM & DSis the truth, otherwise this will always be your fault in their eyes.

All of this sounds like it was predictable & could have been avoided if you had both just been a bit more thoughtful of your decisions and their implications

He’s very angry with her and he’s done it deliberately. It’s very dysfunctional to have approached it in this way . He really should have spoken to his mother and addressed all this at a different time. I think he meant to hurt her. OP has sort of gone along with it but she shouldn’t be accepting the blame.

What a load of nonsense, don’t believe this for a second.

I have a friend who was not invited to her son's wedding as they had no guests & went abroad, only for my friend to find out a few year's later that her DIL's mum did go, this has caused a massive problem & I don't think the rift will ever heal. For the sake of keeping things civil (for what could be many, many years) I would go parents/siblings on both sides or no family at all.