But I did send them save the dates… years ago?
I’ve name changed for this but I’ve been around for years.
Ok so bit of a backstory. Cousin number 1, I used to be incredibly close with back when we were late teens/early 20s, then she had a baby and I was right in the thick of my uni partying days and while we remained friends, we drifted apart. Cousin 2 is her younger sister whom I’ve always gotten along with extremely well also.
We’re all early 40s now, have families and over the years, I’ve realized that cousin 1 and I have become very different people. To the point that I really started to dislike a lot of her behaviour: habitually late, would frequently stand people up or cancel plans at very late notice. She became known for very self centered, selfish behaviour and I very much began to distance myself from her as the years went by. I know she’s not a bad person at all, she’s just not the kind of person I would be friends with.
Anyway, in 2018 I got engaged. In 2019 we send out the save the dates for a 2020 wedding. You can see where this is going. Now, if you ask me now why I sent the cousins a save the date, I’m really not sure. I don’t see them socially at all. I would maybe see them at the odd family gathering but again, it’s fairly likely that cousin 1 will have canceled or shown up so late that I would have already left whatever event it was. So we can literally go for years without seeing or talking to each other. But I guess I got nostalgic for our ‘old days’ and if you invite one cousin, you invite the other. There was probably a sense of family obligation too, I’m very close to my mother and these are her sisters children.
So, due to Covid and a couple of other reasons, we postponed the wedding 3 times, bringing the final wedding date to this year. After much deliberation. My partner and I decided that it was madness to invite people that I didn’t even actually like and had made no effort with me over the years. So why was I spending money on these people on my wedding day? Who we choose to invite is entirely up to us right? And we’re talking about wedding invitations that went out 3 years after the original save the dates and the cousins were not included the last round of save the dates (I don’t think we even did save the dates for round 2).
To address how cousin 1 has never made an effort with me. Her mother recently had a milestone birthday and my mother (her sister) plus multiple other cousins from each side of the family were invited. But not me. The party was arranged by cousin 1. My mother queried this, even though I asked her not to (I felt she could invite whomever she wanted to), and I got a very terse text saying ‘it’s not a child friendly venue and we assumed you wouldn’t be able to get childcare as your mother (who usually looks after my DD) will be at the party’. She knows I have DP, but whatever. She then said ‘your invite is in the mail, I need rsvps by next week’. Of course the invite never arrived but more shitty texts did demanding to know if I was coming or not. I politely declined saying that as I had still not received any information on the where/when etc of the party, it was probably best I sit this one out. I got some sarky remark back from that too. Yes I know I could have got the info from my mother but I knew I clearly wasn’t welcome and I was never actually fishing for an invite.
The same thing happened with cousin 2s milestone birthday, I did not query it at all. I again felt that it was just a sign of us growing apart and so be it.
But would you invite these people to your wedding?
So, if you’ve stuck with me so far, thank you! Because tonight (I’m not in the UK), I received a message from my aunty basically asking why the cousins weren’t invited when they received the original 2019 save the date? Aunty has been invited, mostly for the benefit of my mother and not to cause (any further) problems in the family. I just feel like that’s such a confrontational thing to ask someone who has planned a wedding. What am I supposed to say? Is there etiquette for this? Yeah I probably… definitely shouldn’t have invited them in the first place but I can’t take that back now.
Am I completely in the wrong here?