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

[JanineR]

We are having a micro wedding with only 3 people at the twin hall wedding ceremony (2 family members from my side, 1 from my fiancé’s side). We are inviting 6 people apart from us to the wedding reception meal, all paid for by us of course. My MIL and SIL are upset over not being at the ceremony. We didn’t intentionally exclude them, but we chose another family member from his family who are are both much closer to. The rest of my fiancé’s family have never been particularly close welcoming to me and I WS always excluded during Christmas and other occasions. That’s probably why his MIL wasn’t at the top of my mind when we were choosing witnesses for the wedding ceremony. His family are of course blaming me for everything. Are we in the wrong?

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

@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!

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

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.

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

Honestly I wish we decided to elope instead! All of this could’ve been avoided.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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?

Well obviously she was intentionally excluded so I'm surprised you're surprised by the reaction.
Not saying it's the wrong decision she sounds horrendous bit your fiancee has made a right pig of it and should bare responsibility or just go proper no contact and remove the drama altogether

I’ve got daughters but if I had a son I would be devastated not to be invited to his wedding.
How would you feel in these shoes, OP?

The no contact decision may soon be taken out of his hands.

I think DP must take charge of this situation. He needs to tell his mother that he made the decision and to stop transferring blame onto you. I'm sure MIL understands that she's not being asked to play a traditional role for a valid reason

I just keep reading these posts..... We just invited who we wanted and thought not for one moment of the brother who's been close your whole life or the grandparent who looked after you etc..Just prepared to hurt them and exclude them at the drop of a hat.. Honestly i just fucking despair of how selfish some people are now

"I'm sure MIL understands that she's not being asked to play a traditional role for a valid reason"

Not saying this is right, but it is very unlikely the MIL will "understand". I don't really know anyone who would admit to being a shit mum and be OK with her sister taking her place at her child's wedding.

Or mention it in the opening post.

OP, why did you let your DP do this or (of you genuinely didn't realize) how are you dealing with the fact he did this?

I don't mean not invite his mother, I mean blow up your wedding and cause you personally all this stress. Who cares if his mother is upset and whether that relationship can be fixed, you are upset and stressed.

A decent partner would not have done this to you. You may not know his mother well and possible extremely naively thought she would be ok with it, he most definitely knew she'd flip out about it. I'm suspicious he wanted to send a message to her to be honest but that's speculation.

A good partner would have either said 'I would prefer my aunt but it's just a bit of paper to be and my mum will flip out and cause us a load of stress, so let's go with my mum' or 'I realise that I'm not ok pretending to my mum that we're close and that I'm ok with her, but I don't want this to cause a storm around our wedding so I'm going to tell my mum now that I don't want contact with her and not mention anything about this witness thing'.

What he chose was him having the person he wanted there, a very upset mum, a shadow that will always be over your wedding day (for you maybe he doesn't care!) and you being stressed and upset. He got what he wanted at your expense (and his mum's expense but she sounds like a terrible person anyway). He's meant to be in love with you and centering you, but he put himself first.

Have you talked to him about this? Your focus seems to be on fixing the mess he made, but the bigger issue is he decided to make it.