DH and I have had not spoken to his parents for a good couple of years. We fell out (initially) over them having a pond put in their garden. At the time they would regularly babysit our children (toddlers at the time) but refused to have a cover on the pond, and accused us of not trusting them to watch our children properly. The resulting argument led to lots of horrible things being said, various old resentments and skeletons being dragged out, to the point that we decided we wanted nothing more to do with them. Always two sides to a story I know, but to summarise they showed themselves to be quite nasty and hugely bigotted people.
We have just been invited to DH's older sister's wedding at the end of the year. We have not fallen out with her and she has tried to keep out of the argument. However, the times we would usually meet up; birthdays, xmas etc, always used to be at DH's parent's house, and now that we don't see them we inevitably haven't seen the rest of his family as much either. Sadly, in trying our best not to 'drag' other family members into the fight, we seem to have been losing contact with them too.
Anyway, as much as we don't want to miss the wedding, we cannot see how we can attend. Any contact with DH's parents (who will be there) over the last two years has turned into a row, and the only way we can ensure that doesn't happen would be if we ignored them all day, which would be very difficult when we are on the same side of a family at a wedding, and would inevitably create a bad apmosphere. However we are very aware that not attending at all could also create an equally bad apmosphere! To further complicate the issue, if we were to attend, would it be better to go with or without our children? We know DH's sister wants her nephews there, but how do we explain to them that we are going to be somewhere with grandma and grandad for the day but we will not be speaking to them? Are we being completely selfish? And apologies that this post is so hideously long!