“Make sure to invite all of both your families so no one is insulted.”

We were actually told this several times in various ways, all insinuating that it would somehow cause an apocalypse or WWIII if we didn’t invite Aunt Bertha’s second cousin’s third uncle twice removed cat.

Look.

This is your wedding and you invite who you want to be there. Invite who will enhance your day and not who will bring you down, stress you out, cause arguments, take over the arrangements or make you miserable. If that means you don’t invite alcoholic aunt Jane who likes to grope the DJ then crash into a
table crying, don’t invite her.

We didn’t invite any-and I stress any– of my wife’s family, despite the “advice” given to us. This was for several reasons:

·       Her parents didn’t –
and still don’t, honestly- equate gay marriage as being legally the same as
straight marriage, despite all of us living in a country in which it is and has
been for many years. Somehow it is not as proper or real.

·       Her sister’s long-term partner is a Far Right supporting, Trump loving, conspiracy theorist. paranoid Brexiteer who barely believes we should be allowed to breathe, never mind actually marry. He’s exactly the kind of person you’d see on the front page of a national newspaper after he “suddenly snapped” and murdered his whole family with a potato peeler. We couldn’t invite her sister without him as a) she wouldn’t come anyway or would come with him despite no invite and b) we suspect he may be somehow abusive to her and it would make her life difficult if we
did.

·       Her extended family is huge and all live in another country. We couldn’t afford to invite them to our small budget wedding.

·       Her mother is a toxic, manipulative, dramatic person who would absolutely want to be in control of all proceedings and who would not have approved of how we did things. We couldn’t have been ourselves for the whole event.

In the end, we just didn’t tell her family that we’d done anything special- we just told them we had a registry office wedding (true) and that we didn’t have a reception etc. (not true.) They didn’t particularly care and we’re still on civil terms, it hasn’t changed the relationship at all.

In short- it’s YOUR wedding, invite who the heck you want and ignore the politics as much as you
need to to have a wonderful day with minimum stress.