Father daughter dance wlw debacle
Hi!
So my beautiful fiancé and I are so thrilled to be planning our wedding this fall! Our families have been generally so supportive of us as a wlw couple and honestly asside from one homophobic flower vendor we have had zero issues.
BUT
my father.
I have had some tensions with my dad for a long time but with the political climate in the US right now I felt I needed to share some feelings with him and give him a chance to understand/ change some behaviors I.e. watching Fox News all day, voting for trump, and some personal things from my childhood/life I didn’t want unresolved.
An important bit of context is he has never been unkind to me or my fiancee in any way! He was immediately accepting when I came out and introduced her and simply asked what he could cook for her.
But I wrote all of the things in a letter because he doesn’t so well with confrontation.
He has since not responded at all to the letter nor to my text that I’d be in town a few months later.
My sister asked him about it, and his response was “ everything I think to respond feels wrong”
In my letter was “decided to invite you to my wedding, and I want to be transparent that I made this choice because I would regret not inviting you more than inviting you. I don’t have the privilege of treating my wedding as apolitical. My identity, my love, and my existence have been politicized, and you have actively supported the people who made that true. Accepting my invitation means trusting that you can show up with respect for me, my partner, and the reality of what this marriage represents.”
He has also made the statement to my sister that I only invited him to avoid regret and I don’t want him there.
Then While in town recently for my nephew’s birthday, he spent an entire day in the same space as me, after receiving a text letting him know that I would be in town and I was open to talking, without actually making an attempt to talk to me about anything more than surface level the entire day. During that day, he did hover very close and try to listen to any information that other family members were asking about me, but did not ask me anything himself before leaving.
So now to the actual dilemma.
My partner’s parents are incredible and have single-handedly helped us make this wedding possible and are essentially hosting our wedding. Her dad deserves all of the callouts possible, including walking her down the aisle and a father daughter dance.
But how do I do this without making it weird that I won’t have either of those things?
My nephews are 14 year-old twin boys and are the loves of my life. So I’ve had a brief thought that one of them could walk me down the aisle and the other could do my father daughter dance with me, but I do feel like this draws even more attention to my lack of a father figure to do these things with. I’m just not sure how to handle the situation and at this point I’m not sure if my father will be there. So is it even weirder to have my nephews do these things while my father stands there and watches… I would love opinions.