u/arpeggiolungo

I’m getting married next year, and I’m struggling with the question of whether to invite some conservative relatives.

For context, I’m a gay man and I love my family. My parents, siblings, their partners and their children are all very supportive of me and my husband. It wasn’t always like this — my parents were initially quite homophobic when I came out, but they have come a very long way since then, and I’m genuinely grateful for that.

The problem is that I have an aunt and uncle who are quite conservative, particularly my uncle. I’m pretty certain that they vote very far to the right, and I know their general views on queer people, women, immigrants, etc. I strongly suspect that behind closed doors they say some pretty unpleasant things about gay people. Their daughter and her family are even worse.

However, there’s a complication: they have never actually said anything homophobic to me as an adult. Apart from things they said when I was a teenager, before I came out, they have never directly mistreated me or made a hostile comment about my relationship. I barely see or speak to them anyway, since I live abroad. Usually I might briefly see them at Christmas when I'm visiting my parents.

So objectively, I don't really have a specific incident that I can point to and say, "This is why they aren't invited."

My parents, however, seem to consider inviting them a given simply because they are family. I know my mother in particular is going to take it personally if I don't invite them, because in her view you invite your family to your wedding and excluding them is disrespectful.

But in my view a gay wedding isn't necessarily the same thing as a straight wedding when it comes to the guest list.

At a straight wedding, if a conservative relative doesn't particularly approve of the couple's politics, lifestyle, etc., that doesn't necessarily mean they fundamentally disapprove of the marriage itself. For me, though, someone can be perfectly polite to my face while fundamentally believing that my relationship is wrong or that gay people shouldn't have the same rights.

And my wedding isn't just a family gathering. My husband isn't inviting his own parents because they are openly homophobic. Most of our guests will be making significant sacrifices to come — some of his friends are travelling from the other side of the Atlantic — and we are deliberately choosing people who are genuinely close to us and who we feel comfortable having around us on such an important day.

So it feels strange to invite someone purely because they're related to me when I wouldn't otherwise choose to have them there.

There is another thing that makes me feel slightly hypocritical about this. I actually already cut ties with a friend for essentially this reason. We used to see each other quite frequently, but he had a lot of internalized homophobia and would regularly make outrageous homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic comments. Eventually I told him that he wasn't invited to the wedding because I didn't want anyone to feel uncomfortable at my wedding, and we haven't spoken since.

Obviously my uncle and cousins aren't behaving like that towards me, so I know it's not exactly the same situation. But it still feels inconsistent to say, "I don't want someone at my wedding because I know they hold bigoted views," when it comes to a friend, but then "well, they're family" when it comes to relatives.

I don't want to create unnecessary family drama, and I don't want to punish people for political opinions they've never directly imposed on me. At the same time, I also don't want to spend my wedding day wondering whether people in the room actually disapprove of my marriage or are privately judging my husband and me.

So how would you handle this?

Would you invite them because they are family unless they have actually done something to you? Or is it reasonable to say that "I don't feel close to these people and I don't want them at my wedding" is enough of a reason, especially when the wedding is a celebration of a same-sex marriage?

And, perhaps most importantly, how would you explain this to parents who see not inviting certain relatives as inherently disrespectful?

My fiancé and I are planning our wedding, and we're feeling completely overwhelmed.

We both live abroad and come from different countries (and even different continents!), so organizing everything has been a logistical nightmare. We looked into several options, but in the end the most practical and cost-effective solution was to have the wedding near my hometown, where my parents can help us with a lot of the planning.

The problem is that we're now starting to worry that many of my fiancé's friends won't be able to come. Since the wedding would require an intercontinental flight for them, the travel costs would be significant, and it's completely understandable that not everyone would be able or willing to afford that.

This has sent me into a bit of a spiral for two reasons:

1. My fiancé's family won't be there because they're estranged. That means his side of the wedding will essentially consist only of his friends. If many of them can't make it either, I'm afraid the day will feel lonely and sad for him.

2)We're planning a wedding for around 100 guests. If only 40 people end up coming, we'd still be paying for the venue and the minimum guest requirements, which would mean spending a lot of money for a much smaller celebration than we had envisioned.

I've even thought about covering one night in a hotel near the venue for our guests, but I'm not sure we can realistically afford that on top of everything else.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you handle it? Right now it honestly feels like we should just cancel the whole celebration and do something much smaller instead.