My wedding is in June and long before my fiance and I were even engaged, my dad kept saying that he would give us the money to just go elope. We don't really have a great relationship (my parents have been divorced since I was 2 and I was 100% raised by my mom), but as his only child, it hurt to think he didn't care about watching me get married. Fast forward to now, my dad has been very generous by writing us a check a while back to pay for about half the wedding; we never asked him to do this, as we are very lucky in that we'd be able to afford the entire thing on our own if we dipped into our emergency savings.
VERY long story short, my dad has given me an ultimatum that if we want to keep the money, I have to invite certain family members (I have only met them twice in my life, the most recent being 10 years ago) despite explicitly telling him a year ago that I was limiting my family because it's so much larger than my fiance's. Now as much as my fiance and I want to just give him back the money, it would only be 3 people, and honestly the venue and budget has space for 3 people, so we agreed to suck it up since this would help us buy a hosue this year.
This is far from the first time my dad has done something like this (agrees with me to my face, then sends a very passive agressive/guilt-tripping email shortly after) and because of years of pain and stress he caused while I was growing up, I was already considering walking down the aisle myself. My questions are basically can I do this without being the a**hole? A lot of people know my dad and I don't get along so I don't think anyone would be surprised, and he'll still get the father/daughter dance and a speech at the reception. If I commit to this, when do I even tell him? I was thinking of just doing it at the rehearsal dinner but will this be worse than telling him in advance? I likely won't be seeing him in person before the wedding because he lives halfway across the country. Or do I just get over it and let him walk me since he's giving us money?
