Family Conundrum

You both know they are toxic and you know how he feels so I'm not sure why he would regret not inviting them later. Qua-li-ty before quantity applies to your wedding guest list.
With everything you mentioned , Im not sure why you would even consider the idea of making him change his mind.

View Quoted Comment He's brought it up that he wants to invite his neices. They apparently are the only people he likes besides his one sister but then his whole family would know and probably start hackling them. I'm just not sure if it's worth the headache.

I think it's more likely he'll regret inviting his toxic family members. You want your wedding to be a happy day surrounded by people who love and support you. If relationships mend in the future, you could always do a vow renewal.

Things that "aren't worth the headache" usually end up becoming choosing which headache to endure.

Would you rather deal with the family members you don't invite bugging the people that you send invites to or those family members not being there for you on your wedding day? An option to mitigate that would be to have security at your wedding to make sure nobody crashes that isn't supposed to be there (lots of places require this anyways).

Not inviting people can lead to others' feelings being hurt, post-wedding drama, etc. but inviting those people can lead to your feelings being hurt and pre-wedding drama/ drama during the wedding.

Unfortunately, most of it comes down to which issues you'd rather have to deal with. I hope you guys find a way to come to the best solution! Family issues are never fun.

Let him make the call and accept his decision. Even if he did end up regretting not inviting them at some point, it's not really your "job" to protect him from making mistakes.

Thanks guys, you're absolutely right. (: I just wanted an outsider opinion on what we should do. I only want people there who will support him, not bring him down with petty nonsense. (':

View Quoted Comment Ok, the situation is even trickier than I thought!
It would be hard to invite these girls but not their brothers (should they exist) and their parents. Plus: many people think (personally: I don't) that you either invite all extended family members or you don't invite anyone. He has to decide if he wants the nieces " at all costs" there which will probably lead to extend the invite to their own immediate family and the risk of them starting drama or even a fight on the day of or if avoiding drama/fights is the one thing he puts above having these girls in attendance.
I agree with Maggie's reply.

First of all, fiancé needs to set and maintain boundaries and you support his decisions regarding those boundaries as a united front. If he feels certain relatives are toxic and he doesn’t want to invite them to the wedding or maintain any contact outside of that, then your role as significant other is to support his decision and stand by him. You don’t have to agree with it. Some people don’t have toxic family so they don’t understand the anguish that is associated that it sounds like he doesn’t want at the wedding. He will have bigger regrets by actually inviting people who don’t respect or support him and make his day/life a living hell.



As far as the nieces, is there anyone he is close to who can make sure they are able to get to the wedding?
As far as the toxic family having hurt feelings, I would not be concerned with it. Some people are “people pleasers” though. There are many posts on the forum of brides saying “we said we didn’t want (fill in the blank) but we were bullied/ridiculed into doing it anyway and have regrets involving those people”. Not all but a number of toxic people are narcissistic so they don’t care about anyone else’s feelings as long as they are intentionally hurting people. No one needs to deal with that and it destroys your mental health because with emotional abuse, it is nearly impossible to reverse the mental programming the victims have undergone, even with therapy.

Also, many people say you absolutely must invite people by circles. So all aunts and uncles for example must be invited or none at all if there is a relationship with one but not everyone. Or that you must invite prioritize immediate family because extended family is not close enough, even if you are closer to extended relatives and have no relationship at all with parents and/or siblings. Do what works for your situation and don’t worry about what others do.
Whatever fiancé decides regarding his relatives, support his decision even if you don’t agree.

I didn't invite my brother at my first wedding because we weren't getting along at the time. I don't regret it. I wanted to enjoy my wedding and knowing that he was there would have been a distraction and damper on my day. It could have caused drama. If things get better before the wedding then maybe he could invite them, but he should make his decision on what he knows to be true right now.

View Quoted Comment I'll support whatever decision he makes. I just know he wants to invite some people that wouldn't have a way to get there without assistance. But idk if we'd be able to offer that. I want him to be happy obviously, and I don't want him to invite anyone if they're toxic/unsupportive. But it makes it tricky wanting to invite specific family members while excluding other people in the same house.

I would say invite them and hope they don't show. DH and his sister don't get along, but we invited her to appease DH's mom. In the end, mask mandates were going back into effect in our area, and we weren't sure if our venue would require them or not (in the end, they didn't), so she nor her husband nor her kid showed up because "CoVID is a hoax." (DH is immunocompromised, so we were going to follow whatever our venue recommended).