Family Member from Hell

You're not wrong. There's no obligation to invite all your cousins. If I were in your shoes I'd probably either ignore her or send her an email back telling her off.

I was in a similar situation where I only invited two cousins of about 90. I did invite all my aunts and uncles, like you, but had to draw the line somewhere. I don't think you're wrong to make these distinctions, it's unfortunate that she couldn't be more understanding. Tell her you'd love to get together and celebrate next time she's in town. Or completely ignore her, it really doesn't sound like you're losing much of a relationship here.

I did that, twice. Her responses got progressively nastier until I blocked her entirely, but could I have done anything differently or maybe salvaged the situation?

There's really nothing you could have done differently. She was incredibly rude to even email you with that in the first place. There's no need to apologize when you didn't do anything wrong.

Ignore her. You haven't missed her in 6 years, so I doubt you'll miss her at all.

Send her a link to this thread so we can tell her how rude HER behavior is. She should never be hounding you about this. Incredibly tacky on her part.

You block her number. That's how you deal with it. Don't allow toxic people to have access to you. Protect yourself.

Thank goodness you DIDN'T invite her! Surely she'd find something to get upset about and ruin the party.

Ignore her. Block her number and don't look back.

People get crazy about weddings. Almost all of us have a story of some family member/friend who got all rude and pushy about wanting to be invited. It sounds like you already replied and she won't take no for an answer, so now just ignore her.

I would suggest,

"I'm sorry you feel so strongly about this, I really did not menan to hurt your feelings." Then let it go.

And, I must agree with Holly-- sounds like you dodged a bullet by not inviting her!

Ignore! She has not been part of your life for 6 years! Don't let that bother you. The nerve.

Wow, how crazy of her.


We are not inviting our cousins. We just have too many between us. With their spouses/partners it would add another 40ish people to the list. We had to draw the line of reason somewhere and that was it. Too bad since there are a few we are closer to than others, but it wouldn’t feel right to pick and choose who to invite.

My FH has a lot of cousins, some are invited some aren't. It all depends on your relationship with them, with that being said a cousin whom you haven't seen in 6 years can be skipped.


The focus should be on you and your FH. Ignore your cousin. They will get over it.

If you had known she had such bad manners, you could have NOT invited her for that reason. Instead of your legitimate other reasons, that you rarely see each other, or have a limited number of guests .