insane family members

[Portia]

The first draft of this post was very rant-y.

Condensed version: my boyfriend's brother-in-law is mentally off his rocker and any interaction with him, however slight, is guaranteed to be toxic to my mental well-being.

We need good ways to make sure he and his twenty-two-year-old ward don't crash our wedding (if we do get married), for starters. I'm talking ward in the The Importance of Being Earnest sense, folks.

My vote is a destination wedding. If I get hitched in Paris, could I inform my brother of the time and place? :-)

ETA: Mormons exclude heaps of people from such things all the time, so I know it can be done, Emily Post or no.

[Whistler]

well, a destination wedding is a great way to get fewer people to go to your wedding (assuming that is a lot of money for them). Not sure if your brother could go or not...

[Emiliana]

The simplest thing is to just not invite him, and ask her family members not to talk about it around him.

I have a stepbrother who I didn't particularly want at my wedding, not because he's psycho but just because we're not even remotely close and it would be awkward. But then I sent my invitation list to my dad so he could add anyone I'd forgotten, and he added the stepbrother, and I was like, oh whatever, he won't come anyway because we haven't talked in years except for about thirty seconds at my nephew's funeral. And then his wife RSVPed and now I'm kind of stuck with it even though it's really weird.

So the moral of the story is, if there's someone you don't want at the wedding, don't invite them! It's your (hypothetical) wedding.