'I disinvited my future SIL's BF from our wedding and now SIL won't attend. AITA?' UPDATED

"WIBTA for potentially ruining my fiancee's happiness?"

Long time lurker, first time poster, English is not my first language. I hope I’ll get some inside wisdom with this post. My fiancee and I are getting married soon and her sister is her bridesmaid. However, SIL won’t come to the wedding if her boyfriend (Nick) isn’t invited or welcome. I don’t know Nick very well, but what I heard and know about him, I’m not very keen on having him in our wedding.

When we announced that we were getting married, and before we invited anyone, Nick invited himself. That rubbed me already the wrong way. His reason was that he hasn’t been to a lot of weddings yet. For context, my wedding will be the first wedding I’ll attend, so his reason is not that strong in my opinion.

He already tried to come unannounced to our home when my SIL was staying there for an internship she had and expected to be fine with us. In hindsight, I shouldn’t be that surprised that he invited himself.

Furthermore, my ILs don’t want him to be left at home (their home where he also lives), because they don’t trust him to be left alone there. So, when Nick comes to my home, I’ll have to keep an eye out, which will probably cause more stress on that day.

For my fiancee, family is really important and that is why I’m torn about this question. I know that it’s my wedding too, but my fiancee will be heartbroken, if her sister isn’t there because Nick isn’t invited. So, would I be the a$$h@le if I didn’t invite him, resulting in my SIL not being there and therefore ruining my fiancee's happiness?

EDIT: Some people asked for a little bit more information way I don't want him to be there and what my fiancee is thinking of him. My fiancee is on the same page as me if we're talking about Nick. She also found it quite impolite that he just invited himself even before we send out the invitations (still haven't send them). We did talk about not inviting him.

However, her dislike of him is less than her love of her sister, and "wants" him to be there if that means that her sister is there. I still haven't made a choice in this matter, that's why I made this post. (We're still thinking about having no +1s, because of restrictions, so he'll be the exception in that case) Yes, he does live with my ILs, however, he never asked and they never agreed.

He just slept there one night and never left. He's also controlling, like my SIL has to go where he's going and the other way around, and she cannot wear "sexy" cloth (her words). I think he doesn't trust her to go to a wedding alone. My biggest reason for him not to be there is that he took stuff from my ILs and when confronted, he didn't make a big deal out of it.

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

BaconEggAndCheeseSPK said:

YTA. It’s perfectly reasonable that the boyfriend of the MOH assumed he would be invited to the wedding. Not inviting him, and thus preventing your fiancée from having her sister/ MOH at the wedding, seems petty and punitive. You are risking destroying your fiancées relationship with her sister for absolutely no good reason.

RynnR said:

Yeah, You'd be TA. At this level of the relationship you should know how to compromise with your SO, and you should be talking to her about it. If family is so important to her and it would ruin the day for her, then you should at least try finding a way of making this happen. And not just decide you're not inviting this person because it could POSSIBLY be a stressful situation.

[deleted] said:

If your in laws don’t trust Nick unsupervised in their house where they allow him to live, they need to evict him. This isn’t your fight to have, but it is rude of your in-laws to push to have Nick invited to the wedding so they don’t have to worry about him being unsupervised in the house while they’re at the wedding.

What has Nick done to warrant the distrust? It sounds like he’s gauche and good at social faux-pas but why is he an AH? If you want to bar Nick from your wedding you probably need a bigger reason than ‘I don’t want him there.’ There must be a reason why your in-laws don’t want him in their home without supervision - has Nick stolen from them?

As far as etiquette is concerned it is rude to invite only one half of an established couple, especially when they live together. So unless you have a good reason beyond a gut twinge, YTA.

catzrob89 said:

YTA. He didn't "invite himself" - he's a long term live in partner, it was totally reasonable for him to be invited. Dealing with this sort of thing is part of being in a family. Before and after the wedding you might be able to keep him out of your house - it will be a matter for discussion and perhaps compromise with your fiancée/wife - but for the wedding, given the SIL reason, you need to deal with it.

Might change judgment with more specifics on why you don't want him in your house. I doubt it though, I feel like if they were more specific than "he's a sketchy dude" you'd have shared already.

DoctorSashaGrey said:

NTA he’s not your responsibility

Responses are mixed, but most commenters agree YTA.

About a month after his original post, OP shared this update:

I wanted to make a proper update to close it after we got married, and to reply to the people that took time to comment on my post. After I came home that evening, I showed the post to my then-fiancée and we both had a laugh at how awful I was in the post. She told me that I need to work on relaying information better.

That was a big mistake on my part to not better describe the problem in my post. She also told me that she also doesn’t want him at the wedding and that we were on the same page. However, she said that she wanted her sister to be there more than that she didn’t want Nick to be there.

I said I accepted the judgment, as people pointed out that Nick would probably dig his own grave, and that it would cause more drama to not invite him. And I wanted my SIL there more too. So, we put him on the guest list and once the invites were ready send out, we send one to him too. We got confirmation from SIL that both of them were going to be there. We made plans with him in it and proceeded as usual.

But here’s the good part: two days before the wedding, my in-laws arrived from France, but Nick wasn’t there with them. They told us that he didn’t want to get vaccinated and he didn’t want to get tested before they were going. You need to show a negative test or prove of vaccination before entering into the Netherlands.

We told them two months in advance, and they were either vaccinated or tested, but Nick didn’t want to. We looked at each other and asked ourselfs if we should be pissed because we had everything planned or happy that he wasn’t there. In the end we couldn’t give a crap, because we were too tired at that point. We had a lovely sunny day with the people we loved, including SIL.