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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Inevitable_Dust_2019 on 2023-07-17 16:29:44.

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I’m (26F) getting married to my wonderful fiancé (28M) later this year. He’s great and our relationship has been as close to perfect as you can get, with the exception that his family didn’t approve of me at first. They’re solidly upper middle class conservative WASPs and I grew up mostly in foster care because my birth family was screwed up big time plus I’m career military, so there’s a big culture difference. My fiancé has been good about wrangling them and I thought that they had finally settled down until this happened.

When we got engaged, we floated the idea of just having a small family wedding at the chapel on base, but my fiancé is the eldest and only son and his parents really wanted to throw a big white wedding. They offered to pay for everything and do the majority of the planning and my fiancé asked if we could humor them this once, so I agreed. STBMIL wasn’t happy with some of my choices, but my fiancé talked her down. The last straw was over inviting my father.

Background, my dad was not a good person when I was a kid. He was also military and came back from Iraq messed up in the head, which led to some really bad things happening. My mother also had issues, so I ended up in foster care. She overdosed when I was 10. For a long time, I hated my dad, but one of his old unit mates wrote to me a few years ago and said that my dad had gotten himself together and just wanted me to know that he was sorry for everything that happened and for not being there. We started talking and I’ve visited a couple of times. He’s sober, in therapy, and goes to a veterans support group like clockwork. I understand better what happened and that part of the reason it got so bad was that this was before PTSD and TBIs were really taken seriously and treated. So, we’re not close, but he’s my dad again and he literally cried when I asked him to come walk me down the aisle.

My in-laws are firmly against this and said that he didn’t deserve to be there and they can’t believe I would even want him to be there. I think it has more to do with my dad clashing with their image. My STBFIL said that he would walk with me instead. It turned into a giant argument, so I pulled the plug on the wedding. If I’m not allowed to invite my dad, it’s not happening. Fiancé and I will get hitched on base and the ILs can come or not.

My fiancé backs me up and is kind of relieved the big wedding is off, but is having feels about his family being upset and maybe refusing to come to the small wedding. His parents are in an uproar because they had already sent invitations and made deposits and things, so they may be out some money and will be embarrassed by the cancellation.

I feel bad if they’re going to lose some deposits, but I’m also pretty mad at them. My dad wasn’t the best dad, but it takes a lot to pull yourself out of a hole that deep and I want him to have this.