I (29f) have been no contact with my mother (70f) for 5 years now. Her and my father (71m) are still together.
I am getting married this summer. It is a small wedding, basically an elopement with an after party picnic. (No wedding dress, no cake, just a pavilion in the park, and we live in a state where we can do a quaker self-uniting wedding, meaning no one needs to officiate.)
The party will be made up of my fiance's extended family and my friends. My brother (26m) is invited. The rest of my extended family is not as none of them have spoken to me since I moved out of my parents' house at 22. (My brother will get invited to things but I'm not. I'm just basically not part of the family. Not disliked or anything, just people forget about me. I don't anticipate any of them will care at all about not being invited.)
To sum it up, my mother is a POS and ex/possibly current drug addict. She has been in therapy for years but nothing has helped. She is incredibly toxic and I still have nightmares to this day about being trapped at home with her. (My only specification for a college was that it was hours away so she couldn't visit.) If she showed up to my wedding, it would not only ruin the day because of the traumatic response I would have in reaction to seeing her, but because there's no way she wouldn't cause a scene (she has been kicked out of multiple weddings before!)
That aside, I love my dad. Other than sticking with my mom, he's a great guy. He's the one who raised my brother and I (cooking, cleaning, taking us to sports practice, helping with homework, keeping a roof over our head-etc.)
I told my dad he was invited to the wedding and he asked if my mother could watch from the car with binoculars. I said absolutely not. He said I was making his life way more difficult by not inviting my mother. He also regularly says that I make his life more difficult by refusing to talk to her (we text semi-regularly and he stops over to visit a few times a year, her number is blocked).
My brother understands why I am NC with my mother but thinks I'm a little dramatic about it. However, because of his gender our experiences growing up were very different.
AITA for inviting my father but not my mother? I understand that I am telling him to choose between his daughter and his wife (for one day) but also I am emotionally prepared for him to not choose me. He's not a man who likes conflict so I know I'm putting him in a hard spot, but also I want to give him the chance to be there rather than not inviting either parent.