Child-free weddings are all the rage these days. My oldest child is nearly 7 and has never been invited to anyone’s big day, not even family.

So, OP was okay with his fiancee wanting the same thing for their wedding – at least until she said that she thought it would extend to his 15yo son.

So i recently proposed to my long-term girlfriend, and we are planning for a wedding in summer next year, everything is still very early stages.

My fiance has expressed that she wants a child-free wedding, which I am all down for but I want to make one expectation, my son (15M), i had him from a previous relationship and we have evenly split custody of him.

Thus far, she has played the nice stepmom, even going out of her way to bond.

Until now my fiance has gotten along great with him, we’ve had days out as a family, she’s gone to see his games (he plays ice hockey) and she’s even taken him out on fun days just the two of them.

As they discussed this, though, she started to come unglued about him wanting to bring his “old life” into his new one.

I brought up that I wanted to make an exception to the no kids rule for my son, she shot the idea down straight away and said that she didn’t want anyone under 16 there as she doesn’t want to feel like she or anyone else has to babysit on her special day.

I told her that no one would have to babysit him, he’s 15 and she knows he’s well-behaved and a generally quiet kid.

She then changed her reasoning and asked why i wanted my old family and life on the day I was supposed to making a commitment to her and our new family, I told her while I will be making a commitment to her, my son will still very much be my son and my family.

When he told her that his son was always going to part of his family and his life, she equated it to wanting his ex-wife there, too.

She then equated it to wanting my ex at our wedding, which I do not and never asked.

I told her that i don’t care about the aesthetics of the wedding, and that she can pick everything else, the food, the aesthetic, the music, the dress, but all i want is my family at the wedding (my parents, my sisters and my son), that is my only ultimatum when it comes to our wedding.

Now she’s not speaking to him and is tossing around a lot of psychobabble, too.

She started calling me controlling by giving me an ultimatum and said I had initially agreed to a child-free wedding and now I’m “gaslighting” her.

I said we can have a mainly child-free wedding, but with this one exception, an expectation that guests can’t even complain about being unfair since the only child is the son of the groom.

She called me a name and is now not talking to me.

I really think this is a reasonable want, but maybe I’m not seeing something, so AITA?

Should he give in? Leave her? You know Reddit will give it to him straight!

The top comment says that OP needs to back out now.

This person says her mask is slipping and OP needs to look closely.

They say if he gets out now OP will have dodged a major bullet.

This commenter fears his son will be the one to suffer if he goes through with it.

No one who cared about him would make him choose.

This woman is an evil stepmother waiting to happen.

I hope OP took the comments very seriously.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parent’s 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.