I am getting married later this year. When we got engaged I excitedly shared save the dates to a handful of friends. Including this one friend who I have known since university and was my housemate whilst there.
It's been clear to me for a while that our friendship has changed and grown apart, but I accepted that and still clung onto as much of her friendship as I could. We live a long way apart, but I would often take weekends to visit her and if I happened to be anywhere near where she lived, I would reach out to see if she could even spare 1 hour for a coffee. She does not do the same to me. She visits the city where I live frequently and I only find out about it from her social media postings.
We had plans one weekend but it coincided with her birthday so we made sure we changed our itinerary so we could attend her birthday dinner, then rush off to our other plans. When we arrived with her gift (we'd driven straight to the restaurant and would be leaving straight after the meal) she asked "What the hell am I meant to do with this, we're going out partying after this?". My fiance was furious and from then has considered her very selfish, but kept his thoughts to himself for my sake.
As part of my wedding plans, my bridesmaids were planning my bridal shower and the most convenient place for the majority of my friends was to host it near to where I live. The friend sent me an email to say she'd not be coming, and it was really unacceptable that the venue was so far away from where she lived. I was heartbroken. I know that if it was the other way around, I'd have travelled to hers to attend, regardless of how long I'd be travelling. I was so upset, I didn't reply. I kept then meaning to reply, and every time I did I would get upset so buried my head in the sand. On my part, that's not cool.
She text me the other day to say I was childish for ignoring her message and the whole situation was petty. I clearly think otherwise and told her so. Her reply was very much "this is your opinion, but you're wrong and petty" so once again, I decided not to reply.
Now - we're sending wedding invites out to our guests, and I don't want to invite her. I think it's clear our lives have moved on and I think she would somehow manage to upset me if she did come to our big day. However, my mother thinks that as I've sent her a save the date, I have to invite her as it's rude otherwise, or that I have to explicitly say to her she's no longer invited - which fills me with dread. She has said that the friend could turn up anyway, as she has most of the details, which does worry me but I really doubt she would... I'm just so anxious to enter into a dialogue to tell her she's not coming anymore.
I'm ok with no longer having this friendship, for me - it's toxic and I have a lot of other friends who care about me enough to put me first when needed and without asking. And wish I'd not jumped in and sent save the dates out before I came to this realisation!
Just a side point to add to the awkwardness, my other uni housemate (we weren't that close, but they still are) is part of our wedding band/music... I can just imagine him saying to her "See you at the wedding" and her saying that I'm a **** - eeek!
