Definitely a bit of backstory required here.

As I'm sure you can tell by the title, a lifelong friend of mine (we'll call him Jack), isn't being invited to my wedding. Jack has always been extremely nice to me, almost to a fault, but has made some really poor decisions over the last 3-5 years or so. This has in turn has lead up to an increasingly distant friendship between us.

One of the first reasons I was hesitant to invite him was due to his ongoing issues with another close friend of mine that will be at our wedding. We'll call him Steve. Without going into too much detail, Jack cannot stand Steve over some pretty juvenile and petty shit from years ago. Not that Steve was 100% in the right to begin with, but Jack has taken his "hatred" for Steve way too far. Threatening him, assaulting him, showing up at his house in the middle of the night, some REALLY crazy shit. On top of that, they have been in and out of legal proceedings because of it. Steve has tried to just let it go since he doesn't want to ruin Jack's life/future, but Jack continues to test his patience. The final straw was last time we had friends over to our house, Jack followed Steve outside and threatened to kill him, which caused a scene and ultimately tarnished what little rapport he had with my soon-to-be wife. This alone was enough to decide that inviting him to a wedding that they would both be attending was probably a bad idea, but unfortunately it does not stop there.

I still talk to quite a few mutual friends that Jack and I have, and from what I have heard, he has recently became re-involved with cocaine. This includes selling it to friends and trying to talk his friends (and their spouses) into sneaking off to do it with him. Let me be clear, my fiancee and I do not do drugs in any capacity, so that is 100% off limits for us. I am definitely not trying to be DARE Officer Dan here, but there is a pretty obvious line between casually smoking weed and slamming rails of coke.

All of that being said, I still can't shake this feeling that I am being an asshole by not inviting him. I've known him my whole life and he has always gone out of his way to be a good friend to me. And I know that if I ever needed a place to stay or a shirt on my back, he'd be the first person to give me both. But on the biggest day of my life, surrounded by family and friends, I can't risk him getting drunk and emotional and hauling off on Steve, or taking bumps in the bathroom while a family member is trying to take a piss in the urinal next to him. Even if he was on best behavior, I feel like both me and my fiancee would have to have our heads on a swivel and be alert to what he was doing and where he was all night. And that doesn't seem like a very fair compromise for us on our wedding day.

AITA here? I guess I'd be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat afraid of the fallout with him too, considering the drug abuse and his continually deteriorating mental state.