To cancel my wedding

You are not being unreasonable but please don't confuse a wedding with marriage. There can be very practical reasons for being married - property sharing, pension etc. Not to mention division of assets upon divorce, inheritance tax issues etc. I don't know any of your circumstances but don't deny yourself (and your child) any protections because you don't want a huge event. As others have said, there's plenty of time to change plans and have the ceremony you want. Good luck x

P.S. reading your update, it's great to know your feeling and thoughts have been sorted on reading feedback.

You've got this. You're with a man you and your daughter love, and who you know loves and cares for you back. That's priceless.
The wedding is about celebrating that with others you love. Enjoy it with a celebration you'll enjoy and remember, but that's affordable and stress-free. Make it about you two/three!

Here's to a lifetime of love and happiness.

Is it the big wedding you don't want or thr marriage itself? If its the wedding talk it through with your partner. Sounds like you have a lot of stress and pressure on you to perform which isn't nice at all. Please don't simply cancel it, but please do definitely talk to your partner first.

Tell your partner that it's all too much and either scale it down by half and keep original date or phone the registry office and ask for a couple of dates that they have available to put forward to your partner and family for this year , then just have a nice meal out after.So many places will do small wedding packages and everything is done for you .You could plan for this year still.
If you just don't want to get married , don't .☺️

Just downscale the whole thing. Nobody needs a big fancy do. Some want it, of course, and that’s fine. You do you 🤷‍♀️

Get a wedding planner, we got married abroad on a boat and the only planning i had to really do is getting dresses and rings oh and sorting a few CDs of music we wanted played during the walk down the boat, ceremony, cake cutting and first dance, they sorted the decorating the cake, a live quartet, photographers, flowers all transport and hair, i could have had a horse drawn carriage even but i opted for cars with aircon 😅.

We had a party in the UK for people to come to after, function room, disco and cake, buffet and it worked out sooo good our families all wish we could go back and do it again. We had 18 days sc in turkey and got married on a boat we had 42 guests for the actual day, basically anyone who could afford to and wanted to come from our family/friends and then back home we had a party and requested buffet food for 100 people. It cost us about 12k all in and that included the 18 days holiday in Turkey wedding planner, the lot. Our honeymoon was obviously built in to the 18 days, win win.

You need to compromise on wedding size by the sounds of it too though for something like that to work.

I feel like the Exam thing is kind of irrelevant though, you could still do both.

Fgs just get married in a registry office. Marriage does give legal clarity and rights that are just not avaliable to co habitees.

Why does it have to be naff?

I may be wrong but it appears to me that you are overwhelmed with life in general & have a lot to deal with; working FT, worried about job security, lots of study to do, a possibly traumatized child & going through a court case with an abusive ex which is highly stressful on it's own.

Please speak honestly to your partner about how you feel. You are compromising by getting married when it is not important to you so maybe your partner could compromise by scaling down the wedding. Getting married is essentially legalising your love & commitment towards each other. You don't need to have numerous guests, keep it small. I think if your partner is as kind & caring as you say he will not want you feeling overwhelmed by this. You could even put the wedding "on hold" until your life is less stressful if your partner agrees....it's nothing to do with anyone else.

As for some of the unkind, clueless comments posters have made....ignore them. Many people will not have realised what you & your child have been through & how hard it is to escape an abusive relationship. What your partner wants is important, so are your wishes & feelings. You need to postpone the wedding or scale down the wedding & look after yourself as much as you can to get through this tough time.
Best wishes OP, I hope life gets easier for you x

The only two people who really have a say in this is are you and your partner. Easter is a long way off, people should not mind the change of plans and should want you to be happy. The only people I can imagine who might be in any way put out, is if anyone has booked international flights, but you could still offer to meet these people for a special meal or something if they did come and this may well not apply to your situation anyway. They could also probably change their flight. Really I don't think you should worry about other people with regards to this.

I love planning parties and had a massive wedding. I loved planning and the day. However I would have preferred a less formal and cheaper day (it would have been harder to make it smaller due to a large family and circle of friends). My husband was keen to keep it a bit more formal, so we did. It was still quite informal compared to a lot of weddings, but I would have just had a tiny wedding and then a massive party whereas we still ended up with a huge wedding breakfast ect. I loved the day, but when I think of the cost of our even relatively cheap and cheerful wedding I still shudder. If we already had our children then I would definitely not have been able to justify the cost in my mind.

So, you have to ask yourself:

• is he a keeper?
• what will marriage mean to you and him? I.e. to me it means formalising wanting to be together and from a legal standpoint ,having security in the union
• is it marriage or the wedding that's the issue for you? The wedding can be as small as you want it to be. Remember to consider family, if it's important to you and them.

You're coming across as not wanting the wedding or the marriage. But, it could just be the onerous wedding plans becoming overwhelming?

Either be honest with your partner or don't. If it means a lot to him but you don't want to do it, maybe you should leave him so he can find someone who shares the same feelings

It is obvious that you do not want to get married at all So, stop it before it goes further. You will be miserable and resentful if you go through with it. A wedding should be exciting and joyous. This is not. Hugs. Sorry you are in this position

If u can't be botherd to marry them when u no they want to.marry u leave them and let them find a person who cares about them not just yourself

You said you don’t want to get married so don’t. You need to talk to your partner though and tell him the truth because no relationship will last on lies

Yeah I would, I’d be hurt that they didn’t want to be married to me.

and yours is a totally different situation, you were both thinking about cancelling it not just one person. She shouldn’t have agreed to marry him in the first place if she didn’t want to.

Yes, that's a good point. The wedding points are actually secondary.

Just do registry office now and a ceremony or party for the family and friends another time when more convenient.

@MissFenellaPrism I agree. From the OP, it was getting married that was important to her DP and it sounds like it's marriage that OP doesn't want, although she threw in the wedding as a difficulty. But much of the thread has got caught up in the wedding arguments.

The second is also entirely optional, and, it would seem, not right for the OP from all she's said.

A lot of people on here seem to confuse 'wedding' and 'marriage'. One is a (generally) one-day event which can be as big, expensive and fancy (or not) as you like. The other is a huge commitment with financial and legal implications. The first is entirely optional.

Really? You'd end your relationship even if your fiancé was two traumatised to remarry after two previous abusive marriages? I'm clearly referring to the OP's situation here, but the lack of empathy or understanding is rather alarming when there may well be a very good reason to back out of a booked wedding, that isn't relationship ending!

My DH2 and I talked about calling off our wedding (in-law issues), but we wouldn't have ended our relationship had we called off the wedding. Sometimes things happen or situations arise, or minds change, and that's ok, but it really doesn't have to be relationship ending!

I think giving a struggling partner support is more important than ending things due to being mortified!

This doesn't make sense to me. If he has groomsmen you don't need to have bridesmaids. Just don't. I literally couldn't tell you how many groomsmen vs bridesmaids any of my friends have (or even if they had any in some cases). No-one will notice or care.

Groomsmen don't walk down the aisle. Bridesmaids can have any role you like, they don't have to either. Your instructions for them can be as simple as "wear any blue dress you already own". Job done.

You seem quite judgemental about your partner's tastes and ability to plan a wedding. You also sound like you have a very rigid idea of what makes a wedding not naff. I've been to all sorts of weddings and the only thing they ALL had in common was bring married by the end of it and enjoying the time with loved ones. Attendants, cake, car, gifts, white dress, flowers, sit down meal, disco, photos, first dance - all completely optional. I've been to lovely weddings without any of that.

I'd really just let him crack on, turn up on the day and enjoy seeing everyone.

If you don’t want to get married then cancel it, however if my oh said he wanted to cancel our wedding then our relationship would be over. I would be crushed if we had planned a wedding, sorted date and venue hence had to tell everyone it was off.

id be mortified.