What are your thoughts on death bed weddings?

[Lailla719]

Specifically when a couple has been together for a significant amount of time?

A couple I know married 2 days before the brides death. They’d been together 30 years, ages 60+.

I have mixed emotions. I’m pleased they did it but can’t help feeling angry that she was denied the day she really wanted. I don’t understand why it took her imminent death for him to finally agree.

Girl, you're probably not as chronically online as me, but there's a thread on a similar theme which is based on the posters current circumstances

This would come across as insensitive xx

Bit of an insensitive post.

I'd say you're asking a different question, really. Lots of deathbed weddings wouldn't be about giving the bride something she wanted much earlier. Are you sure that's what happened here?

Couples who aren't in a hurry to marry could end up having deathbed weddings for lots of reasons - legal, emotional, religious - not just because one has been holding out.

I'm sorry if that's that happened to the woman you know, though. I suppose you could turn it around and say nobody's obliged to get married and he agreed as a last act of love because she wanted it, but obviously I don't know the circumstances.

I think that if you are not in that situation it is not your place to judge.

I’m pleased they did it but can’t help feeling angry that she was denied the day she really wanted
That isn't the case for everyone. Those I know did it for tax reasons.
I would wager that losing your partner is a damn sight more anger-inducing than not spending money on photo booth props or chair covers.

Who are you to judge. They likely do it for financial security.

If it made the person who was dying happy, that they got to get married before they died then what does it matter what anyone else thinks or the background behind it?

The bride wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t want to and the husband was no longer married two days later so nothing lost on his part if marriage wasn’t something he wanted.

I think facing mortality makes many people reassess their priorities. Which is only human.

In the case of the couple you know, it sounds like that was quite a specific circumstance (I assume you know that she wanted to get married and aren’t just assuming). I don’t see that it has any relevance to deathbed weddings as a whole.

I would say that it’s absolutely none of your business.

My DH is a Consultant and there’s been a few deathbed weddings in the ICU where he works. It’s an incredibly difficult time for the families, and the very last thing any of them need is judgement.

Im sorry, I had no idea. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.

If it makes any difference, I’m a very close relative to the bride (I was just trying to keep it vague).

Im grieving and over thinking everything and just wondered what others thoughts were and if I had any ‘right’ to be angry. I don’t have anyone in real life to talk to about it.

Its sensible. Saves tax, protects the surviving spouse. Plus it's nice to recognise what you've already been to each other.

YABU
cricitising people on their death beds?! Seriously?

Not deathbeds specifically but you do hear of people getting married when someone had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It always makes me wonder why.

That's a fair approach and I am sorry for your loss.

I haven't been in that situation, but like a few people I guess, I've seen estranged relatives come out of the woodwork when someone dear to me was dying. It made him happy so I'm glad it happened. But I understand your feelings and you have a right to them. I think I'd try to keep the positive memory foremost. I suppose nobody owes anyone else a wedding.

I'm glad your relative died feeling loved by her husband and you.

Its okay, i figured you're probably not a mn addict 🙈

I'm really sorry for your loss. You process your grief how you want, and yanbu to wonder why. I guess it was a combination of things for them. I'm sure though that she knew how loved she was 😔❤️

I think I just need to focus on the happiness it gave her in her final days. It’s just hard as I know what it would have meant to her (and me and my siblings) had this happened a long time ago, it was also quite stressful to organise at an already very stressful time and this was an expected death so there was no need for it to be so last minute.

Anyway, I’m rambling, my head is swimming.

Apologies again if anyone found my post insensitive, it wasn’t my intention.

I used to work in end of life care, and was often bewildered by decisions that family made when a loved one was in the active phase of death. Having watched my own father in his last days, I was quite territorial over anyone coming into his private space. I felt he deserved to die in peace and comfort.

I’m guessing you’re talking about your mum there.

Im sorry @Lailla719 . I can see both your pain at loosing someone close to you and how much it hurts she couldn’t have that one thing that meant so much to her.

I dint think anyone can tell why not before.
But I think it’s pretty normal to have wanted more fir someone you cared about.

My "uncle" (dad's best friend) had a death bed wedding. They'd been together for 20 odd years, owned a house etc. His diagnosis was out of the blue and he died 3 week later. No time to sort a will or anything. So emergency wedding it was.
Pretty sure his wife would rather never have got married than to have lost him.

I have been a part of a number of death bed weddings or weddings for people who are terminally ill because of my job role.

These type of weddings are so humbling in so many ways. Sometimes it is to tie up loose ends, make everything easier for when they go, to have the legal declaration that their union existed even if it wasn’t on paper yet and some people just go through life thinking yeah we’ll get married soon, just have to do the house up, just have to pay the kids through uni, just have to buy all this stuff for the kids, need to save for this that or the other, changing careers, then all of a sudden; mortality cruelly creeps up on them entirely whipping the rug from under them.

There is then no time to spare.
It is an opportunity to acknowledge all the years, the challenges, the joy, the love that they have shared.

Maybe you could try and turn it around in your mind to feel like that because I know as an onlooker to many of these moments, a marriage isn’t always marking the beginning of something, it is simply, a declaration of love, admiration, a chance to say, despite it all, we made it ♥️
sorry for your loss.

The only one I have heard of was to give the surviving spouse the authority and NoK status to deal with the funeral arrangements and estate. The dying spouse had left their religion some years ago and the dying spouse knew their parents would have taken over the funeral arrangements and done a religious funeral which they did not want.

I think most deathbed weddings are for practical reasons like this- to financially secure the surviving spouse and to give the surviving spouse more authority to deal with funeral arrangements and estates.

Usually relating to finances or pensions to protect the remaining partner.

romantic reasons - Most likely to have record of their love for each other somewhere - otherwise it will be as if they never happened. To acknowledge the love care and gratitude they have had for each other but hadn’t had the chance/finances/opportunity/balls to do (in cases unions that are not wanted by family), to make official.
practical reasons - no will, dispute over who would decide over either care or funeral arrangements which is automatically sorted when married, to ensure children have care, pension entitlements so essentially financial.
There is also the chance they both went through their relationship thinking they didn’t need a piece of paper to know that they have each other then all of a sudden they think they’ve missed out on something and don’t want to regret not having it done.

My deathbed wedding was so I could register my unborn daughter correctly, e.g as my husband’s daughter, once she was born. HTH