to expect my family to be happy that I got married?

[beachtent]

OK, so, we planned a more traditional wedding, but my family drove us nuts with their various demands, so we cancelled it. We always wanted a small wedding, so we decided to do it all completely the way we wanted to - with two witnesses, and tell everyone afterwards. We knew our families (particularly our mothers) would be upset they weren't there to share the moment, but we thought that our own preferences for our own wedding should take precedence, so we decided to forge ahead with our plans. We got married, it took 20 minutes, we loved it, it was perfect. We had two friends as witnesses, then went on holiday. When we got back, we invited our parents round, opened some bubbly, and told them.

All seemed to be going well, until I was alone with my mum, then she started crying. I expected her to be upset and I too was sad that she hadn't been part of it all. But now her sadness about not being there, her feelings of being 'snubbed' and denied the experience of attending my wedding have dominated my entire family's response since. I expected some negative emotions in response to their lack of involvement, but the scale of the negativity is unreal. I'm getting shit from all angles. I've had my sister tell me she's 'never seen mum so upset about anything in my whole life', that she spent the entire day crying after we broke the news. My sister was crying, saying, 'how could you do this to her? How could you do this to us? We thought we were a close family' and reduced me to tears. My brother has just been on the phone and reduced me to tears again with the same kind of talk - 'what did you expect? You've denied her and she feels left out, rejected, snubbed' etc.

I'm so fed up of trying to justify myself. I got married, I didn't kill someone, I did something incredibly positive with the man I love. We've lived together for 5 years, we have a child together, getting married to us was no big deal. Both of us hate being on show, getting married felt like a very personal thing to do, and we wanted to keep it simple, short, and cheap. And we did.

My partner's family have all congratulated us and sent us gifts and cards. I've not had a single card from anyone in my family.

Have I committed a crime? I know a marriage is the union of two families, but having a child is more so (in my eyes), so we felt that getting married on our own terms in our own way wouldn't be such a big deal.

My mum now wants to take me out for lunch and buy me a present as a way of celebrating my marriage...

Thoughts, please! [bracing self]

But what about your husbands mum - did she not see it as a snub by not being invited?So why are they not being upset about it?

"Thanks you to all of you who've congratulated us. It means a lot!"

And a great big raspberry to everyone who thought you were out of order, obviously!

I guess it depends how you view marriage. For me, it's more than just two people getting married but an important family occasion.

Gay40 "Bearing in mind more than 50% of marriages don't make it past 10 years anyway (if the statistics are to be believed), they should reserve their devastation for later."

What an unpleasant comment to make after someone's just got married!

beachtent, that is what soooo many people forget. Thousands and thousands and thousands spent on weddings - when often the debts last longer than the marriage .

What so many people seem to be missing is that your parents and in laws interfered so much that you decided this was the best option. Perhaps if they had stepped back a little the outcome would have been different.

But you're right, the response is totally and utterly out of all proportion to the event.

My MIL didn't speak to me for six months when we did it and still hasn't fully forgiven me, but then I haven't fully forgiven her for treating me like shit for 17 yrs!

I thought it wasnt the parents who had interfered.

YANBU!!!

And those on here who've said otherwise are fucking barking..

Congratulations on your marriage, and on having the strength of mind to have a ceremony that is pleasing and meaningful to you , rather than an expensive crowd-pleaser for everyone else.

I can understand why your mum is feeling upset, and you've had good advice here on how to build bridges with her on that. Ultimately, she has to realise that your reasons were not a reflection on your relationship with her - maybe you could have a special day with DH and close family, with lots of photos or something. She needs to realise, too, that there is a lot more to a mother-daughter relationship than getting to wear a big hat at an expensive party.

But whatever you decide to do.... YANBU!

sute?

oh ok lol sorry I am usually good at deciphering them since I make so many of my own!

Dh and I eloped and dragged our witnesses from the carpark.

There was an element of not wanting to have to deal with organising a big family event, and the inevitable upsetting people in the process.

But, it was more because we wanted to get married for us, to make what had been a shit year, into a really special one. we didn't want a big party or for it to be about anyone else, it was a way of saying to each other that no matter what crap gets thrown at us, we will try and stay strong together.

If any of my dcs want to marry in the way we did, as long as they are with someone who truly loves them, i will be happy for them, because getting married is not about the party or the wedding or me or the family, but about their relationship with each other.

Congratulations Beachtent.

If either of my sons decided to have a wedding at the foot of the himalayas or on an island somewhere with no one else present I would congratulate myself on having raised such interesting individuals. I want them to do whatever makes them happy, not what I want them to do. They're not my children, they are people in their own right and I hope that I can raise them well enough to be able to respect their decisions.

YANBU, btw.

Hmm I'm finding this thread fascinating. You see we would like to be married but the family hassles and the cost put us off (we have been together over 14 years - all of them happy).

Am I spoiling life for our families by not doing so? I would be scared of the reaction if we did a bunk with our children to do it though, even more so after this thread.

I think what you did was fine, congrats btw. I do think you should have been able to predict the reaction though, sorry.

CONGRATS,

dont worry to much op, its their hang up not yours.

now you should be telling them that they have upset you by putting a downer on your wedding.

they should be a bit more grown up about it.

just start to enjoy your married life, well done to you and your dh

I would be gutted if DD got married and didn't want me there. Of course I would. But I would not tell her, as far as she would see, I would be over the moon that she had decided to make a commitment to spend her life with someone she loved. My way and her way of doing that might not be the same.

It is not your mum's wedding, or your siblings wedding, it is YOUR wedding, about you and your DH.

Tell them to just get over it.

Congratulations.

Exactly, bohemia! Equally supportive of them if they chose long-term partnership without getting married (providing they look after the financial and legal aspects of such a decision).

In the grand scheme of things, it's a blip on the radar.

I'd love to get married that way - as I see it, it's just signing a bit of paper so I don't see why it should have to be a big family event, or really why it's anyone else's business, it doesn't affect anyone but the two of us. We've been together for 10 years, so anything about starting a 'family unit/household', 'joining together two families' etc is irrelevant, that stuff has already happened long ago. The marriage contract would be just to tie up legal loose ends.

DP is against doing it this way, because of the inevitable family upset, and he's probably right, it would be a nightmare to deal with.

We might be able to get away with making it very low-key, just inviting both sets of parents and buying them dinner afterwards, don't think I'll be able to stop MIL turning up in a hat though

YANBU to get married quietly. I came very close to cancelling my big, fat wedding that my family were taking over.

But, I think it might have been kinder to tell your mother that this is what you were doing before just doing it. But, that's just me, and what I would have done.

So you crap on your mother, even though she did not hassle you about your wedding plans.

You come on here asking for validation and ignore anyone who isn't 100% behind you.

You have a hole in the corner oh so romantic wedding because you " hate being on show, getting married felt like a very personal thing to do, and we wanted to keep it simple, short, and cheap", but you are actually planning a full scale knees up later in the year.

Are you in fact 14?

I think the entire idea that people do a thing like this as a snub is rather indicative of being self-absorbed, because it presumes that you're the direct deciding factor behind someone else's decisions, when it's probably not about yourself at all.

It reeks of 'Oh, they snubbed me! It's all about me, me, me!' rather than, maybe they'd been together 5 years (or more), have children together, just saw it the cheapest way to cover the legal issues surrounding partnership, found it romantic, had financial worries they didn't want to broadcast so eloped to avoid any expenses, she's pregnant again, he's dying of Exploding Head Syndrom, a thousand different reasons why it's not all about you and nothing to take so personally.

Agree that a marriage is about more than two individuals, ideally.

Although I think society has pretty much lost the idea that it's joining each other's families and therefore a community thing.

Part of the problem is very much the traditional expectations of the day. and how it should be organised. Lord knows my SIL thought my wedding was all about her...

So it's a tricky one.

It's one thing to get married quietly with the two of you, but it's another to start to plan a bigger wedding, (with mother-of-the-bride presumably getting excited and involved in the planning?), then jack it all in without a word to anyone and sneak off to marry without her (and others).

How did you cancel the first wedding? How soon after did you get married?

Good grief cat are you her mum.

lay off a bit, she has not crapped on her mother.

and if she was 14 she wouldnt be able to get married