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]

I posted earlier regarding getting married abroad in 1989 because of an (in denial) but alcoholic mum. She probably only forgave me in 2003 when I married for a second time and had a small wedding that she came to......

BUT atswimtwolengthsit didn't make any difference that I decided to tell her a few days before we went away, rather than telling her when we came back. She still found it unforgiveable.
I know I did the right thing by the way she behaved at my brother's wedding the following year......

I think if anyone else is thinking of getting married quietly just go abroad and do it in secret. I can understand that close family would find it more hurtful if they lived locally and were excluded though. Still think we all have a right to choose the wedding we want!

I would be heartbroken. Utterly. I make no apologies for that.

I do however understand that everyone is different and some people would not mind a jot. I respect that's their point of view, it's just one I could never share.

Not read the rest, but this is almost exactly what Dh and I did. Except we told everybody that we were getting married and that no-one would be coming. Tbh, we mainly did it cos of our attention-seeking fathers - you can't miss a lifetime of school concerts, parents' evenings etc becasue you're in teh pub then expect to get the glory at your children's wedding.

My mum totally understood and said she wished she'd done teh same. My aunties, less so, Told me that my gran'd be turning in her grave.

Everyone came to the party a month later.

2old4thislark - your reasons for wanting to marry in secret are totally understandable

To clarify, I don't think there is anything wrong in wanting a totally private wedding (even if you do come from a relatively well-adjusted family) but a wedding is still (in my eyes) a family affair. So in your case, it would have been perhaps more appropriate to talk to your mum beforehand (thus involving her and cutting out the deceit). It's the deceit that would hurt me tbh.

Congrats by the way

It seems there are a lot of mothers who have responded based on how they would feel if their DCs got married without including them.

Fair enough, but I would note that if you would be devastated if you weren't included, you should carefully consider your own behaviour. Putting pressure on the bride and groom to host an OTT wedding, inviting loads of your friends, trying to get too involved in small details, stirring up family drama (especially if you are no longer married to DC's other parent), and foisting your religious choices on the couple are all reasons which might lead to you being excluded.

Another one - in cases of remarriage, consider how you behave if your DCs get divorced. If you are nasty about it, you might get over it, but chances are your DC won't and may distance you from their relationships in the future. Along that line, consider also how you treat new partners when they enter the picture following a divorce. If you aren't very welcoming, your DC is likely to always remember that, even if you warm up to them later.

Of course, sometimes people get married without their families for other reasons (such as it being romantic, inexpensive, hassle-free, etc), but family behaviour often does influence these decisions. It may be a bit selfish, but so is the behaviour that triggers it in the first place. If you are impossible to please, your DC may decide not to even try.

I wouldn't expect to have a say in any aspect of my DCs weddings. But i would expect to be there. S'family. Only broken families do that sort of running off and not loving one another stuff.

Tbh I would also expect to foot the bill, but that expectation is in no way linked to the first expectation.

I only got to the second page.

I can't believe how many people are saying that it's a deliberate snub to not be invited to a wedding, or that you should have accepted that your family would be so upset.

Wedding vows are about two people, and two people only. The only other people that need to be there are the three that make it legal. If one of my dc's did this, yes, I would without a doubt be dissapointed, but the feeling of being happy that my child had grown up to be united with someone they love would far outweigh that. It's just pure selfisheness for anyone to make you feel that your wedding should be as much about them as the two of you.

What about all those people that don't get married and just decide to live in committed relationships. Are they wrong for denying their mothers/families a day of celebrating and a piece of cake?

As mothers we should support what our dc's decide to do with their lives, especially when they are adults and making a positive choice! We should not be making them feel guilty for doing what is best for them and those of you that have said you would react the same if your dc's do this should probably watch out. Yours are probably the ones most likely to do this in the future.

Beachtent, I'm 100% certain that if you had posted this on a wedding forum and not a mothery forum, the reaction you got would be completely different. Huge Congratulations to both of you

Curlymama, if your DC led you to believe that they were having a family wedding that you were invited to, and then allowed you to carry on thinking that while they married in secret - would you be ok with that too?

Because that is what the OP did.

Escuse me but a marriage is most certainly NOT about two people and two people only

It's about two families becoming linked, shared grandchildren and nephews and nieces, shared values and the wider community. That's what marriage is.

It's the one thing I remember the Vicar saying on my wedding day, and even though I'm a committed atheist, it makes more sense now than it did umpteen years ago.

'Only broken families do that sort of running off and not loving one another stuff.'

Excuse me? My parents have been happily married for 46 years. I have a large extended family and we all love one another very much.

You don't need a wedding or marriage to link families.

The Vicar said? A lot of people don't believe in God. That doesn't make them horrible broken people who don't love.

I understand that my view of marriage isn't the same as everyone's, indeed many of my friends don't believe in marriage at all. But I don't go around starting threads slagging other peoples' choices off and making generalisations about their feelings and the people they are because of it.

I see your point Betty, but tbh, I really do think that even if I was a bit hurt, my happiness that my daughter had married someone she loves and who loves her back would be a much stronger feeling. And if they said they only wanted a small wedding, I would have backed them in that and hopefully helped fend off some of the more zealous relations that made them feel that eloping was the best way to go.

Perhaps the OP did go about it in a way that's not ideal, but it was HER wedding, and that of her husband of course, and the important thing is that they are married. The wedding is irrelevant really, and this is coming from someone who did the whole huge white wedding less than a year ago.

'What about all those people that don't get married and just decide to live in committed relationships. Are they wrong for denying their mothers/families a day of celebrating and a piece of cake?'

Apparently not. I can see now why some people don't bother.

I'm just saying that most parents probably don't intend to alienate their children through their behaviour, but it happens nonetheless.

quattro, I don't think its fair to say that those who get married without their families present don't love their families; every family and every couple has different ways of showing their love and places different levels of importance on weddings.

secondcoming, I agree that malicious deception isn't right, but there are many things which children don't share with their parents, especially as adults involved in relationships with other adults. I don't think Beachtent maliciously deceived her mother; she changed her plans and made an adult decision to keep her new plans private as she and DP deemed it to be in their best interest. I think there is a split here between those who view weddings as family affairs and those who view them as intensely personal moments. I tend to agree with Beachtent that the act of marriage is what unites the families, not the wedding itself.

Betty, we didn't lead them to believe that. They knew we'd cancelled the original wedding because it was so far from what we originally wanted. And what we originally wanted was no secret, as I've said in previous posts. We wanted to get married with just the two of us and a couple of witnesses, and we never implied that those witnesses would be anyone from our families. In fact, we often talked about having strangers as witnesses, but since our dc was there, we thought that would be inappropriate. So it was not a surprise, in fact everyone we told has said it is not a surprise, including my mother, so it wasn't a case of lying and deceiving, leading them to think one thing and then doing another. We've been open about our wishes since we got engaged years ago. We just wanted to be married,and not just because of the legal stuff, but because we're in love with each other.

Being married is what is important to us both, not the ceremony, which is why we didn't want a fussy ceremony, and why we didn't want other people foisting their ideas about protocols and whathaveyous on us. We just wanted a swift, simple, basic ceremony, we thought it would be romantic, and it was! It was lovely. We really enjoyed it. I think it would have been nice if our mums were there but it's not something my dh wanted, and we certainly couldn't have had my mum and not his - can you imagine that? So we had to do it the way we did - I honestly didn't feel we had a choice. But it seems from what everyone's saying that the crime is in not having told them first.

Personally I don't see how this would have made much difference. Surely if I'd told her beforehand, she would have felt hurt at not being able to come? And tried to convince me otherwise (which she definitely would have done). Then, if she came, dh's mum would come, and so would about 10 other people, and hey - there we are back having the wedding we didn't want. I really couldn't see any other way of having the wedding we wanted and pleasing everyone.

:( Expat - you know we mostly agree on most topics

I think I made it clear that I don't believe in God, but it doesn't mean that those who do can't say anything relevant to me.

For me (and probably in consequence my DCs) family is important. It's important that they have grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, and that all those people have a part in their lives and their upbringing. Marriage sort of made all that formal - it made them part of my DCs lives and me part of their lives. A private thing but also a public thing.

I suspect I am closer in age to the OP's mother than the OP so maybe this is a generational thing. But to exclude a parent from this rite of passage is almost like disowning them, I think (or feel).

Quattro - maybe in an ideal world, but not in RL. I certainly didn't marry my husbands family, I married him and him only! Any responsibility I have towards his parents (they are his only family) is only there because I want to do what makes him happy. If the by product of that is that his mother is also happy, then that is just an unfortunate coincidence. I can't stand the woman, and I don't feel I owe her anything just because I married her son. Likewise, my Dh and I got married because we wanted to show our commitment to eachother, and him to my DC's from my last relationship. But that involves the four of us and nobody else. My dc's don't need another set of GP's they are lucky enough to already have their own. And my family don't have to share anything with my DH just because I married him. Except me! They will because they adore him and they all get on very well, but that is their choice. I don't feel I have the right to force two families together just because me and my DH have chosen to share our lives.

So I guess what I'm trying to say (albeit not very well) is that imo a marriage is about two people, plus any children involved. Not about two families. The families just get the pleasure out of it should they so choose.

quattro why is the 15 minutes it took us to say a few words and sign a piece of paper so massively significant to two families and a community? Is it not all the things before (in modern society) and after that moment, such as having children, living together, sharing lives and so on, that is what unifies two families? I mean, our families became united in blood when our child was created, what could be more moving or powerful than that? Perhaps if we hadn't already had a child we might have felt the wedding itself was more of a significant moment, but to us, it was not. Our families are already bonded, forever, in our son. No big change to anyone by us getting hitched, other than to us. Well, that's how we see it, anyway.

quattro how the f is getting married without your parents there like disowning them?! Seriously? Are you joking? Are you ok? That's just nuts. We haven't disowned anyone. We got married. Just the two of us. No crime. No rejection. We love our families, we love our mums, we haven't disowned anyone.

I'm very glad my mother wasn't so unsupportive or her love so conditional she made me feel like my choices made me less of a person then, Quattro.

Family is incredibly important to her. We're Latino.

But she believes in marriage as a relgious promise to God between two people. As she says, 'I wake up next to your father every day, not his mother.' My father does as well. He says he married her, not her mother.

They left their native city to move to a city 200 miles so my father could make a better life: there was no university in their city and job opportunities where they were. Her parents and his father gave nothing but their blessing. His mother tried to use guilt. It didn't work. He felt his obligation to his wife and the children they might have were more important.

They raised me to believe love is stronger than death, because it is from God, so physical distance is no barrier to that.

I really take exception to the idea that anyone who doesn't agree with one's personal idea of a wedding or marriage is whacked, broken, can't love, doesn't consider family important, etc.

I haven't made similar assumptions about people who don't feel the way I do.

My own children may never chose to get married or have kids at all. I'm fine with that. I had them to try to bring them to up to find joy in the world, however they see fit so long as it's legal.

Curly - you daid "I certainly didn't marry my husbands family, I married him and him only!" But I think from your later description that this was your second marriage. I didn't realise at the time when I married DH that I was also choosing my children's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. But I was ...

Beachtent - um obviously that's how you feel, but it seems it's not how your parents feel? If you'd realised that your parents would feel rejected, would you have done it?

Expat - you know as well or better than I do that parental love is pretty unconditional. Or involuntary, as I reminded DD when she blocked up her loo with facial tissues tonight, leaving me deblocking said loo up to the elbow in shit. Doesn't mean I wouldn't feel rejected at not being invited to her wedding, though. Your bonds are differently structured and I respect that.

Congratulations Beachtent.

I think you should just let your mum know WHY you both decided on the quiet marriage.

After all, the day was about you and your DH, not the guests. The problem with some families is they get carried away in the excitement of an impending wedding.

When DH and I decided to get hitched, we organised and finalised all arrangements and then told family 8-9 months before the big day. TBH, we were getting married regardless of who was or wasn't there.

All the best for the future

Quattro, maybe my situation is a bit different, but I wasn't married to the man I had children with. I realised when I was pregnant that his family would be my childrens family of course, but I didn't plan my pregnancies. My ex and his family are all fantastic luckily, because I didn't consiuosly (sp!) choose them. I made an active descision to marry my DH though.

Sorry, I might be being thick, but I'm not sure what your point is?