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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to have got married secretly with only 2 witnesses?

492 replies

fivecandles · 11/09/2011 08:50

Dp and I been together 13 odd years with ups and downs and 2 children. Decided to get married because really it's about time for all sorts of reasons BUT didn't want a big faff or the expense of a big wedding. Don't like to be the centre of attention, other financial commitments, it's dh's 2nd marriage, we're not religious etc, etc. DH has a very large family and if we'd invited his mum and dad we'd have had to invite his siblings and before you know it we would have had at least 30 people just with close family. So we had a quiet but lovely wedding in register office. DH had his best mate for his witness and I had mine and they brought their families. We then went for a lovely lunch in a nice restaurant and had a lovely day together.

Told our respective families the next day. Mine completely understood and very happy that we're finally respectable and legal. DH's horribly upset and accused us of being deceitful (because we didn't tell them beforehand) and so on. DH had long conversation with them which was very heated in places but reached a sort of resolution even if it was an agreement to differ sort of thing.

Now they've not spoken to me at all although they did send a card and a little bit of money a few weeks after the event. I sent them some photos and the only contact I've had with them directly is now a letter from MIL saying how happy we look in the photos and how upset this makes her!! She has been showing the photos to all her friends and they're also really upset apparently. She's told dh about how she's been crying for days and not sleeping and one of dh's siblings has written to say similar things.

Anway, having said nothing and hoped it would all blow over, I've felt moved to write back to MIL to remind them that a wedding is a happy occasion and ask them to put aside their negative views and be happy for us and respect our choices. AIBU???

OP posts:
LadyMontdore · 12/09/2011 13:41

Gosh this is such a long thread!

I feel the need to interject on behalf of people for whom marriage was a 'life changing event'. It seems we are a minority but not everybody lives together before marriage. None of our friends / rellies have had children before marriage. Most people I know have got married a year or two after movign in together and it was a big deal not just an excuse for a party! It was the 'formal' start of their lives together with them as a unit not jsut bf and gf

However, OP has dcs and has been with dh for years and so marriage won't change things for her. But she still wants to be 'welcomed into the family' and treated as a 'newly wed' even from the people she has, as someone said, slapped in the face by choosing friends over them. Not a great start!

I just feel so sorry for the MIL, such a rejection. ANd how awful when she has to tell her friends - DS has got married but we weren't invited Sad. I should think she feels terribly confused, and this is not a hurt that she'll ever be able to forget.

Wamster · 12/09/2011 13:42

Oh I think we do, DandyLioness, her pils are devout Christians, therefore, cohabitation and children before marriage are very much out.

My mil is also devoutly religious- her choice, but I could tell that at the register office it was not a real wedding in her eyes, and, frankly, my dh recognised this and did actually say that it was OK for her not to go although it would be nice if she could make it etc. She did have something else on on the day of the wedding and she was um-ing and aah-ing over whether to cancel that event to come to our wedding.
We know that she attended out of a sense of duty to us. Which is good of her, but the truth is this: she did not really wish to be at a wedding which she did not recognise as being a 'proper' one.

This is why I think the mil is being really unreasonable. Her devout religious views do not chime with somebody who is peed off at not going to a register office wedding.

LadyMontdore · 12/09/2011 13:44

Wamster - presumably all Christians don't think exactly the same (like any other group of people) so what your MIL thinks is not particularly relevant.

Thepoweroforangeknickers · 12/09/2011 13:46

Do most parents not say "I just want my children to be happy". OP's MIL doesn't seem to believe in that.

Wamster · 12/09/2011 13:46

I am only going on what the op tells us. It is not reasonable for people who are devoutly religious to think that cohabitation and having children out of wedlock is OK. Nor are register office weddings seen as being 'proper' weddings in their eyes.

Not my view- their's.

minervaitalica · 12/09/2011 13:47

Hmmm - another one. I know a few couples who did something like that (various ages and circumstances...) and in all cases there has been some fall-out or other with the immediate family.

Of course a couple is allowed to get married in whatever way they see fit. At the same time, I cannot believe that people think that deliberately excluding parents (but not friends, like in this case) is not bound to create some ill feelings somewhere. The most considerate parents may grin and bear it (as I would try to do if this happened to me!) - but given that a family fall-out over this type of issue is a distinct possibility and in some cases totally predictable, doing an AIBU like this sounds distinctly unreasonable.

Wamster · 12/09/2011 13:48

I will, however, await anybody who claims to be devoutly Christian telling me otherwise. Think I'll have a long wait. Hmm

SinisterBuggyMonth · 12/09/2011 13:48

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BellaneyMimphus · 12/09/2011 13:49

I suppose another way of looking at it is that there is indeed something amiss in the parent-son relationship and that's why he didn't want them there - probably not wise to point out that they were not much wanted, but it could be why she's going so wobbly over it.

MorningCoffee · 12/09/2011 13:50

I have put this in my watch list & am going to have a read later when i have more time, I read the OP & this is exactly what me & dp are going to do......

Wamster · 12/09/2011 13:52

Well, that is just it, isn't it? If a person's pil's are the sort of people to feel a little hurt but grin and bear it and say: 'whatever makes you happy', their odds of being excluded drop massively.
It's a bit of a catch-22 situation.
If they weren't unpleasant and demanding they would have been included, anyway.

verylittlecarrot · 12/09/2011 14:19

You have the absolute right to the wedding of your choice.

You can string bunting up outside the ceremony saying "Only to be attended by the most important people in my life (so, not you PIL.)."

You can sky-write "the presence of my husband's actual family is not as important to me as the presence of various family members of our mates".

You can state "this is MY wedding, it is IMPORTANT, worthy of CONGRATULATIONS, worthy of CELEBRATION and anniversary parties, and I don't want YOU there, thanks."
You can merrily acknowledge that this occasion is one which your PIL desperately wanted to share with you, in full knowledge that they will be dreadfully sad to miss your important day.

You could have done any of these things. Or just what you actually did, which is pretty much the same thing.

Oh, and you can't apologise for someone else's feelings. It's like apologising for them being ginger, or left-handed. You can only apologise for something you have done wrong. And it seems you have absolutely no regrets about your choices, which is probably why your 'apology' is like salt in a wound.

So, YANBU to have the wedding you wanted.
But YABU to fail to acknowledge that your choices were hurtful to others, and may have caused some long-term damage to a family relationship.
And YABU to want to dictate other people's feelings and reactions.
Interestingly, you are coming off as the ultimate me, me, me bridezilla.

DandyLioness · 12/09/2011 14:22

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

fatlazymummy · 12/09/2011 14:23

wamster so why weren't the OP's own parents included then? Were they also 'unpleasant and demanding'? I expect the witnesses families must have been really pleasant and undemanding then, by your reasoning.
You seem to be doing quite a lot of projecting in your arguments.

fedupofnamechanging · 12/09/2011 14:32

I think the OP probably didn't invite her own parents as you can't have one set of parents but not the other. In her own way, I think she was being fair.

Also inviting parents would have led to the snowballing effect that the OP and her DH didn't want.

Wamster · 12/09/2011 14:33

I meant generally speaking, not in this particular instance.

exoticfruits · 12/09/2011 14:36

I fear that OP won't understand it until much too late, and probably not even then as her own DCs won't exclude her.

DandyLioness · 12/09/2011 14:39

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

carriedababi · 12/09/2011 14:40

yanbu, but let them have their moment to be hurt and upset and give it time to blow over.

perhaps when the dust settles all go out for a nice lunch?

Wamster · 12/09/2011 14:51

Don't see that there is much to understand. Perhaps the op is the sort of person who sees actual actions as being louder than words. Perhaps if her mil becomes ill, she will take care of her mil out of a sense of duty and care. Or indeed, her fil, never mind, though, obviously a wedding is of much more importance than either of these things.
Who cares? Weddings are irrelevant these days. Half of children are born outside of wedlock. If that does not signal the irrelevancy of marriage nothing does.
Marriage is only important for legal reasons in this day and age.

LadyMontdore · 12/09/2011 14:54

WAmster - marriage is unimportant to you to lots and lots of other people it is very important! What a daft thing to say!

verylittlecarrot · 12/09/2011 14:55

"Marriage is only important for legal reasons in this day and age."

Wow. My marriage is so much more important to me than for reasons of legality.

Do tell, how should I rid myself of the outdated notion of its importance? Is there therapy available? I'm so behind the times...

Wamster · 12/09/2011 15:02

If marriage is so important, how come half of all babies are born outside of wedlock in the UK? Obviously it will be important to individual people but not to society as a whole.

And marriage is important to me. Very important for legal reasons. The rest? I don't need a marriage certificate to love anybody else, ta very much.

Maybe (only maybe) this is where the op is coming from, too.

LadyMontdore · 12/09/2011 15:09

Wamster - just making the point that your statement 'marriage is only important for legal reasons in this day and age' is an opinion and not a fact. Presumably, according to your statisitc, half of children are born in wedlock so does that not imply that your opinion is not exactly that of the overwhelming majority of the population?

verylittlecarrot · 12/09/2011 15:10

Well, since half of babies are born outside of wedlock, it follows that half are born within wedlock.
And so, at least half of society must value it as important.
Further, if some of the parents of the children born out of wedlock go on to marry in the future ( as the OP did) then it follows that more than half of society value marriage as important.

So should we not conclude that marriage is, in fact, important to most of society as a whole?