DP and I are away on holiday atm and have been discussing marriage. My family stress me out so much. When my sister got married my mum moaned about virtually every decision my sister and her (now) husband made. Every time I see my parents I end up so stressed out, in the lead up to seeing them, whilst seeing them and even a little bit afterwards. We seem to have opposing views on absolutely everything to the point they can't even agree to disagree. They're racist, homophobic, hypocritical (blaming lazy benefit scroungers (or immigrants) for everything despite being on benefits for the last 15 or so years themselves).
The rest of my family never really want to talk to us unless somebody else organises an event that we and they happen to be at. I do have one amazing aunty that I love to bits and would love her to be at our wedding but I can just imagine the shit storm if we only invited her, my uncle and cousins.
DP doesn't get along with his family at all. They live miles away, never come up to see their granddaughter and even on the odd occasion we've gone to theirs they still have barely bothered with DSD. His family caused a huge fight when he married his ex so he wouldn't want to invite them again.
The idea of getting married locally with family stresses me out to the point of not wanting to do it. Which is awful as it shouldn't be about them, it should be about DP and I (and DSD of course). I know it'd piss off / upset a lot of people if we didn't invite them though, I was engaged before and my dad was upset my ex didn't ask him.
Would we be unreasonable to elope to New Zealand and not tell anyone until we come back? We'd love to just run away and get married without a lot of the stress and to combine the wedding and honeymoon, hence New Zealand.
If we do that do we just not tell people we're engaged? It'd be a long term (well a year to two years) engagement due to having to save massively for flights, wedding, holiday / honeymoon etc. How on earth do we keep it from people for so long if we go down that route?