To consider going against my own strongly held beliefs about getting married before having children

[KirstenRaymonde]

Have name changed as I’m usually woefully sloppy with giving out identifying details about myself, and am a known MNetter in real life, so thought I’d make an attempt at privacy for this. Sorry in advance but this will likely be long.

I have always felt very strongly that I wanted to be married before having children. No judgment on whatever anyone else chooses to do, and I know often the decision is taken out of people’s hands anyway, but I’ve alays felt I wanted to be absolutely committed to someone before deciding to bring a child into the world with them on purpose. Plus the legal protection of marriage plays into my reasoning in no small part. I’ve been 100% sure I will get married before trying for kids for as long as I could possibly have been thinking about such things, it’s never been in doubt for me (and actually I’d have considered it a deal breaker if a partner hadn’t agreed to it)

I am 30, DP is 28 and we’ve been together for 6 years. We are very settled and happy together, he’s a fantastic partner and my best friend. We’ve decided we want to get married, and have been talking about when to have children. We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years actually, but turning 30 ramped it up for me.

We were looking at getting married next year, but even trying to do a wedding on the cheap (big stately home do’s are not us) it was still getting expensive very quickly. We are lucky to have lots of friends and family we really love and would want to share the day with. I tried to cut our potential invite list down to the absolute bare minimum and still couldn’t get it below 70, not including kids. This is a lovely problem to have but it does add up the costs even just in food and drink. I considered briefly eloping or doing it just with immediate family and best friends (which would still take us beyond....30 or 40 people at least!) but I just couldn’t do it, I want the people I love there. So we’ve decided to marry instead in 2020, on a date that’s significant to us and I think worth waiting for, and enables us to save for the wedding we want. I am happy with this decision after a couple of months of worrying how to make it all work, and the pressure of figuring out how to sort it in that time has just gone. But of course this pushes back TTC by at least a year if not more, date is about 2.5 years from now.

So now I’m thinking, why don’t we just try for a baby now? There seem lots of very good reasons to just go for it, and try to have a baby before the wedding. But I’m really going back and forth on myself. DP knows how I’ve always felt about being married first and had agreed with what made me happy, but he doesn’t feel so strongly about it so wants me to be sure of my feelings.

My good reasons include:

• I know 30 isn’t old, and I’ve no reason to doubt my fertility, but I’m conscious that having your kids younger is generally better for health reasons. I also recently had some cervical cell changes discovered at a smear (it’s fine for now but they’re being monitored as early stage at risk) and the thought that I could put off and put off trying, and then have the choice taken away from me by something like cancer feels me with such deep dread.
• DP has a medical condition which could impact sperm motility. It’s not for sure, and potentially a low risk, but should it be the case it could take us longer to conceive and I think we should consider that. At the moment time and age are on our side.
• Our relationship is wonderful and solid. I know I have a true partner in DP, he won’t be ‘babysitting’ his own kids, and he doesn’t ‘help me with the house’, he does his perfect fair share of our life together (if not more at times). He is fair and patient. I can completely rely on him. Marriage would solidify that legally but I don’t have any fears about him leaving or his skills as a parent. He is already a wonderful uncle, in fact he’s probably more child friendly than I am, and ‘Dad’ to our cats. I know he will care for and support me and any children amazingly, whether we’re already married or not.
• My DDad died very suddenly, young, recently. Both my grandfathers also died young, I didn’t know them. It has brought mine and my other loved ones mortality into focus (unsurprisingly) and I want to make sure my kids know my DM and DPs wonderful parents, who are all already brilliant and involved GPs, and have them around in all our lives for as long as possible. DM is on heart medication and hopefully will live another 30 years, but her DM died when she was 33, and I know she’s always felt her absence in hers and is children’s lives. The longer we wait the less potential time I see.
• I am close to my siblings and cousins and want my DCs to have that opportunity too. Our sibling’s children are already appearing and I’d love them all to be close in age.
• We live amongst a great support network of friends and family we can rely on, emotionally and physically. We are very lucky in this regard.
• Financially we are just about fine. Could always be better of course, but DP is on an upwards trajectory and even as we are now living costs including childcare would be fine. We don’t own our house, but we live near London and prices are nuts. If we waited to own we could be waiting a long time!

So yes, many ticks in the yes box! But what about some cons?

• We have some debt. Not crazy but needs dealing with, any decision to TTC would have to be accompanied by heavy duty knuckling down to saving and debt repayment, but I think knowing why we were working hard to do that quickly would make it easier.

But number one negative - I fear I will always judge myself for not waiting, for going against my own beliefs that I’ve always held so highly. I’m not worried about anyone else’s thoughts, I don’t think it would bother anyone else at all which way round we did it, but it might well bother me, and I’d hate to have that niggling regret in the back of my mind - I guess that I didn’t meet my own standards for want of a better term.

But I’m conscious that anything can always happen, we can’t plan life to a tee and sometimes maybe we just need to go for it? I am a worrier and do always feel like I need to be in control of ‘the plan’ but recent events have shown me sometimes you really can’t plan.

Fully prepared to be told I’m being utterly ridiculous, but after rolling this around in my head gettings nowhere for a few weeks I thought I’d present it to the wonders of MN and see what you all thought.

So, if you made it this far, thanks! Would be grateful for any advice.

Have you considered having your fertility checked? And your DH-to-be? This might have to be done privately and I must admit I haven't done it myself so I'm not sure on how accurate it is. But if it tells you your fertility is declining then you have your answer, really.

You could start trying now but it may not happen right away. What if you get pregnant later than you expect and this interferes/overlaps with the planned wedding? What if the baby is a couple of months old at your wedding?

If you wait til 2020 when you are 32/33 that's still young enough to conceive. I had the same worries as you at 30. I decided to go for a wedding as that was more important to me (I knew that once we had children I wouldn't be able to afford the wedding I always wanted and I was ok with not having children if that was the outcome) I tried for a baby at 33 and conceived straight away. Which was a surprise as I have PCOS. I did buy some ovulation sticks to "test" my fertility so I knew I was at least ovulating.

It sounds to me like you can have two of the three:

• Marriage before baby
• Affordable but dream wedding
• Start TTC soon

You can save up and get married, but you'll have to wait to TTC.
You can marry quickly and TTC afterwards, but have a much smaller wedding/go into more debt.
Or you can start TTC and wait for the wedding.

I know which I'd do. (3). It's not quite the same as just having DC without any plans to marry IMO. You have a specific reason to delay the wedding and a particular plan for when to do it. However I'd caution that you may struggle to afford even a basic wedding with 70+ guests after DC because your income ends up so strained and earning power too. I wanted similar but in the end we had to do it quickly and were limited by the venue to 40 so 40 is what we had. It was very disappointing not to have certain people there but we still had a lovely day, and those people are still in our lives and will get to celebrate other milestones with us. It's not the end of the world.

Ultimately it depends which two out of the three options are more important to you. I'd say at 30 you have ages to worry about fertility yet, but you mentioned other issues WRT timing which do make sense to get a move on sooner rather than later. As someone who's been through a longer period of TTC than the norm I'd always in the future err on the side of trying early, even if sod's law means we'll likely end up with babies less than a year apart!

And YY to feeling knackered and haggard with a toddler!! Get married while you're child-free OP

Have your honeymoon in Cornwall and ENJOY responsibility free!!

Your OP should say ‘I always wanted a fairytale wedding before having children - should I put off having children until I can afford this.’

If you had ‘a strongly held belief in marriage’ you would sign the paperwork and/or stand up in a church with just two witnesses.’
You don’t seem interested in that so it seems that your ‘strongly held belief’ is actually an ‘ideal version of your life’.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting that event.

There are two ways to have it.

1. By going into debt (note that the stress of this could affect fertility, if for example one of you loses your job then can’t manage repayment).

1. By waiting. This could mean you lose fertility, for some it will make no difference, for others it is the difference between having a child or not.

If neither 1 nor 2 seem palatable you can either

Go for one of the suggested solutions on these 7 pages

or

remain unmarried.

I think you need to unpick why you are happy to to spend money / save money for ‘one day’ that would be best spent on your future children (when money is clearly not in abundance). Once you have your child (I’ll wager) you won’t care about your ‘beliefs’ half as much. Motherhood is not guaranteed. Try now whilst still young. Go to a registry office or have a religious ceremony and no reception (and wear a nice dress you can wear again). Or just have your baby. As I said before. You won’t care once you’ve had your bundle of joy.

Could you just do a really basic just the two of you and a couple of witnesses job at the registry office, then save up for a blessing or whatever in 2020 with your loved ones? Sorry if this has already been suggested, personally I don't believe in marriage so my opinion is probably a bit worthless

So your debt will be cleared, that's good.

You can't buy because of where you live, you can't do much about that unless you move, and I can see why you wouldn't want to move.

You can do something about the baby and the marriage though. You CAN get married as soon as you like and you can start ttc.

Look everyone here is telling you, from experience.

1. The wedding doesn't matter, it's the marriage that counts
2. It will be a nightmare trying to plan a wedding once you've got children and it may end up never happening

It seems to me that there are 3 things here.

1. A baby
2. A marriage
3. A party for all your friends and relatives
4. Your principles

You can't have them all right away but you could potentially have two off the list within a year if you compromise.

So which one/ones are the most important?

Sorry you could have 3

Oh gosh I'm sure you know what I mean.

Well she could have all 4 of those if she is willing to compromise on the type of wedding she has

If you really want to have the big wedding in 2020 and it’s still important to be married before having kids then just wait. I got pregnant at 32 and 35 no problem at all. You’re only 30, if you were in your late 30s I might suggest you crack on with having kids but at 30 you’ve likely got bags of time.

Have registry office wedding now and the celebratory do when you can afford it. Being married gives you important rights & protections if you have children.

OP definitely ask GP ASAP about fertility testing for you both. If yours is already waning/or you may need to have treatment for the warning cells, and to add to the problems your DP has low sperm count or low motility or whatever ... at least you can make a proper judgement call about TTC. Some people seem to fall pregnant, Baked Beans just by looking at their OH but your "likely you've got bags of time" isn't true of the 52000 women who had fertility treatment in 2014. 8 out of 10 had to go private.

From the NICE Fertility guidelines

Go to the registry office, register intent to Marry and get wed 2 weeks later. Exactly what I did.

I went to a lovely church wedding this summer where they did a dramatic reveal during the ceremony that they'd got married in a registry office shortly before their son was born. Even their parents had no idea! They wanted the legal protections but couldnt wait 18m for the "big day" they shared with loved ones. Everyone was still delighted for them and had a fab time.

Can I as OP - are you both religious and do you both attend church on a regular basis? Do you live your lives with the church/god as a main part of them?
Because if you don’t - why are you so hell bent on a church wedding...?

If you have to wait that long to get marriedin a reasonably frugal wedding you are going to struggle to afford children. Save your money for your child and just get married at your local registry.

OP---I don't want to sound provocative, but you talk about your religion in this thread, but then you also talk about big weddings. I am not really understanding this at all.

If you are religious, then getting married in the eyes of God is what should matter to you (not having a massive party). Making sure that your partner and children are protected from harm is another thing that ought to be important to you if you are religious. So a reg office wedding and quick religious blessing should be fine. Do the big party later if you want to.

Have you talked to your vicar or priest about this? He or she may have some good advice for you.

The whole idea of a big wedding as a "must" is quite a recent idea. Up until the 19th century, even wealthy people sometimes got married in very small, private ceremonies. It wasn't considered important.

what I never understand is people talk about something being a principle for them. then discuss why they should abandon it!

if something really is a principle then its not something you just abandon when it becomes expedient to do so. and it is hard to stick to - principles are that's the nature of them.

so either the desire to be married before you have a child is a principle or it isn't. if it is then stick to it and find another way before ttc. if it isn't then admit that it isn't and just do what you are talking yourself into throughout this thread.

I can see both sides of your argument here but as a pregnant girl ready to pop in a weeks time i dont know if u have thought through the expense of having a child?
I get that you want the right wedding day, not just a quick register office job, which is totally fine amd you want to be able to have your 1 wedding done properly with enough savings to actually be able to afford it. But having a baby is very expensive too!
You say you want to pay off debts before you start maternity....but before u start maternity you will also need to pay for the basics for a baby arrival, and unless you are planning on having the absolute cheapest/hand me down/second hand items, here is the average costs of the following right now;

1. Pram (anywhere between £600 - 1k for pram only, no carry cot or car seat)
2. Car seat + base £300
3. Potential car upgrade...outright or part ex(£1k? £3k? £5k? - bigger boot is better so u can fit in shopping/luggage as well as pram)
4. Nursery furniture (£400-£800)
5. Next to bed cot (£150-200)
6. Moses basket (£50-£80)
7. Baby clothes (£100-£300 or even moreby the time you add it all up)
8. Other baby home accessories such as playmats, rocker/swing, high chair, baby bath - total £250
9. Baby essentials - muslins, blankets, slings, swaddles, bedding, growbags - around £200

(This is all average pricing based on cheapest and average marked items in mothercare and mamas and papas).

Personally i have ended up spending over 10k for our baby and that includes some really low priced deals on pram etc but i had to buy a new car as my last was written off and i hadn't yet bought a replacement when i fell pregnant and i wanted to get something that would atleast last me 5 years minimum and have space for more kids in the future therefore this took up the bulk of our expenditure.

Just take all that into consideration too. Yes just like a budget wedding in register office, baby essentials can be done on a budget too (think ebay and gumtree). But if that is not what you want then be prepared to spend over the odds for a baby, which you are entitled to do as its your baby and your money and your choice on how and what you spend it on. Just like your wedding

I would say have a look at the expense of the wedding plus the expense of having a child
Both have budget alternatives. Yet both also have the potential to be incredibley expensive if you want to do it 'properly' the one and only time u wish to do it.

I bet you could recreate something like these images in your church village hall quite easily on a budget. Throw in lots of white fairy lights, some tea lights (IKEA!), some potted lavender plants for the tables and a disco and I bet you'd have a blast!

Buns that really doesn't have to be the case. My experienced comparison:
Cloth nappies, Baby carrier, Clothes £300 total and resold for a good amount.
Cot and moses £200 but coslept and used neither. Same with pram, had one but never used it. Didn't have a car either, certainly wouldn't need to upgrade for one child! Most "essentials" are unnecessary, a tea or hand towel works perfectly for example.

Babies are very cheap, it's kids that cost.

I'm not talking about budget options either, my point is more that many baby things are unnecessary and many people also get them as gifts.

I wish DH and I had done a quick registry office wedding before the big event, which ended up being more than a year after getting engaged as our families live in different countries.

I have found out through the years that quite a few of our friends actually were legally married months before the weddings we attended, for similar reasons.