My partner (M, 28) and I (F, 28) can't agree on a wedding. My partner's parents are married whereas my parents are not so as I've grown up marriage is not really important to me personally. My partner wants to get married and I've already agreed that I'd be willing to do this for him but we always get into arguments when we talk about weddings.
Neither of us have a big social circle so I would be quite happy with a small ceremony at the registry office with our siblings and parents/grandparents and then a small family meal afterwards. However my partner says if we didn't have a big wedding to which his whole extended family (which is quite big) were invited they'd be offended. We can't afford a big wedding as we have recently bought a house which requires a lot of work and modernisation. To add to that he doesn't see his extended family much, maybe once a year if they all gather at his grans house for Christmas, they don't socialise outwith this so I don't get the problem. I'm sure if he explained we had to keep the wedding small and intimate because of financial reasons they would have to understand.
I just can't see why we keep having this argument, for me it's the marriage that's important whereas it seems my partner is more concerned with the actual wedding!
Any thoughts? Has anyone experienced anything similar?