I’m going to start by saying that I know I’m being unreasonable. I’m very pregnant and hormonal right now but I still need to get this off my chest.
I got married to my husband 2 years ago. We have an amazing marriage. We rarely argue, we get along great. We’re both quiet people and we keep our relationship private. We post photos together on social media and hold hands in public, but we don’t broadcast details about our marriage. For example, we sort any arguments out by talking through them together rather than by sharing it with others or letting it turn into shouting.
As we’re both quite quiet and shy people, we had a small wedding and we did a few non-traditional things to ease our anxieties. We’re in the UK where private first looks aren’t common but we had one and saw each other privately just before the ceremony. We both got very emotional with this, which meant neither of us cried during the actual ceremony as we got it out of our system early. We also had a private first dance with no audience, and we wrote a speech to each other, which we read to each other privately in our honeymoon suite with wedding cake and tea. These intimate moments were my absolute favourite part of our wedding and are memories we both cherish. We have no recordings of them but we don’t feel the need to. We still mixed with guests but those moments just the two of us were perfect.
My husbands brother got married in the summer and he and his wife could not be any more different than my husband and I. They both do acting as their careers and are very theatrical. We all know every detail of their marriage and they frequently argue in front of family. I know it’s normal to argue though and that every couple is different.
In their wedding, they saw each other for the first time in the ceremony. My husband’s brother broke down sobbing and his reaction was beautiful. They had a public first dance and shared their speeches about each other publicly too. This was all so lovely and I felt nothing but happiness for them.
Since their wedding has passed, however, my husband and I have received a lot of comments from his family. I’ve been told, ‘I bet you wish he cried when he saw you’. We’ve been questioned about why we didn’t do speeches or a dance, etc. My husband has a 26 year old sister who’s just got engaged and has openly said that she wants to be reacted to in the same way when she walks down the aisle, and she openly pities me, as does my MIL.
At the time I really didn’t care. I adore my husband and I know he adores me, and I wouldn’t change anything about our wedding or our marriage. It’s just started bothering me that our weddings are being compared so much. As nobody saw our intimate moments, his side of the family assume they just didn’t happen, and use that to state that my husband’s brother must love his wife more than my husband loves me.
im very much of the mindset that not every little thing needs to be shared publicly, and I wouldn’t change having the big wedding moments done privately for anything.
I know my husband adores me, and I know I’m being unreasonable and ridiculous and it’s my pregnancy hormones. And I feel ridiculous writing this. We just ignore the wedding comparisons and I didn’t care about them until I got further into my pregnancy.
Please tell me I’m being ridiculous, and please also share if you’ve experienced similar.
To add also, I’m not jealous of their wedding. I’d have dreaded doing a public first dance and speeches because of my anxiety and it would have spoiled my enjoyment of my wedding day