…to be 7 months pregnant at my own destination wedding?

[FruitPastel54321]

We’re getting married abroad next year (4hr flight) and despite using condoms, have just discovered I am 4-5 weeks pregnant with DC3. Safe to say we are in complete shock and disbelief.

We booked the wedding 2 years in advance and almost 20 families have booked to join us for the week, costing a few £k per family. We have already spent a lot on the wedding ourselves.

I’d be 7 months pregnant at the wedding, 5 months at my hen do (which is in the UK but also booked and paid for). I already bought my wedding dress earlier this year and it’s boned and fitted.

On top of this, I’m starting a new job in January and would be due in August - I know maternity leave is a legal right but I can’t help but feel guilty that I’d have to tell a new employee within a few weeks of joining.

We know we want a 3rd, it’s just such unexpected timing, it’s caught us totally off guard and we’re not sure if going ahead with the pregnancy is the right decision, mainly based on my job situation but paired with the wedding plans too I am desperately struggling to imagine 2025 looking SO different to what we thought.

I do also try to be sensitive as some of our friends have struggled TTC, so please no judgement for considering all options here.

WWYD?

The job situation would be enough to prompt me to terminate, let alone everything else.

To point out the obvious- why not speak to the guests, find out how many would lose and how much, whose insurance covers what, then make your decision on the wedding.

if everyone will lose the full amount, cross your fingers and hope you will be fit to fly.

if people can recoup some of the loss by cancelling or rearranging now, and would prefer to do so, then take that option.

but I do think you need to speak to your guests and find out what their choices are.

btw I would not want to spend k’s on a wedding with no wedding as pp suggest. I wouldn’t want to go just as a holiday for many reasons.

I would definitely terminate the pregnancy. You have a new job and that alone would make my decision easy. Your friends and family will not be able to claim on their insurance and will be upset that they are now stuck with a holiday not of their choosing.

I wouldn't bet that you will be allowed to fly if you're calculating you would be 32 weeks on return. You could go to your dating scan and be dated say a week or even 2 differently from your dates for example with the hospital saying you're actually 34 weeks then. Would you be able to fly then? Would you even want to? I think I'm quite chilled about pregnancy and risks etc, I've had 3 kids, but I wouldn't want to be abroad/flying home at 34 weeks pregnant, that would be too late for me. My nephew was born unexpectedly at that gestation after a healthy, low risk pregnancy.

I also don't think I'd terminate in this situation if I definitely wanted a third child. I'd cancel the wedding abroad, apologise to everyone but they should understand it was not planned, and plan a very small UK wedding either asap (so you can still wear your dress), or for much further in the future (ditto). Personally Id do the asap option but then I wouldnt have any kids without being married in the first place so I appreciate we aren't on the same page with that anyway and you might just prefer to delay it a couple of years.

So this is a surprise pregnancy but not one that is unwanted in itself. Overall, your con list includes the new job timing and the wedding - the pro list is that you have actively discussed wanting a third, you are in a stable relationship with the means to support an expanded family.

The new job is one thing to consider - there’s your employer’s reaction ( but this sort of thing does happen ) there’s the unknown about how the new job is going to work out ie it might go swimmingly but going off on mat leave after a relatively short time is could feel like a personal disruption;OTOH it could not go as well as you hoped and, if you had terminated because of the new start, you could resent any problems that arise.

The wedding - two strands to this, your own financial and emotional investment and the effect on your guests. You have to look at this in terms of sunk cost fallacy: continuing with something that is no longer the right fit because you have already spent money and then needing to continue spending money to make the initial outlay ‘worth’ it. If you continue the pregnancy and keep to the original wedding plan you are going to be large, uncomfortable and not wearing that boned dress anyway ; or you terminate , are wearing the boned dress, you’ve spent more money to achieve the dream wedding - again, things might not be as picture perfect as you hope and you might weigh up every irritation against the big decision you made.

I think you have to take the friends and family out of the equation - they surely haven’t paid everything up front two years out ? . There could be all kinds of reasons for something like this falling through and some may be quietly relieved at not having a holiday around what is essentially a social event.

Yes, but on MN it seems to be de rigueur to lie to insurance companies. I'm sure they wouldn't get away with this sort of scenario, though (hopefully).

As I indicated earlier, being allowed to fly is not my main worry - Greek healthcare isn't great and if the destination isn't Athens, Thessaloniki or Patras (where there are better hospitals) there is a massive risk to mum and baby if complications occur, especially if they're on an island.

OP, do think long and hard about putting you and your baby at risk by going ahead with the wedding in Greece.

This is one of the many reasons it is selfish to have a destination wedding.

You may be unable to fly at 32 weeks so you need to look into that sooner rather than later. Also, think about what will happen if you have a complicated pregnancy and deliver early (or late).

I think you need to cancel, unfortunately.

I am a card-carrying supporter of a woman's right to choose, but if I thought for even one second that you'd terminated a wanted pregnancy so I didn't lose out on a holiday deposit, I'd be so disappointed in your low opinion of me.

Cancel the wedding, do it right away so people can move their holiday/make alternative plans. Some of them won't be able to change their plans so unfortunately I think that means you won't be able to reschedule, but that's life.

Are these the sort of circumstances that legislators had in mind when they promised abortion would be “safe, legal and rare”? 🤔

Same. If I was more advanced in my pregnancy, it would be a harder choice but at 4/5 weeks I’m afraid I’d have to make the choice for our future. For me this wouldn’t be sensible timing.

What? Considering an abortion because it’ll time badly with starting a new job that you need to provide for your family?
Luckily, it’s a woman’s own choice.

It's not the flying part that would worry me, its the (hopefully small) chance of needing medical care when I was out there. I don't believe most insurance would cover pregnancy, could you afford hospital care if something happened? Can you imagine being stuck in a foreign country with a premature baby in their NICU and the only way to get home being a hospital flight for 10s of thousands? The likelihood is low but the potential issues are massive.

I had no idea most insurance companies won't cover pregnancy when is still a couple of months away from due date. I wouldn't recommend being pregnant and having a wedding overseas without insurance.

Maybe this is something the OP needs to investigate. It may be possible to obtain insurance with a letter from her obstetrician?

I think this scenario is a bit different.

I do wholeheartedly believe that anyone should be able to have an abortion for whatever reason, as long as they want to.

I also fully believe that loads of people have totally “no regrets” abortions - and that is great.

I think the difference in this scenario is that the situation is ripe for regret afterwards, eg a) the OP mainly is thinking of an abortion to avoid inconveniencing other people b) the other reason is so that she can have the nice wedding she has planned. I think that years down the track one could easily look back and think you would have done differently and you regret it.

This is mainly because the OP and her fiancé do want another child. What if she couldn’t get pregnant again? What if there was a complication with the abortion that prevented future pregnancy? What if she aborted this one and got pregnant again 6 months later but that baby was profoundly disabled?

In any of those scenarios, the OP and her husband might well regret the fact that they aborted this baby and think, in hindsight, the reasons now seemed insignificant.

But if the OP is sure she wants to have a termination, then absolutely fine. I wouldn’t tell any of your friends though as you say some of them have difficulty in conceiving.

I think this is the third baby you wanted.

And I totally agree with ExtraOnions.

“It’s a personal and private decison and you do not need to tell anyone else, or listen to anyone else’s opinions.” Says @ExtraOnions

BUT…

@FruitPastel54321
has asked for other people’s opinions by saying “WWYD?”

Obviously she doesn’t have to take them on board. 🤷🏼‍♀️

It depends how much you want a 3rd child- how would you feel if you terminated the pregnancy then never concieved again?

You can do what you want (no, really!) but as a guest you cancelling the wedding without refunding what we lost would probably be the end of our friendship. You want to make us all go abroad to be fancy, I would expect you to turn up or compensate. Sorry.

You should be okay to fly, but FGS check with the airline and check your travel insurance, as presumably you don't currently have insurance that covers you for pregnancy complications.

In a way though, you and your family is the easy bit, with regard to the wedding. If you have the right insurance then you'll be covered if you need to cancel because of your pregnancy. But what about your guests? If you end up with pre-eclampsia, an incompetent cervix, a pre-term birth or something else that results in the cancellation of your wedding, will their insurance pay out? I very much doubt it, particularly if you've all already booked and committed.

TBH, given all the above AND your new job, I think I'd terminate. I'd just be so worried and stressed about letting everyone down and costing them all a ton of money that I couldn't enjoy myself or look forward to the wedding. You don't want another baby right now, this was an accident, so I think I'd terminate, sort out some bullet-proof contraception for the next year, and then try again in 2026.

Any decent sensible insurance won't cover cancellation due to pregnancy.

What about pregnancy complications though, where the insured person is on bed rest or medically advised against flying? If you need to travel while pregnant there must be policies that would cover that eventuality, at least for the OP and her family? They won't apply though to her family and friends.

For a wedding? I doubt it