Should I cancel elopement plans?

[PlumHiker]

Need some perspective so apologies in advance if this is long winded!

For background, myself and my partner live overseas (>24hrs travel from UK). We've been together over 15 years and have an infant.

My sister is getting married later this year and has planned a massive wedding (think >100 at her meal), we will be travelling to attend this as a family, and we all can't wait.

My partner and I have travelled to the same place every year around July/August for a holiday since moving here and last year talked about an elopement when we were on our babymoon there however due to my health at the time I wasn't sure I'd be able to fly and so we postponed plans til post baby. We never shared this with anyone (ie how an elopement works).

Fast forward to this year and we have our first trip booked as a family of three and began discussing the idea of elopement again. We've reached out to a couple of companies for a quote for a very small affair - literally just as and 2 witnesses. Total cost will be less than the flights home for my sisters wedding.

Earlier in the week I decided to speak to her about it - mostly out of excitement as she will be the only person we tell in advance.. we are both very close despite the physical miles between us and she was the first person I shared my pregnancy news with. Her response was the complete opposite of what I was expecting. She was really upset and asked us not to do it and to wait until after they get married later in the year, to "let them have their day". There is about 2 months between our trip and their wedding. She also mentioned she was upset that we announced our pregnancy to family the same week her daughter was born and so now feels I'm just trying to overshadow them again.

With regards to baby announcement, we'd already told my in laws and my parents were about to go on holiday so the timing wasn't great but we felt a bit stuck. My parents were also going to be away with friends and we thought it was important our immediate family knew before anyone else. She'd never spoken to me about this before but I do acknowledge her feelings about this, and appreciate that she could be upset by the timing.

We've already booked and paid for this trip - which to be honest we'd be doing anyway, and are hoping to try for another baby after her wedding. I'm mid 30s so time is not my friend! I've spoken to my partner and he thinks it's absolutely nothing to do with anyone else (this is part of the reason we've never done a big wedding - geography being another!). Neither of us are big on social media and have no plans for a big wide announcement of our nuptials to "one up" my sister or anything.

I'm really struggling with this - hoping for helpful advice on how to navigate...

IABU - I should postpone any wedding plans til after my sisters wedding (and potential baby 2) since we've waited this long anyway

IANBU - have our quiet day, sign the form and discreetly share with family after.

I think you should do what you like and tell people or not as and when you want to.

We're about to get married in private a few months before my brother's big wedding, but we're not going to tell anyone. For us, after over a decade together and two children, yes it is a bit of admin rather than a dramatic statement. Everyone already knows we love each other and are in a committed long term relationship - it's bloody obvious! And it's got nothing to do with my brother - in our case it was actually a health emergency that promptly us to finally go ahead and get it sorted out.

Which illustrates that if the whole point is just to get married with no fuss, there is no need to ‘discreetly’ tell people and ‘coincidently’ (still don’t think it’s a coincidence in the OP’s case) take attention off the sibling having a big wedding on their wedding day.

It’s your life and no one else’s business. It’s fine to marry in secret. You don’t ever have to tell anyone.

But I don’t think you should have told your sister your secret when she has a big wedding coming up. She must already be under a lot of stress and could probably do with your support. Knowing your secret plans puts her in an impossible situation, having to keep it to herself or confide in other people, because it’s affected her, and risk this news clashing with her wedding. Even if not intended, it could come across as you trying to get in first with a wedding.

If you wanted a secret wedding, you should have kept it secret.

I’d delay it and apologise to your sister for by insensitive by telling her.

What is this obsession with being the centre of attention?

It seems to me there are several narcissistic attention seekers on this thread defending the bonkers sister.

@PlumHiker , is your sister older or younger than you? Is her fear that you'll 'get there first'? It seems like she's competing with you (even if you're not engaged in competition). Why would she be doing that? From where does her insecurity come?

Is this post a wind up?

In my opinion your sister sounds like an unreasonable insecure narcissist. Live your life as you want to live it OP, you only get one after all

Well, nobody pointing out that it’s a bit odd the OP is going to be seizing the attention on multiple significant days in her sister’s life has descended to personal insults towards other posters.

Says a lot, really.

And I think it’s a side effect of a bloated wedding industry to view a big party as some kind of moment of ‘permitted’ limelight-hogging.

I can’t help wondering if it’s a British cultural thing— ‘looking for attention’ always seems to be viewed as a virtual crime on here, and a wedding day seems to be the one permitted event when apparently that’s fine, and there are perfectly serious discussions on how pale a dress you can legitimately wear to a wedding without it looking as if you’re ’taking attention away from the bride.’ (The groom, apparently, is completely fine with being visually indistinguishable from any groomsmen or other male guests.) I mean, I love a bit of attention, but it’s pretty depressing to be taking this Your One Big Day stuff so literally. Especially when it’s a ruse to get you to spend money on chair covers and wedding ice cream vans.

What does it actually say ?

Live your own life. Get married, don't tell anyone, especially don't tell AT THE WEDDING.

Live your own life, get married.

What happens if DP gets hit by a bus and you didn't get married because "sisters wedding" fk that, live your life as YOU want. For you.

But don't tell anyone BEFORE or AT THE wedding...

Well obviously they both want to outdo each other but the sisters wedding is the one that’s already booked and arranged, not the OP’s.

But the OP is getting married quietly with no guests other than their baby. She’s hardly ‘trying to outdo’ anyone!

This

Hmm I can see this point but I just can't imagine it being a massive thing even if you did mention it at a wedding. There's a lot of chatting at weddings, surely it'd just be -

"Oh we actually got married a few months ago, you know we'd been meaning to get round to it for a while."

"Oh, that's nice, congratulations. So how's work?"

If you present it in a low key way I don't think anyone would get terribly excited by it anymore than if you mentioned you'd got a new job or were thinking about moving house. It's not going to be a surprise and she's hardly going to stand up and make a speech.

I'm sure all the limelight would remain on on the people who are actually holding the party - weddings are really designed to do that, aren't they?

We also haven’t descended to disingenuous ‘but I don’t understaaaaaaand’ so there’s that as well….

I don't understand where you are coming from with this. It's not like they are getting married the day before her sister.

I think the sister seems to have a strange attitude. Not one I recognise at all. She should be happy that her sister is being happy.

Can't understand this "stealing the thunder" stuff. It's life. Get on with it.

Certainly no one turned a hair when it eventually became known we’d got married. (Not dissimilar situation, living in another country to family, longterm relationships, got married with two witnesses.) I mean, peiole get married all the time, it’s not like they climbed Everest with no oxygen in a clown costume or something.

I think the mistake was telling her / giving her the chance to have her say which I realise you didn't think this would happen at the time.

Now that you know her views then you know that she is not going to be happy if you go ahead and that she will think you are stealing her thunder.

So, in my view you should either go ahead and get married and not say anything until well after her wedding, or, wait and do it the following year when you can make more of a thing about it.

If you do anything else you know she is going to be unhappy. While some would say she should suck it up I guess that is up to you to decide.

Good luck!

Your sister doesn’t want her wedding to turn into a double celebration which I think is fair enough.

You seem all about you.

I'll never understand why people are so dramatic about "announcements" (aka telling the people you know about a fact in your life).

Your sister needs to get over herself. She'd thinks her life will peak with marriage and babies and I feel sorry for women like her. They've bought into the patriarchy hook, line and sinker.

By that logic, the sister is all about themself as well.

Just because someone else is doing something doesn't mean they have a monopoly on everyone else doing it.

Horrified! 😂that's hilarious.

If my sister got bloody married in the same week I’d be happy, I’d be happy for her if she announced a pregnancy at my wedding itself. It’s madness to be anything but happy for each other. Jesus, if it was just my neighbour I’d be happy for them…