Getting married...

[Mummybear8]

Currently pregnant with my second child with my partner of 9 years. I firmly do not believe in "getting married for the sake of it" just because we have children.
IF we get married, I have very specific things I would like and have always dreamed of; beautiful church wedding, big summery marquee, a stunning dress, nice food etc.
The problem is other family members think we should just settle and have a nice fast, cheap registry office do and just get it over with like they did. I'd sooner wait until we can afford the full package I've always envisaged even if it takes us 50 years to get there!
So what's your opinion? Was your wedding what you'd always wanted or were you left disappointed/pressured because of what others wanted?

DW has a large extended family on both sides of the Atlantic, and our friends are scattered around. Having a large wedding (hotel venue, sit down food, awesome swing jazz band) was therefore a pretext for encouraging this diaspora to assemble in one place.

From what you describe I wonder whether you can get some of the things you want in a different, and possibly cheaper way - eg an Atlantic Crossing on QM2. Luxury and an excuse to wear fancy dresses every evening for a week.

unmarried mothers are in a very vulnerable position if anything goes wrong with the relationship.

Tripe! sahms are in a very vulnerable position if anything goes wrong with the relationship. Being married or not doesn't make a huge difference in a lot of cases.

worserevived Wed 10-Jun-15 11:38:22 - If you plan to wait, get legal agreements drawn up to protect you should you ever split

Agreed!

Athenaviolet in a perfect world where women get paid the same etc as men and you both earnt the same I might agree but generally this isn't the case.

I am in two minds about this myself. Before we had DS, I said I would never get married again for 2 reasons; firstly because, following my first failed marriage, I realised that it means nothing with respect to how much you love each other. Second, DP wants a big wedding because he hasn't done it before but I don't want to spend that amount of money.

However, now we have a 5 week old I can see the legal benefits of marriage. It has nothing to do with love though.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/relationships/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/#h-children