Pregnant and unmarried, not sure whether it's an issue

[TumbleTwit]

Have been with DP for 10 years, living together for 8. We are expecting our first DC - planned.
I am feeling a little anxious about not being married, for no specific reason (we are doing great and he is perfect) than that it seems sensible financially, for the benefit of the child, for legal protection etc if anything were to go tits up.
I presume I could get this in other ways such as having wills made, life insurance etc. We jointly own a house but one half would not auto go to the other. We can get that changed.

Are there any other big important reasons to just get on and do it? Or is it fine to be casual?

Thing is the idea of a wedding to me is horrific, I do not want a public display. He doesn't, either.
However, he feels very awkward about explaining that to family, worrying they will be put out.
We have gone through the motions of trying to plan something, many hours of discussion about type of venue, keeping it simple, who to invite. It all ends up being stressful and we stop discussing it.
Then, I got pregnant. I am jot being a pregnant bride, I feel shit enough in this pregnancy as it is without putting my massive body on display.
So we vaguely said we will do something when the child is a bit older. That hasn't been defined, it could be years until we have the energy to sort something. He won't actually do any of the organising. I wouldn't mind organising.. but i resent having to for something i don't want to do anyway! I would rather go to a reg office and have a little elopement holiday. May family would not care, and i am certain his would not either (100% sure i am right on this). I think he has some difficulty with this, so I am very patient with him and I understand. However, i don't want to end up in a pickle because he couldn't face up to dealing with the problem.
I'd love to hear MNs thoughts on this. I keep hearing that MN is usually adamant that people are stupid not to get married. I'd like to understand clear reasons for this that couldn't be resolved through other legal means.
And i have suggested we do it secretly so we are legally protected but don't have to tell anyone but he doesnt like the idea of the lie to his family.

Just go to a registry office and get married? No one has to know? I dont get people like you. 'Horrified' at a wedding but wont do a simple registry office?
Your post sounds like excuses why not to get married when there is actually a solution for you.

I want it to just be a piece of legal paper, but it isn't.

It really is. Just registry office, statutory ceremony, don’t have to wear rings or change names, but you’re legally a union in the eyes of the law and state and have more rights and protections than unmarried. Marriage doesn’t have to be bound up with the big wedding day and being given away by your father and three course meals. It’s very simply a statement you are family.

This might be an incorrect take, but I’ve seen a pattern repeatedly in my friendship group where a couple are together for several years, kids, the female partner wants to get married and the male proposes to her but with no intention of actually marrying her. Then when she gets excited and starts talking about planning the wedding he says ‘oh I absolutely MUST have a big event, family invited etc and it’s the most special day of our lives so I won’t compromise on less’, basically removing their ability to marry until they’ve saved up thousands (which he doesn’t have a plan to do or start doing). The woman is left pretty high and dry and confused and upset with a pointless engagement ring, no more married than she was prior to the proposal, and the guy gets to say he wants to marry or he wouldn’t have proposed but he wants it to be perfect because he loves her so much but in practice blocks them from ever making the next steps to marry.

You say he wants to be married to you as you do him, but does he? Really? If being married was that important he’d book the registry office for the two of you for £90 so that you could be married. You’re no less married than the couple who spends £20k on a wedding day.

Someone who is focused on having a special wedding (without actively saving for it and costing it and suggesting a date) to me is either a) dodging marriage or b) has an unrealistic view of what marriage is and is more concerned about the day than being married.

I know it’s each to their own and we’ll probably do the £300 ceremony in September where we can have a few guests and rings and a reading and a couple of songs, moreso so we can show the baby our wedding day when they’re grown up, but if not we’d just we happily pop down to the registry office on a Thursday morning in our jeans and t shirt, sign the papers, swap rings outside and go for a nice walk around the park. It’s sorted then and you’re married.

Is this possibly more about him not wanting to marry you?

And after 10 years together you should have been further along in your commitments - wills , marriage etc. Seems like yourll are stuck in a comfortable space and making excuses as to not go forward?

Sorry, meant to add re my friendship group: I know five ‘engaged’ couples who’ve been together 5+ years, engaged for over two years, no wedding date set or in sight, no closer to being married than the day they got engaged. In one case it’s genuinely both of them who are blasé and not fussed and may or may not get round to it someday. The rest the woman desperately wants to get married while their partner keeps saying ‘we can’t afford it, I went a proper big white wedding’. Then if she says ‘well why not get married at the registry office and then save for a party later’ it’s ‘how could you, this is the biggest day of our lives, I want it to be special’ etc. I know one girl from my primary school who’s been engaged for fifteen years. Four kids.

It’s why personally I would only get engaged if it was a statement of intent to marry, closely followed by plans and a date. Otherwise it’s just hollow. And when we discussed marriage and engagement a year ago we both said the same thing, we want to get engaged once we are ready to crack on and marry and don’t want a long engagement. Six months tops (given we don’t want anything fancy), in our case three 😂

A lot of men drag their feet bout marriage after baby is here. They don't have as much to lose.

SignedUpJust4This yep. And it’s much harder to find time and money to marry when the baby is here I bet! Hence why I’d rather have a shotgun wedding (love that term haha) than think oh let’s do it when the baby is born.

I know couples who’ve bought a house together, which is an immense commitment, and had kids, and the guy is still reluctant to marry. Wtf. I just can’t wrap my head around that.

We aren't engaged, there will be no rings. We just want to be legally married for the legal benefit it brings. Unfortunately it has dredged up a load of cultural, political and family baggage for both of us, and we've been lazy about sorting it out. He definitely agrees we should be married, it is not a way to avoid it.

So anyway, now I have some of the clear benefits of doing it, we can discuss it more seriously and decide together what risk to accept. We either need to do it quickly, or wait to have the small family gathering we had half planned that, though came to a few grand because of how non-small our families are and location difficulties, is the likely compromise that would sort it. But it is effort, and we need to pull ourselves together and stop philisophising about the 'meaning of marriage' and our social anxiety :)

@TumbleTwit, I'd like to add a disaster story. When our DD was born she was very poorly as was I. Decisions had to be made about treatment for her in a quick timeframe. I couldn't make them as was too ill to comprehend, DH was allowed to but only because we were married. She was not registered yet so he couldn't have proven parenteral rights and I couldn't agree as was too ill. If we hadn't been married, DH wouldn't have had a say, DD would have been rushed off and treated behind closed doors away from him. If I had died, I think he would have to have proven he was the dad before being allowed to take her home. All very scary, but not an issue as we were married.

Good luck OP! If you both want to be married you’ll get married. I was absolutely astonished when I started looking into it for the first time and realised you can get married for £90. Getting married and weddings are two separate things and I think it causes a lot of issues when people mix up the two. In ten years time, hell in six months time, nobody will know or care whether you were the couple who spent £10k or £90. You’ll be married.

Are there emotional reasons you want to be married other than just the legal practical aspects or just the latter?

He won't actually do any of the organising.

I just have to ask... why?

If he wants to be married to you, why wouldn’t he put in at least 50/50 effort into organising to marry? Why should it all be you, when you’re already more exhausted than usual due to pregnancy? I’d be wary that you’d be kinda dragging him reluctantly into it as his path of least resistance if he’s saying ‘I want to be married’ but isn’t willing to lift a finger or exert himself in any way to make it happen.

@JemimaPuddlePeacock no emotional aspect to it on my side, maybe a little more so on his, but we are on a similar page.

He would try, if I needed him to. It would make it a lot harder if I'm honest. He is just no good at being organised and making decisions. On the important stuff, we get to it in the end. On something like a party... he would hate every moment of planning.

And yes, it irritates me that he doesn't want an easy registry do, and wants a 'simple' family party, but has no thought about how much effort that would actually take. When we chat about it next i will challenge him if he is still stuck on this issue, saying I'd expect him to organise it, and ask him how he would go about it. I think that might shock him into reality and how unfair it is. Or he might stupidly agree and then stress and stress and stress until he is sick. He is a silly one sometimes but what can ya do, it's love

OP, my DH and I were very anti marriage, back in the day. I saw it as anti-feminist patriarchal control, and DH was a hippy type.
However, he crashed and wrote off our car, and the only way we could afford a new one was to get married (for the princely licence fee of £13.50 in a registry office with just us and two witnesses!) and claim the year’s rebate for married tax allowance.
We put the marriage certificate in a drawer, and vowed we would never speak of it, and pretend it never happened.
Fast forward 10 years and two babies. DH then had a sudden brain haemorrhage and died. If we hadn’t had that wedding, I would have been left with nothing. Instead, I got a state widow’s pension, a pension from DH’s work, and a death in service benefit, and inherited all DH’s estate (such as it was), and a share of his various relatives’ estates when they too died.
Please don’t leave yourself financially vulnerable out of a dislike of marriage. You can do as we did, with minimal fuss, and pretend it never happened. Then you have peace of mind.

The big thing for me is that it's all fine while you both still love each other. But what happens if he stops loving you? What if he changes his will and the beneficiary of his death in service benefits and love insurance without telling you? At least if you are married you can challenge any change and will probably be successful.

Life not love insurance!

I’m unsure how he has a greater emotional pull to marrying than you do if he isn’t making any steps to marry, though I suspect once you bring up getting married in the next few months seriously you’ll know for sure whether he does want to be married or he’s just blowing hot air.

I would sit down with him later tonight, explain you’ve looked through the legal aspects of being married versus unmarried parents, and would like to get married and set a date. That you can decide later whether the date will be a basic statutory ceremony just with witnesses or a family party, but that either way you’ll be marrying on that date. And see what he says. If he genuinely does want to marry you like he says he does he’ll be thrilled you’re making it happen :)