Fiancé hates my family

[Dad394]

Getting married in 5 months and my fiancée hates my family, it’s ruining everything.

We had a dream wedding planned since we was young in Portugal, when we expressed to my family the plans and that our wedding is going to be “child free” all hell broke loose.

My Mother said she was not coming, my other family members said I was silly and stupid and should rethink as my brother and 2 sisters have really young kids, all under 3. We want a child free wedding and I give them so many options and offered to pay for other family members to come to look after the kids for the 6 hours the wedding was on. All fell of deaf ears.

This led to us changing everything and are now getting married on our own abroad and having a UK party for family. Now my wife to be feels my mum has ruined the best moment/time of her life, and she will never get this back, something she has always dreamed of and my family has ruined for her. She has so much anger towards my family and even though my family has said sorry and that they would make it work, it was already ruined for us. 

I have explained to my family all how I feel, how they have made us feel and what they have done and ruined. And told them to just not talk about the wedding coming up to us and just try move on as it’s really ruined the relationship.

I am now arguing everyday with my partner and my relationship with my family is at the lowest it has ever been, I feel like I really have no option but to be a punching bag for everyone to express how they feel, if I speak to my family my partner gets angry as it’s always wedding related, if I don’t speak to my family the relationship gets worse.

My partner now hates me speaking to my family, wants to know every conversation I have with them even if it’s on the phone I have to explain what was said. My mother is still talking about the wedding party to me 3/4 times a week to try to feel involved and make things easier and it’s infuriating my partner and I told her to stop talking about it. To the point if I get a text from my family it will ruin our entire day, as my partner thinks they are trying to get involved and she does not want them involved or talking about her wedding. She said she doesn’t want my mum to be allowed to talk about the wedding to me also.

Its gotten to a really low point and I have no idea what to do as I am now stuck in the middle, does my partner need to calm down and realise I could lose all my family over this and work together to sort it, or do my family need to back off and realise they have ruined everything and give us space for now.

You cannot marry her. She’s insane.

Oh I’m surprised by the responses
you and your DP wanted a certain wedding, it was your dream for years.
your family kicked off, your own mother even threatening not to come to support you on your important day unless it’s how she wants it to be
even when you offer solutions like arranging childcare etc it’s not good enough, there is to be no compromise, it has to be your family’s way.
and now you and your DP can’t have your dream wedding, you have to bend to your family.

so you change the wedding the wedding party location - to a location you didn’t want
and you both want a child free wedding but you’re not allowed to.
you explicitly say your family have ruined your wedding
they say they’re sorry.
you say ok let’s just not talk about it
and yet still every single time you talk to your family they ignore your request to just leave it, and they insist on talking about the wedding.
so now they’re trampling those boundaries too.
and you’re doing nothing to protect your partner, she’s just dealing with the fact that her wedding isn’t what she wanted and she wants some peace from demanding people talking about and taking ownership of her wedding, and she can’t even get that

I’m not saying she’s behaving rationally here, but I can see why she’s annoyed

If she hates your family this isn't going to work ..... She seems very rigid in her views what do YOU want ? Your views seen to be overlooked

Take wedding out of this equation. Your fiance getting upset because you're talking to your family, causing huge arguments with you is a massive massive control play. This is abuse.
She is supposed to be part of your family and she's acting like a stranger who just wants to tear you away from them.

I love the idea of a child free abroad wedding but I love my immediate family too much to not have my neices/nephews there (6 of them aged between 1 and 7). So no, doing that here in the UK could be plausible but very hard, but abroad is impossible without pissing at least a few people off or making them skint from the silly costs that will be involved.

In a sense, abroad weddings are very self indulgent if you EXPECT everyone to be there because the expense and stress is massive for those who would have to come over, unless you pay the bulk of the expenses.

I think your fiance is being incredibly unfair here. Yes your family could have initially reacted better but to blame them for ruining her perfect wedding is pretty gross.
She needs to understand how families work.

Take it from me OP, the horrible way your fiance is acting right now, the control and abuse of banning you from talking about your own special day with your family, and the clear difference in how you both perceive families and family dynamics is a huge recipe for disaster.

Her actions say 'I don't care about your family or your siblings kids, I don't care if they turn up or not, i only care about my wedding day'.

Weddings are family occasions - they are about 2 people and 2 families coming together. ALL the families.

OR they can be about a couple getting together on their own.

I think the decision to ban children was wrong in the first place; and that your partner is placing too much on this one day. The only thing that really matters is that you love each other and want to commit.

If I were you I would be taking note of her attitude and having an eye to the future and the potential other problems that might arise. She needs to relax and get her priorities sorted.

Agree. Postpone the wedding and reassess the relationship. If you don't you will fuck up the rest of your life. Tell me how I know....!! :)

Yes! Cancel the entire thing and get counseling for yourself. Your fiancée is abusive. Get away.

Also. You still get to have your intimate ceremony abroad. How is that ruined? Because she can't snap picture perfect photos for insta and show the world how she had a huge destination wedding with 100 people there? Why is she annoyed if you still get to have your wedding there?

Is this what you want for the rest of your life? Either isolated from your family, or in constant conflict with your wife. If you think it's bad now, just wait until you have children (if that's the plan). I'd honestly walk away at this point. You can see the type of person she is. The unreasonableness, anger and resentment she is capable of. No thanks. Bye bye.

Well. You're going to have a happy life aren't you?

You can't tether yourself to someone who is active in isolating you from your family.

A wedding is a family occasion. You are joining 2 families together. It's not all about the bride and groom and what they want.

Why make it harder for yourself by marrying someone who doesn't get on with your family?! It's masochistic and doesn't bode well for the future AT ALL.

Do not marry her.

Something not adding up here. Why do you want a childfree wedding 'Dad394' ? Eh ???

It’s not’her’ wedding… it’s yours too and a wedding generally involves family. I’d be upset if my child’s wedding basically excluded all my siblings going and would tell my child this.

That said it sounds like it’s all got a bit out of hand from both sides. You need a proper conversation with your partner… this is your family they are part if your lice just like hers are so she needs to draw a line and start thinking of how to make this the best days for both of you. I think your mum is talking about it so much in an effort to smooth things over (unless she’s trying to tell you what to do!)

if Dp won’t engage then personally I’d postpone it.. a lifetime of feeling like piggy in the middle between her and your family is not going to work… unless you are happy to go low contact etc which I hope is not the case

Did people not read the bit where the op said that they would pay for/sort childcare for the 6 hours of the wedding? They were not excluding children from the (presumably) extended break just the wedding itself.

Notwithstanding that your fiancée sounds completely over the top and she is the one now ruining things.

I'd think carefully what how you want to proceed as it seems like she wants to cut you off from your family all together which is very wrong.

I'm going to go against the grain and say I don't blame your fiancee at all for being extremely upset that the dream wedding she's always envisaged has been cancelled because your family threw their toys out of the pram and stamped their collective feet until they got their own way. Presumably none of her family will be present at the scaled back ceremony abroad now and everyone's just attending the UK party so no one's left out? I appreciate that child-free weddings are a pain for some, but it was what YOU wanted! Your family have behaved like spoiled brats, frankly – they've totally bullied you into doing what they want.

That said, her anger isn't helping and she is starting to sound very controlling in wanting to monitor your texts. But again, I don't blame her in getting frustrated that your mum is suddenly all over the UK party like a rash when it's not the wedding celebration SHE wants or dreamt of. I think I'd be livid and struggling to contain my feelings too.

I don't know how you salvage this, short of cancelling the UK party and reverting to plan A. I feel so sorry for you caught in the middle, OP.

We had a dream wedding planned since we was young in Portugal

This is the root of the problem - sometimes childhood dreams aren’t really practical with adult reality! Of course if there are loads of kids in a family, a childfree wedding will be frowned upon and people won’t want to travel at huge expense if they can’t take their kids/won’t want to leave their kids with a strange babysitter abroad. Your fiancée sounds a bit childish, to be honest; family relationships are far more important than one “big day”. Getting married is about having a life together; I’d go so far as to say that your wedding day shouldn’t be “the best day of your life”. If this carries on, I’d reconsider whether you want to be getting married at all….

The whole thing sounds nuts, cancel the wedding, it's not going to end well.
There is obviously a lot of hurt on both sides.

You cannot allow yourself to be isolated from your family, but at the same time your mum sounds as if she is really overstepping.

If my DB did what you were planning, I would think them selfish idiots and have a lot less to do with them, but ultimately understand it's their decision, and wouldn't keep bringing it up.

Maybe a family meeting is in order to talk through everything and see if you can get to a place where everyone is happy or at least amicable with each other.

Not all of us would be OK with randoms looking after our preschool aged kids in a foreign country.

Good spot.

Do you have ANY idea how expensive it is to sort childcare abroad at a wedding? I had am invite to a destination wedding last year, 4k in total then was asked to sort my own childcare or just fly in a nanny...whilst everyone's cost of living has doubled.

Look at the bigger picture here.

Three families with under-3s. Not many people would be happy to leave their babies for hours with people they don't know. Not many babies would like it much either.

Be glad you aren't already married. Your family were at fault to start with but her controlling behaviour is frightening. Dump her.

I disagree. Perhaps the op and his fiancé do too. A wedding (for me) is about the vows you make to the other person.
even if it is about the family, ops family have hardly been welcoming by threatening not to come.
op says the wedding has been ruined by their family and op says the wedding now isn’t what they wanted at all. I don’t think the fiancé started the issue.