How to reach a compromise? Re:Wedding

[cloudybreeks]

I'm best friend of the bride and we wrote this together on my account.

Bride is British and family lives between the UK and France and groom is Indian and family lives in India. Bride and Groom live in the UK.

Bride is happy to elope but preference is to have a small intimate wedding (£5k max) and groom wants a big Indian wedding. Groom's family will expect a big wedding as it is a part of his culture and they have saved up for it (£65k). The Indian parents expected this to be half the budget and expected the brides family to contribute the other half (usually the brides parents pay the whole cost but they are fairly liberal). They are now understanding that brides parents cannot do this and the culture is different and want to save up more now to try and up the budget. The groom cannot emphasize enough that it is so important to his culture to have a big wedding. It represents his family's status and the budget cannot be scrimped on.

The couple decide to compromise and have an intimate British wedding first with 15 people then a big Indian wedding party after as Grooms parents are willing to pay for the Indian wedding (£65k).

No plans have yet been made.

Here are the two points of contention.

1. Groom has found out new information and doesn't want his parents to pay for the Indian wedding and would rather pay for it himself. The family business isn't doing too well and groom feels that his family really need this money and will struggle without it. From the outset it looks like the grooms family are in a bad financial position but still want to spend this amount on the wedding. Groom says that he cannot accept the money knowing it may affect his family badly and wants to self fund it. Bride is horrified at the thought of paying £70k in total for a wedding and a big part of wanting a small or no wedding was not wanting to spend money or have a big performance. The couple have lived frugally for years to save enough money that they can buy a family home. They now have about £110k in savings, which the groom claims is enough for both a wedding and a family home. (They own a one bed so the extra money will upscale). The bride just doesn't want to spend that money on the wedding.
2. The Groom's parents are very easy going about most things but the 4 Indian grandparents are strict and old fashioned and would not understand liberal British culture. The Groom has said that if they come to the British wedding there are certain things that would offend the grandparents such as if younger people drank alcohol. The groom has warned the grandparents may create a scene if they feel disrespected and has recommended that they are not invited. The bride absolutely wants her two surviving grandparents to come to the intimate wedding and it would cause deep regret and upset if they didn't come. The grooms parents (who are easy going and would only do this if it was a hill to die on )said that it is not fair to have one family grandparents come and not the other and that they should all be invited or none. Apparently there is a lot of culture meaning that the bride just couldn't understand and the parents said it would be too controversial for them to come unless the invites were sent fairly and they would have to pull themselves out the small wedding. The groom would feel very sad having an intimate wedding without his family there as this would be the main wedding ceremony. The bride doesn't feel theres any point in having a small wedding if it's just her side of the family and the magic for her was having the most important people in both their lives there for one day.

They get on well and this is the only cultural difference and they were aware that it would be an issue when they got together years back. They both agree it's not a deal breaker and their love is the most important.

How do they come to a compromise on this?

The bride better be careful as to what she is getting herself into

to all intents and purposes this man who I’m sure she thinks is the love of her life and her his well he is making it clear right now that his cultural beliefs are ahead of the brides own wishes

more worrying is that it defies common sense to fritter away those savings on this wedding - you should be careful in believing this man has embraced your culture when clearly he is expecting you to adhere to cultural expectations that are not your own

and anyway if these people are so proud why would they take his money?

postpone this wedding at least until the family business is doing better

do discuss children and what cultural and religious expectations will be placed upon them and make sure you are happy about that because as you can see this man is not happy to let go of expectations when it involves his belief system

The multicultural weddings I've been to have been mostly:
Small wedding in a church / chapel / registry office in typically British wedding clothes.
Blessing in Hindu religion in a hall where the reception was held and bride and groom having changed into Indian clothes.
Large reception but nowhere near numbers some people describe (I've been to much bigger West African weddings) - there were around 200 at the British/Indian weddings.
Indian food and I can't remember whether there was alcohol.

Things are changing a lot. The last of my Indian friends to get married had a relatively smaller wedding - she was marrying a guy of Pakistani heritage so that came with its own issues with regards to their families - and they just said they were ignoring both family traditions (I mean not completely. They didn't serve pork or beef for example) and creating their own. It was a wonderful day - probably more British than anything else but with a sprinkling of various cultures mixed in.
It's no good saying "having a big wedding isn't an option" - it is if nobody can afford it. And they can't afford it because their savings were for a house. If he wants to spend half then that's a huge red flag.
Everything is an option. Ask him what he would do if he was getting married in a poor village in India. Would be be happy for his bride's parents to be getting in debt for the rest of their lives just so they could have a big wedding and save face?

If he truly can't work out how to deal with his parents I would advise them to either elope or to lie and say they aren't getting married and then just have a very very small ceremony (not the best option as lying is never a great thing but better than throwing tens of thousands of pounds away...

@Riskofbeingsued you raise some great suggestions here thank you. I think almost all of these will be taken on board. It would be a big compromise for both. The bride would be paying more for a wedding she doesn't want, and the groom will miss out on his big Indian wedding.

The main barriers to having a bigger wedding in the UK is that it wouldn't fit into a £10k budget. The bride is willing to stretch to this number. Both families are family large and making a guest list 15 people is easier than making a guest list of 50. The grooms close extended family is 45 people.

The flights alone for the grooms family will also likely be £1k per person. This is excluding hotels. His parents would be too embarrassed to ask the family to pay for this themselves so they would generously step in to pay, which would defeat the point of not spending that wedding budget.

Another cultural difference to consider is that Indian guests going to a foreign wedding apparently expect their room and board to be paid for and if a family is extra generous, the flight to be chucked in too.

A mutual Indian friend said that her friend actually made a profit from her wedding with all the gold she got, so it may be an investment!

I would be horrified at my fiancé insisting we spend £60k of our savings on a wedding he knows I do not want. He is well and truly putting his family’s wishes above his brides. If it wasn’t all about what his parents and grandparents want, what would the groom actually want for his wedding?

The bride feels relieved to hear of other Indian/British weddings where compromises have been made. For those saying the groom isn't willing to compromise, the groom is absolutely lovely. This is just really important to him. He has agreed to elope because he loves my friend, but my friend knows this is the worst case for groom as he really wants a wedding. Because it's so important to him, bride really wants to find a compromise so he can get a wonderful day. Groom wants a big wedding with everyone he loves, the more the merrier.

In that case....
Go with plan A.
Small intimate wedding in the UK.
Huge wedding in India that the groom's parents pay for. Pay them back with (for example) 1/2 or 3/4 of whatever they get in gifts as those would be unexpected bonuses and not in the bride's original plan.

Why does the grooms 'culture' trump the brides 'culture'?

The grooms family should respect the brides culture. She's western and wants a western wedding in a western country. They should respect the fact she's having her wedding the way she wants it.

If someone wanted me to have a huge wedding that I didn’t want, pay a huge amount of money out of my savings that I didn’t want to, make demands on who I could or couldn’t invite, say I couldn’t wear what I wanted to, drink or speak how I wanted to, then I would NOT be getting married and would NOT be paying for it.

I also think Groom can’t really make these demands while living in the UK with a British bride. Having Indian mumsnet feedback isn’t quite the same equivalent until OP moved to Indian and made her demands.

Personally, I’d say no wedding and I’d have a civil ceremony.

My sisters SIL married a man of Indian descent.

They had a British wedding here with all the usual white wedding traditions, church wedding with party afterwards and only UK family invited, they then flew to India for their honeymoon and had the big Indian family wedding with all his family’s traditions.
It meant that both families were celebrated and family from abroad didn’t have to travel because they were also getting a wedding to attend.
It cost an absolute fortune!

What else will the groom be unwilling to compromise on? I'd consider cultural expectations relating to care of elderly parents, parents living with you, grandparent involvement with grandchildren, sending money home to parents, anything else that might have a profound impact on the life you see for yourself in the future. I'm not an expert on this and might be showing ignorance here. Just some issues I've seen come up in the relationships of people I know from different cultural backgrounds.

@Riskofbeingsued it's actually a really unique idea to consider selling all the gold received and giving all the money to the grooms family in payment for the wedding. We will run this by the groom.

@lifeinthehills the couple have discussed everything else and they are both in agreement

I think they should have two ceremonies, one in the U.K. which can be intimate with the brides family, one in India that the in laws can finance.

I’d caution that the bride should absolutely ensure her current joint savings are ring fenced, and require double signatures to release any funds. He may be lovely, but he has a deep rooted sense of duty, loyalty and obligation to his family, much deeper than what he feels for his future bride. If there’s no fear of him using the joint funds, then there’s no issue with it being kept securely for its intended purpose.

I bet the grooms family would be horrified by the suggestion of selling the gold and gifts, lord forbid anyone suspect them of being cheap or in financial difficulty, it really would go against the whole image they’re hoping to project.

@StreamingCervix would they have to know?

Can they not have an intimate family wedding with both grandparents, a meal or buffet afterwards with the grandparents and then drinks but after without them. En corporate stuff from both cultures but on a significantly smaller scale.

I mean, by all means suggest it to the groom.

I imagine if the in laws were to discover it, they would claim that the couple had brought dishonour to the family.

Having flashbacks to my own wedding, although without the added complication of difficult in-law finances. That sounds so tough.

What others have said about it being important for the couple to set their own boundaries as a precedent for the future is so true. But also, everyone goes a bit crazy when it comes to wedding planning, even if from the same culture, so helpful to remember that the way someone is behaving now doesn't mean that it will always be like that. Our wedding planning was fraught and full of emotional outbursts from relatives, but things are great now. To an extent that I would not have believed possible at the time.

Biggest cultural difference is that in the West a wedding is a celebration of the couple and in India a wedding is a celebration of the community. It's just so hard to reconcile the two.

We made very few compromises on our English wedding (which we paid for), but gave in-laws almost total free reign on the Indian wedding (which they paid for). They didn't want alcohol, but we agreed no spirits (makes no sense to me but seemed to help). They didn't want dancing, but we had a ceilidh which is pretty wholesome family fun. We wanted a small wedding, and they invited a bunch of people without asking (I lost it at this).

Lots of talking through the cultural significance of alcohol, dancing, and joy as part of a celebration here and that it would be considered rude or strange not to have that. Lots of talking through how we were hosting/paying for the English wedding so would be making the decisions between us, but we'd go along with whatever they wanted for the Indian wedding.

My DH understood that it was more important to invest financially in our married lives together than in one day, so can't help on that one, sorry.

Indian people can and do have all sorts of weddings when they marry outside their culture. One of my best friends is white English, married and Indian. They had a small ceremony abroad with about 30 close family and friends then in India had the big celebration of their marriage. They let groom's parents have a pretty free reign over the food, decoration, guest list but my friend out her foot down over them deciding what she wore and said among some other things. The world didn't end, nobody cut him off.

Now they have a baby there has also been upset that they aren't doing all the things you "have" to do in his culture. Well he married her and promised to "forsake all others", not "forsake all others apart from my grandparents".

My cousins husband is Indian. His parents (who are lovely) delicately pointed out to him what kind of dowry he’d expect if he found an Indian bride. He said you’ve met jane and I’m marrying her.
they had a wedding in Australia, in a church, and afterwards changed into Indian wedding clothes and went to a hall and had a Hindi ceremony then the reception. There was alcohol, there were bare shoulders. There was never never any question of spending the house deposit on the wedding.

this was the best suggestion copied below. if the groom wants his wedding then he has to accept his parents paying for it, not spending the savings his partner has helped him build for a house. He can’t be uncomfortable with his parents funding it as per their traditional expectation but think his wife should swallow her enormous discomfort with spending their savings. That is no compromise and would be a total dealbreaker.
ibvite the Indian grandparents to the English wedding through the grooms parents, not directly. Say I’d love them to be there but this wedding is in my brides culture and they will have to accept that. Bride will be wearing a traditional dress possibly with bare shoulders or clingy, there will be alcohol and dancing, there will be no inappropriate speeches. Brides grandparents willl be there whether mine come or not. This is our English wedding with my soon to be wife so my grandparents are not allowed to spoil it. No, please stop arguing. We will not be having a wedding in India if my wife does not get her wedding here in England.

Small intimate wedding in the UK.
Huge wedding in India that the groom's parents pay for. Pay them back with (for example) 1/2 or 3/4 of whatever they get in gifts as those would be unexpected bonuses and not in the bride's original plan.

he has not done a lot of compromising in the scenario you describe. If he can’t show he can respect her views not jsut insist she confirms to his family this is all a really bad sign. There is no way my cousin would have married her husband if he’d said these things your friedns partner is! (Their wedding was about 15 years ago)

The compromise is a much cheaper Indian wedding. It's not normal to spend that kind of money even in India, only the rich can afford such lavish celebrations.

Cutting down the celebrations to 2 days for instance, in the U.K. (I rent halls for Indian weddings) families have a combined pre wedding party or have the women first for 2 hours then the men (or vice versa) same venue to save

@Deut28 you're absolutely right. Grooms parents are easy going but struggle to understand that they don't call the shots here. In many ways Indian weddings are more about the parents of the couple. The grooms mother is lovely but has already massively overstepped assuming she was the decision maker by inviting all her friends, sending the dress she wanted to buy the bride, and buying hair pieces for the bride. It was done with kindness and excitement but she has stepped back now the groom set a boundary. The grandparents haven't been introduced into the conversation yet. There was no engagement for this reason. The couple jointly decided they were ready to get married and when they have made a plan the groom with 'propose'. The plan has to come first to risk the grandparents taking over. It's only the brides family and grooms parents that know the decision to marry has been made.

The bride says she is happy to compromise on most things but if she is paying, she won't compromise on her values. Her priority is that if she has a wedding, she would like a chunk of it to be pressure free where she can wear, drink and act how she likes. Realistically that means the paternal grandparents cannot be there for this part of the wedding.

Thank you everyone who has taken the time to respond, the bride is leaving now to head home but we will check in any new comments and suggestions tomorrow

What an absolute nightmare! A colleague of mine was from Pakistan and married a close family friend. They had a similar type of wedding where everyone they had ever met was invited. It cost the families an absolute fortune. It was crazy as the bride was certainly never going to see any of those people again. Both families lived in pretty small terraced houses in Bolton. The cost of the wedding would have easily bought a house for the married couple outright.

A bride and groom going off and just making their own decisions isn't an option.

A wedding where I could not make my own decisions with my partner would not be an option

This is something that will likely echo again down the line. Hairpieces today, baby items tomorrow, and so it goes.

Not something to be swept under the carpet in the excitement of a wedding, keep your eye on the decades of marriage and being a part of this family ahead.

This is the first culture clash . FGS don't have kids and god help you dealing with expectations about caring for and funding elderly and ailing relatives. You say G family have lost money. Next the B will find he is funding them.

If they can't work out a sensible solution here there is no hope.

It seems the only sensible solution is a registry office with close family. Indian grandparents not invited if they are going to be offended by proceedings. Seriously what can they do here: invite them and theh will be offended, or don't invite them and they will be offended. If G can't see his way to sensible compromise then they are not as well matched as they thought.

Not getting married seems to be the top solution.

If G genuinely wanted a big wedding and B stopped it then that might be controlling. If G is only doing the big wedding to appease his family then that's daft.