Hi all,
We've just found out that fiance's parents are very upset that we aren't planning a church wedding. Neither of is are religious, and my parents have realized this on their own and don't care, but he has been "going through the motions" for the past few years and they (particularly his mother) are totally blindsided by this new vision of their son.
I feel that we should probably stick to our guns, chiefly because we don't intend to baptize our future kids and if we cave now this whole issue will come roaring up again in a few years. My parents are paying for whatever part of the wedding we can't cover on our own, within reason.
Thing is, the center stone of my three-stone engagement ring was his maternal grandmother's. She was a very religious woman, and as a result so is his mother's side of the family. I'm now feeling really uncomfortable about wearing his family's beloved deceased grandmother's stone in my engagement ring, since she definitely wouldn't approve of the non-church wedding if she we're alive.
My fiance feels that whoever it used to belong to, he gave me the stone and it is now mine, end of story. I'm not so sure. I really like his family, and while I'm willing to make people uncomfortable by having a non-church wedding, I don't want to cause pain by wearing her stone while doing something she wouldn't approve of. On the other hand, I worry giving it back would seem a very final form of rejection that could damage in-law relations very seriously, perhaps permanently. I don't want that either.