Apologies in advance for the length, but I really need advice from Brides-to-be!
My fiancé is very close with his younger brother and cousin.
The cousin proposed on Dec 20, 2014 and the brother proposed on Dec 25, 2014. We became engaged on April 18, 2015.
On the Dec 25, 2014 (right before the brothers proposals), the cousin & fiance announced they were planning a destination wedding tentatively in Sep 2016.
The brother and his finance were secretly married at the JOP in March 2015 and in early May, we received STDs for their destination wedding in June 2016.
My fiancé is a groomsman in both his cousin's and brothers weddings.
As none of us are rolling in money, I immediately realized that planning a wedding and attending 2 others would be tight.
Especially for:
1. us as we would be paying for our own local wedding and attending 2 destinations weddings and
2. his family who will be celebrating and/or traveling to 3 weddings.
My fiancé and I really struggled with how to plan a wedding of our own that we would enjoy without breaking the bank AFTER we are already spending thousands attending 2 other destination weddings. Nonetheless, we knew would not wait longer than a year to get married.
I did initially get all caught up in planning my Pinterest dream wedding, but reality struck. While my family is looking forward to an extravagant event, I really had no desire to overspend on 1 day when we have a mortgage and kid in private school, so I am ok with not having a huge over the top affair. I am happy (and would have no regrets) as long as I get to wear a great dress/shoes and have great pictures!
I speak with the brother’s fiancé regularly and I consider her a friend. We have recently been working out together to get 'wedding ready’. She is well aware of the situation that we are in and that I have given up on planning out of frustration and because my soul couldn't live with a 20K party.
My fiancé and I (FINALLY!) agreed to have a small intimate ceremony in Central Park (which is local to us and our families) where we could have an amazing photoshoot followed by a reception. I am pretty creative and resourceful so I know I can make our day special regardless of the scale. In choosing a date, although I preferred April (to avoid wedding season madness), my fiancé chose end of May 2016 to increase our chances of better weather and take advantage of the long Memorial Day Weekend. He isn’t asking for much else input so I can live with May.
This would be about 3-4 weeks before the brothers wedding.
Now, I had assumed that all 3 couples were aware of the situation and that we would do our best to accommodate and support each other during this AWESOME year we would all be married.
A few days ago, I shared my excitement over FINALLY agreeing on a tentative date and planning our wedding with my future sister in law. (Tentative as the permit has to be approved). At first her response was ‘NICE’. She later text me that she felt a way that we would be inconsiderate to plan a wedding 3 weeks before her wedding. She finds it odd that a brother would plan a wedding so close to his own brother’s wedding which had planned for close to a year (?). She had assumed we would wait until 2017 to get married. She confirmed that they have no plans yet for that weekend, but felt that we should NOT plan anything in case they wanted to have their bachelorette/ bachelor party that weekend. She conferred with others and they all felt I was wrong.
I was completely caught off guard.
At first I felt bad that she thought we were being inconsiderate (I consider her a friend) and I tried to minimize our wedding and reassure her that we were not taking away from their wedding. I also tried to explain that we are asking for nothing from them.
Then I got upset. my feelings are hurt that she would think her ONE day is any more special than my ONE day. She did not acknowledge that we did not hesitate to RSVP and are spending thousands to attend their wedding (and the cousin’s), even though it is not in our best interest financially as we plan our own special ONE DAY.
Her destination wedding guests list is set and tickets are paid for. Nothing we do can impact her wedding.
I can’t believe she would even suggest that we would wait another year to get married when she herself felt it necessary to elope for 'business reason' a full 15 months before her ‘real wedding’.
Furthermore, I can’t believe she would even mention inconsiderate after planning a second destination for their family to attend knowing that it would cause financial strain for everyone, especially us!.
I guess I was born without the Bridezilla gene because I can’t imagine telling someone that their wedding date bothered me. Anything besides CONGRATS is rude, unnecessary and downright selfish!
By her theory, we could not get married in May/June OR August/Sept. I guess since we were the last to get engaged, we have no right to expect to be married when we want to. WTF?????
Our entire exchange was by text so I am hoping that maybe i misunderstood her somehow so I suggested we have a face to face. (Something tells me that I understood perfectly!)
Before we talk, I just need to know, am I inconsiderate or is she selfish?