Different wedding expectations for different families?

marinabreeze

I saw the board was getting a little slow, so I had a question I wanted to pose to you guys. 

Here's the background:  I was thinking about it since relatively recently my FI and I were renegotiating with each other in terms of what kind of wedding we want.  I want a small, simple wedding, my FI doesn't really care all that much as long as we get married (although he does have input and plenty of opinions on what he'd like to see!).  He and I are paying for the wedding on our own.

Well, here's the thing.  My family tends to go all out for weddings...either super-expensive country club affairs or DWs to pricey locations like Hawaii and the Caribbean.  My FI's family is the complete opposite...just about all of them have eloped/JOP, even FI's grandparents.  They're not poor by any means, they're just very practical people. They don't see the point of all the expense for one day. 

Both of us felt the family pressure, and felt pulled in different directions, and end up with a swelled guest list and a lot of stress (no one has gotten save the dates or invites yet).  We ended end up having a heart-to-heart about it, and ultimately decided just to go ahead with my original vision, which is to have a ceremony and reception, but to cut the guest list and make it more intimate, as in immediate family, aunts and uncles (no cousins or distant relatives), and close friends only.

Have any of you had to contend with families who have different ideas or visions of what your wedding should like or anything along those lines based on either cultural expectations or just individual family differences?  And if so, how have you and your respective FIs chosen to handle it?

mrswac58

It's so funny that you posted this. We are struggling with something similar issue and it came up today.

Background:
I come from a large and very close family. When there's a wedding, everyone pitches in and everybody tries to attend to support. FI's comes from a smaller fam but isn't in contact with barely any of his fam .He is also the only child.
 I don't need to have an extravengant  affair by any means but i want my family to be present. He doesn't want a large wedding for the simple fact that he wouldn't be inviting a lot of people. To me an intimate wedding consist of my family and closest friends. Unfortunately, my family consist of about 100 or so people( immediate, aunts,uncles and cousins). And to add, im from CA, Fi is from IL and our wedding is in AZ so EVERYONE has to travel to attend.( which isn't a bad thing.)

the issue
My FI's family is a lot like how you described your FI's to be. They'd rather not spend a lot of money. Which is fine. They offered us an amount to use if needed but FI wants to not use it and save it for our honeymoon. The bulk of the wedding is being paid for by my mom and sister. My problem is that FI's parents keep trying to tell us to have an "intimate" or "small" wedding and reception in AZ then a reception in both of our respective hometowns. They keep telling us this but 1) they aren't paying for the wedding and 2) I actually like my family and talk to them so intimate, to me doesn't actually mean small. 

FI's mom called this morning, and told us,again, how she thinks we should have a "small",wedding with only parents, attendants, PARENTS OF ATTENDANTS, and a few friends and family. Well, why on earth would not invite my family whom i LOVE DEARLY, to invite parents whose children i like. I quickly realized that she hadn't put any thought into what I, the bride, want. And only considered what she, FL and FFIL would want. FI, also hasn't explained to his parents what his intentions are with the money they offered. Huuuuhhhhh. Well, i feel better.lol

Clearly ,we too, need to sit down and have a talk as well.

Back to you
I'm glad you 2 were able to have a heart to heart and figure out what would be best for the 2 of you, as opposed to what your families want

happe2gether

I can kind of understand what you are going through.

In my side of the family we are all relatively close at times and so when a wedding comes up, pretty much the entire family is in the wedding party in some shape or fashion (aunts, uncles, cousins).  This usually leaves little if any room for close friends of the bride and groom to actually participate.  

FI's only has one brother so there isn't much of an "issue" with that.  But the biggest thing we are probably contending with from his side is the fact that there are SO MANY people in his extended (aunts, uncles and cousins) family.  Ever since we got engaged, the first thing we had to do was set a date far enough off so that we could save to pay for all of the guests.  Just the other day, I ran the list by him once again and for the must invite list from his side alone, there are about 120 people.  That is a lot and almost a wedding by itself but like I said we knew we would have a large guest list and have been planning for it all along.

But back to what I was saying about my family.  Because I know how they like things and more importantly because I know how I want my wedding to be, I have told very little people about any details of the wedding.  We are basically paying for it ourselves so the decisions for the wedding will only be made by the two of us.  So that's my solution. Our wedding = our choices.

JKeyes2011

Here we aren't having so much of an issue, its just my MILs mouth. I have a crazy large family and we love to get togehter and have a good time and that means everybody. My FI is an only child and his family really only is his parents, his grandma, and one cousin in France. His family isn't even coming to the wedding and his mom keeps saying that she finds it stupid for us to have this big "party" as she calls it while always implying that my family is poor. My mom is paying for the entire wedding and if I were her I would look at my family and I wouldn't make asumptions that they are poor since we are having this big "party". She makes it seem like we are trying to get money from my FI. My FI volenteered to buy something and the only thing he is getting is the flowers and only because he volenteered and not even all the flowers, my mom bought the bouquets and the caremony decoration flowers. I never see why my "party" is such a big deal if they aren't even coming. Just irritates me sometimes.

mrswac58

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/cultural-wedding-boards_interracial-weddings_different-wedding-expectations-diffrent-families?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Cultural Wedding BoardsForum:c9069c39-6e1f-4397-9e66-aeb7ed51fccbDiscussion:a916a2c7-8780-468d-844a-f552959b31aePost:964c92db-1714-4e94-b0d9-68c010dec309">Re: Different wedding expectations for different families?</a>:
[QUOTE]Here we aren't having so much of an issue, its just my MILs mouth.<strong> I have a crazy large family and we love to get togehter and have a good time and that means everybody. My FI is an only child and his family really only is his parents, his grandma, and one cousin in France. His family isn't even coming to the wedding and his mom keeps saying that she finds it stupid for us to have this big "party" as she calls it</strong> while always implying that my family is poor. My mom is paying for the entire wedding and if I were her I would look at my family and I wouldn't make asumptions that they are poor since we are having this big "party". <strong>She makes it seem like we are trying to get money from my FI. </strong>My FI volenteered to buy something and the only thing he is getting is the flowers and only because he volenteered and not even all the flowers, my mom bought the bouquets and the caremony decoration flowers. I never see why my "party" is such a big deal if they aren't even coming. Just irritates me sometimes.
Posted by JKeyes2011[/QUOTE]


Sounds like we are in similar situations. For me it's both ILs. Their fam isn't really even coming. I don't understand why it matters so much. My fam is paying for the whole wedding pretty much but they seem to have more imput/request than my own mother. I guess we gotta take everything with a grain of salt,huh? lol OOHH IL's . My mom said " Yea girl, get ready! Inlaws aint no joke!'  haha

Cynthia1207

We don't really have this problem simply because FI is letting me do what my vision of the wedding is (I consult him of course!).  We come from entirely different cultural backgrounds when it comes to weddings but FI was perfectly fine with me planning everything the way I had envisioned.  Our families are understanding enough to realize that we are grown adults who can make thier own decisions.  We are paying for everything ourselves so they can't really judge anything we do.  I get a few pointers here and there, mostly helpful insight and sometimes I have to tell people my way of thinking but all in all we've had no problems when it comes to wedding planning and cultural issues.   We've managed to both embrace each other's culture and adapt to certain differences in values and traditions and we've come out with a nice mix of it all.

JloveB

this is a great post...

My family - they would love a big wedding and they love to party but they also understand that me and FI are paying for everything and we are on a budget so they are okay with something simple, I would love to have all my family come, but I have a big family and paying for all of them would be costly...so we decided to have a wedding in a location where both families are required to travel in a way to cut the guest list as we know those with kids (some on my younger cousin will most likely not make it) but I have to invite them because they are first cousin and I am close to all my family so I can't invite my uncles and aunties and not their children. My family is okay with whatever wedding we have because it is our day...they never complained about where we planned to have it or the cost, but they planned on finding a way to make it.

FI family - they are a big family that loves big weddings and they can afford to have those type of big weddings that start at 6 pm and go until 2am in the morning with 300 + guest, and all the perks of having a 100k wedding....me and FI can't do that while paying for it by ourselves but FI feels like he just has to please his family and do something they are use to, so that is our biggest challenge where FI wants to please his family and go for broke while doing it and I won't let him do that to our wedding or to the beginning of our life as a family.  I love his family but I don't appericate how they sometimes make him feel guilty about having this wedding that is beautiful but not over the top like what they are use to having....we want to invite all his family as they are close to us a well but with inviting all his family and mines that is around 200 people alone and we don't get to invite close friends and we just can't see ourselvers not inviting friends so we pick a location for every single guest has to travel...

FI is slowly coming around to understanding that it is our wedding he feels like he has to have the wedding of his family's dreams while I want him to see that our friends and families will love our wedding regardless of what we choose.

krsomedaykh

I am so glad I found this post. I am going through a simmilar situation, too. And it is sucking the fun out of this wedding really fast.

My fiance is originally from east Africa. I am born and raised here. They have a huge tight knit community, which is amazing. However, of the entire community, he and I are only the 2nd interracial couple ever. They have accepted me and I am so grateful, but the cultural differences are becoming more and more apparent now that we are planning our wedding. His family/community goes all out for weddings. It's at least a 3 day long affair where EVERYONE is invited(via word of mouth, by the way). I have a big family too but my family would be happy with anything we decided to do.

 We have been engaged for awhile and have talked out all of the possible options. We are paying for the wedding ourselves and are not big "center of attention" type people. So after many many discussions, he and I decided in order to keep the wedding intimate, we would have a destination wedding in FL with only family and our closest of friends. And now that the invitations are going out and the word is spreading, people on his side, including his immediate family and some close friends are really upset with us that we are not doing our wedding the traditional way. We are planning to have a big reception for everyone locally, but they don't seem to care. His family/community wants a big 600 person three day thing and not only do we not have the money for that, but it's not "us". They do not understand why we chose to have our wedding in FL at all. They think that we are being hurtful(probably more specifically they think I am the one trying to disregard their feelings and traditions.) I feel like they wouldn't be happy unless we completely give up everything we want to accommodate them. I understand their side completely but I feel like they don't ever look at the situation through my/our eyes. I know that at the end of the day, it is our wedding, but it's hard going through with the decisions we've made knowing everyone is against us.

Has anyone else been through something like this? What did you do? Risk everyone being mad forever and do what you want, or back out of what is already planned and do what they want?

This whole situation has gone from happy and exciting to heartbreaking and frustrating. I'm ready to elope.

Thanks for "listening."

marinabreeze

No prob.  I'm sorry you're having to go through that.  I think it's really hard when family expects you to do things a certain way, and get mad, offended, etc., because it's not what they're used to. 

My situation was defintely not as extreme, and our differences aren't really "cultural," per se.  I think there are other ladies that come onto this board every so often who can speak to the cultural differences more than I can.  All I can say, though, is that there is no way that you can please everyone.  If you shift in any direction, someone's going to get mad.  

Even after my FI and I cut our guest list, my younger brother and other relatives have expressed unhappiness about the fact that I cut out so much of the extended family, I'm including family members they don't think I should include, and allowing FI's whole family to come (they amount to all of like 10 people total), and try to make me feel bad about it.  But I stand my ground. 

All you and your FI can do is to have the wedding you want and can plan, and accept that there's no way everyone will be happy.  Hopefully your FI will try to make them understand where he is coming from and that the wedding in Florida is as much his choice as it is yours.  I wish you the best of luck in your planning!

Lisa50

Thankfully, no one on either side has voiced an opinion.  Of course, we're paying for everything and are old enough to do as we please.  Most often, the response is "Just tell us where and when and we'll be there!"  It doesn't get much better than that.

Sorry you've gone through such angst.  I wish you the very best moving forward with planning the wedding you and your FI want to have.  I hope it gets better.  Good luck!

krsomedaykh

Thank you both.