I thought about putting this on the "Wedding Woes" board, but decided not to. If you're the "TL;DR" type, you may want to move along...
I've been engaged to my wonderful wife-to-be for about 6 months. Originally, we were planning on getting married in mid-2014 right after her graduation (from a school on the opposite side of the country from me). But actually being finished by then is unpredictable, for reasons I won't get into. To add to that, it would be VERYdifficult for my sister (who will be standing on my side) to make it at that time (my only other sibling younger brother is BM). Not to mention, that's a LOT happening all at once: graduation, moving back here, finding our own place, licensing exam, starting a new job (for her). Add a wedding + honeymoon, and boy, that's a lot to deal with.
To be perfectly clear: we've already committed to getting married, and while we're patient, pushing the date off into later in 2014 isn't what we want to do. At the time we had decided on mid-2014, it just seemed to make sense. But factoring in the schedules and the uncertainties made us begin to think otherwise. So this past week we started looking at alternative dates, where there could be more certainty about what's going on.
Other big point to mention: the families are scattered across the country. I'm in an area close to her parents, my family is almost all in an area about 6 hours north of here, her sister (and husband) are about the same distance away, and most of her family is located within a few hours' drive of where she goes to school. She's the youngest in her family, I'm the oldest in mine, and most of my cousins are in some form of grad school. In other words, there's little about the situation that's ideal by any stretch of the imagination. Also, to keep the wedding smaller and help control costs, we had initially chosen a venue out by her. This decision, made back in May or so, had not gone over that well with my family; the financial burden was a big part of the issue. But they accepted it.
Back to where we left off: the date. This past week, my fiancee and I went back to the drawing board, and came to the realization that we had what appeared to be two options. The first: wait until at least mid-2014, while not knowing for certain whether something big would gum it up (e.g., having more school requirements to finish), and knowing that for certain people involved, it wouldn't be a relaxed event. The other was moving the date to THIS December. As in, four months from now. She and I had already talked about many of the details of the wedding, but obviously there are things we need to do. However, we found a new venue (necessary), we have a pastor...she's even had her dress for months.
If the decision just to have the wedding in a location not closer to her parents (and therefore my family as well) didn't go over well, the decision to move the date to 4 months from now resulted in, well... it wasn't anger, just a lot of emotion. It's knowing that it may be even MORE difficult for a lot of my extended family to make it (some of her family and friends will also not be able to attend), and despite the fact that my family isn't being asked to shoulder practically any of the cost (again, for reasons I won't get into), there's been a sense that they should have had more input into the decision on the venue and the date. They feel like it's too rushed, and concerned as to whether we're really prepared to spend the first 1.5 years of marriage still apart (we've made it two years apart already with nary a problem).
When my faincee and I discussed moving the date to December last week, I knew that it would not really be what my family wanted to hear. But having thought long and hard about it, I believed I was making the right decision. However, after telling my family, and discussing all the reasons for it, I'm fighting off the urge to doubt myself. They really care about me, and I really care about them, and they want to be there for me. They're struggling with this, in no small part because it's (admittedly) a significant course correction with only 4 months before we'd get hitched, and they're concerned that they may not be adequately represented in all of this. I've spent a lot of time on the phone the past couple of days talking about all of this with them. And because I care deeply about them, the whole situation has left me mentally and emotionally drained.
I'm leaving out a lot of details here, but I think this covers most of the big points. I guess what I'm asking is, has anyone here gone through a similar experience? If so, how did it play out? In hindsight, perhaps we should have set up a meeting of the respective familes to talk about all of the expectations and responsibilities (yes, they had already met each other). Would that have made a difference with the present situation? Perhaps. I don't know. But being caught in the middle of everything isn't fun. And I don't want to have to feel bad about whatever decision I made, though at this point I can't help but feel that.
My fiancee's cousin and his wife have mentioned that if you can survive planning a wedding, you can survive anything. I really want to believe that my fiancee and I, and our respective families, will come out of this whole experience without resentment, without regret, and full of happiness. I'm just having a hard time believing that at the moment...
Thanks for listening.