Hi, I've been dealing with some SERIOUS family drama recently. My fiancé and I have decided we want a VERY small, intimate, and sentimental wedding.
We are getting married in a spot where my grandfather's ashes are spread (he passed away and last year and it means a lot to me for him to "be there"). This was his favorite spot in the world and also happens to be at the golf course he owned with my father.
We are inviting only 20-25 people. We don't really like attention and just want this to be a special moment shared with the people we are closest to.
The "reception", if you can call it that will be in the same location. By reception, I just mean dinner. We aren't having dancing or anything else that traditionally comes with weddings. But because we are having an intimate wedding, we want to splurge a little. We want nice decor and a nice 3 or 4 course meal delivered to our guests at their table.
It's very important to us to be able to do this for the people we love the most, and it's very important to us to share this bond with only them.
Now here's where the drama comes into play. My mother is extremely hurt that her siblings are not invited. First of all, she has 4 of them
and 3 have spouses. So that's 7 people...if we add them that's increasing our guest list by almost 30%. And with the dinner we want to have, that's almost $500 extra. My parents can't afford to pay for that. We're paying for most of the wedding ourselves. Second of all, I'm not particularly close with them. I see them about once a year at Christmas and that's it. It's not that I don't like them and don't want them there, it's simply just that we can't afford to have the wedding we want to have if we invite them, and it kinda takes away from the super sentimal value of ONLY inviting people we are VERY close to and see and speak to regularly.
I'm inviting ONE of my uncles (and his family) on my dad's side because I am extremely close with them. Whenever I am home visiting, I spend nearly every day with them. I don't spend any time with my mom's side of the family unless it's Christmas Eve.
I should probably also mention that the grandfather who passed is on my Dad's side, so the ceremony site is not a factor in the argument for my mom's side of the family.
I'm having to deal with my parents threatening to not let me have the wedding, backing out of financial contributions they promised (which is fine...if we have to pay for everything ourselves to have the wedding we want to have, we will), and just saying downright hurtful things.
I'm not sure they really understand what this wedding is...that it's not really a wedding in the traditional sense. I agree it would be wrong not to invite them if we were having a normal wedding, but that's just not the case.
My mom's original solution was to have an informal BBQ the day after the wedding for the people not invited. I agreed, but now it's not enough. We go back and forth every day. I tell her how hurt I am and she says she understands and tells me to have the wedding I want to have, then the next day she's upset again and she's telling me I'm not allowed to have the wedding I want. It's incredibly exhausting. And I've spent every single day since our engagement depressed and crying.
I'm not sure what to do. I don't really want to budge on this because it's just SO important to me to ONLY share this experience with certain people.
My fiancé is upset because this is really important to him as well...and he's the one paying for most of it.
My parents are also upset because my fiancé has ONE of his uncles coming and a couple of his friends. He doesn't have grandparents like I do, so he inviting his childhood neighbors (the closest thing he ever had to grandparents), and he went to boarding school for high school, so he's always compensated his friends as family. He lived with them during the most impressionable period of his life.
My parents are being dramatic and saying that his WHOLE side is coming, which isn't true.
We purposely invited an even amount of guests. I don't see how they can have a problem with him inviting the people closest to him. This is his wedding too, and his guests are just as important as mine.
I don't know what to. I really hate this, and I really have tried to add the people they want to the list...I even tried to have a 60 person wedding with cheap buffet catering to try to please them...but both options put us way too far over our budget. I've decided that I need to stay strong and have the wedding that both my fiancé and I want to have and hope they come around and understand. It's the only way I can actually look forward to my wedding because right now I just don't.
