Hello! I'm looking for advice and guidance for a very messy family situation...
Up until last year, I was estranged from my parents for about eight years. The reasons were various and complex, but in a nutshell, my mother has major anger management and control issues; my dad enables her. I decided to step away from my family so that I could work on myself and build stronger relationships with friends and other family members. (e.g., my younger brother is my best friend and will be my MOH, though we definitely had to work on our communication over the past few years.) However, upon the recommendation of my therapist, and as marriage become a strong likelihood for me and my partner, I started to reconnect with them in hopes that we could rebuild our family as I started creating a new one with my partner. I wanted to invite them to the wedding, and I would like them to be in the lives of their future grandchildren, with the hope of building a more stable environment for us all. The steps have been small but steady, as we slowly communicate more frequently and start to celebrate holidays together. It hasn't been without a couple pitfalls, but it's gone alright over the past 12 months or so.
My partner and I got engaged this past summer and I struggled with how to include my parents into the process of wedding planning. They are caterers and I told them from the beginning that I didn't want them to cater the wedding; I want them to enjoy the day, without stress. My mother insisted I invited second and third cousins, many I haven't seen in a decade or more. I said I would be inviting her and my dad's entire immediate family: they each have four siblings, many of whom have kids, many of whom have kids of their own. My side of the family on the guestlist comprises more than 60 people, or 33% of the entire guestlist.This is a big deal for me since many of my mother's siblings, and her mother, have struggled to understand why I needed time away from my family and have sent me some pretty nasty emails in the past. But in trying to create an inclusive family environment, and to make my mother feel comfortable, I'm willing to invite them (though not without trepidation). Also, my parents aren't paying for anything, which I'm fine with since, in my mind, it limits their right to make demands on us. We haven't told them who is funding the wedding, but my fiancee's side of the family is footing the bill as their wedding gift, for which we are very grateful.
We are having the wedding at my fiancee's sister's home. It's a beautiful 10 acre estate with a rustic barn that will definitely need work, which my fiancee's family is willing to do and have the means to do so. (We're also heading there this Saturday for a big clean up day.) But the grounds are gorgeous, and has the ability to create the kind of family and friend-oriented weekend wedding we want to host. (Friends can camp there, we can party as long into the night as we want, etc.) The minute I mentioned that my wedding reception would be in a barn, my mom wasn't enthused. My parents visited the house a couple weeks ago and also didn't seem very happy. (FYI-We chose the location in August and set a wedding date for next June.)
Last week, my dad (always my mom's messenger) asked again if I could invite a pair of my mother's second cousins. It upset me that we were revisiting the topic again and that they still didn't seem to understand the concessions I was already making. I explained the breakdown of guestlist numbers again, and also threw in that we would have to be prepared to fit the entire wedding into the barn in the case of rain, and therefore needed to be careful about beefing up the guest list. (We're down to a list of 174, 33 of which are kids). My dad said he understood.
My dad phones me last night with a proposal: they think having the wedding at the house is a bad idea. My great-aunt will give us $3,000 to move the wedding to a proper venue and my parents will cater the wedding.
This saddens and frustrates me for many reasons. They are trying to insert their control into a process that my partner and I have been working on for months. They claim it's because they are concerned that the catering costs will be too high since it's a strange off-site situation. Ok, if that's the case, then why can't they offer to throw in extra money for the catering costs? It saddens me that rather than leaving the house after their visit with positive thoughts about what a lovely place it is, they focused on the negative (a common problem in my family).
I think this comes down to the guest list. They want a bigger venue so that there is no excuse for why my mom can't invite more of her family.
Quite frankly, I would like them to be happy that they are invited. That may seem cold, but up until last year, they weren't going to be part of this event. I wish they could just focus on the joy of the occasion, rather than trying to interfere.
Anyway, this is definitely a vent, but if anyone else has faced a similar situation, I'd love to hear what you did. Luckily, I have therapy today so I can work on this more there, too.
Thanks for reading.