I would have preferred posting this in Snarky Brides but my ultimate question is an etiquette one soooo..
tl:dr version- FI are getting married in May of this year with 15 people present. FOG tells us he'd like to plan a celebration (not a PPD) a month afterwards for family and friends. Due to reasons i'll elaborate on below, this needs to be postponed. How long after our wedding is it still ok to plan a celebration like this? Would having a marriage celebration this fall be so far after the fact that its deemed rude?
So here's the deal- FI got engaged last fall after almost 5 years of dating, and planned our wedding for May as he was set to deploy again shortly thereafter. We are paying for it ourselves as we are both 32 and didnt feel it was appropriate to accept money from my dad at this age. My dad offered, but there was no reason to accept as we had saved money for this, and umm, we're adults. We budgeted $10k for our intimate wedding, we rented out a B&B for the entire Memorial Day Weekend and paid for everyone (hence the bulk of the cost for only 15 people), including travel costs for guests. It became our dream wedding, and I feel that I shouldnt have to defend what we're doing since we're paying. FOG offered, and kept offering, to throw us a 'celebration' so extended family and friends could also celebrate with us at a later date. It took some convincing but we finally said what the hell, and accepted his generous offer. We were thinking of a casual BBQ or something similar, he had other plans (kept saying open bar, live band, etc etc. We side eyed it as we knew he had no clue what that actually would cost him) So FI's deployment this summer was cancelled, and instead another is on the books for a year from now. We technically have plenty of time, but are unwilling to change our plans for our original wedding as its perfect for us. Anyways, the last 2 months we've been trying to plan, or at least talk about the celebration in any form, and FOG has constantly said "dont worry about it." Its not ok, apparently, to discuss financial anything on that side of the family. Well now we're 3 months out, and not only is nothing planned, we still cant get a budget out of him more than "just dont worry about it." At some point he had told us he had a venue booked for a specific Saturday in June, through a family member that could get a discount on the venue fee. Upon being pressed for details, it turns out he had merely hoped he'd be able to get in on that date, but instead kept telling us "dont worry about it." It turns out the venue with the massive discount had been booked up more than a year in advance (duh) and he didnt know what to do. Ok, well FI and I voiced our opinion that we should just scratch the whole thing as it was superfluous in our eyes anyways. As it turns out, FOG paid for 8 airline tickets for some random-ass distant relatives to fly in from Ireland on that specific date in June. And since he generously paid for their travel expenses, he was no longer able to pay for anything other than a venue fee for the whole shindig.
I still want to cancel the whole ordeal as its not needed or really wanted, but FI says we'd be crucified as his dad just dropped waaay too much money for these people coming from IRELAND (that we've never met), and other family members and friends have already been told on some level that there will be a celebration coming. The drafted guestlist he had given us was 90 people. That doesnt inlude any of our friends, FI's army buddies, FI's firehouse, my circle, my family etc. His dad paid for these international airline tickets without any sort of date being set, or invitations or anything. Thats a fucking amazing contribution! But.... Now we feel cornered into covering the costs for this damn celebration (that we never wanted) so FOG isnt screwed on those tickets.
Well between the wedding and modest HM we're paying for, we're maxed out. Its embarrassing to admit but we're spending $15k total on everything we wanted, and refuse to just start throwing a credit card around for FOG to "host" a party he isnt paying for (minus a venue fee). However, we decided to do the right thing and plan a budget-friendly party for everyone...again, not something we actually want to do, but now we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.. Our problem (of many) is: we need a few months to save enough even for a smaller celebration as we're spending every penny we can afford on our wedding as it is. FOG asked us to scale back on our wedding, or cancel the HM so WE can pay for the party he wants. Nope. WHAT TO DO?!
Besides cancelling his hypothetical celebration and dealing with that fallout, we decided to plan a damn celebration but postpone it a few more months. At that point we could afford the fee to change the tickets he purchased, and have a modest celebration this fall. So the ultimate question: How long after our actual wedding is it considered rude to have this "celebration?" It just seems weird to me, to have a wedding then 5 months later throw a party in honor of ourselves. Embarrassing actually.
Help.
I just dont want to be side-eyed or talked about after the fact.
Caveat- to any other military brides out there that might say "but for military reasons you can do whatever you want!" Just shove it. We've been through 2 deployments together and we refuse to let the army dictate more than it already does. We saved up for the wedding we wanted instead of getting married for government benefits. (We purchased a house with his deployment money, instead of a huge blowout wedding because of our personal priorities).
Also- we are planning on about 175 maximum at this little celebration. My mom is 12th out of 13 kids, and FI's Irish Catholic family consistently has like 60+ people at holidays. We've pared down as much as we can to be able to invite his battle buddies and our personal friends. This whole debacle is the main reason we didnt plan a big wedding to begin with. Guestlist could be 300+ without even batting an eye.
So yeah, thoughts on having a celebration 5 months after our local wedding with no deployment dictating timeframe? Or how bad is it if I tell FOG "sorry" and just cancel the whole thing anyways.... Please help
