Hello everyone! I'm just wondering about the etiquette for parents meeting each other?
My parents live about 4 hours away from us and his parents lives about 2 hours in a different direction. His parents are separated but still live in the same area. They separated a few years ago and as far as we are aware divorce proceedings are basically halted because of a disagreement on the alimony. Otherwise they don’t really see each other and my FI isn’t concerned that they would get dramatic with each other but he thinks his mom would have a hard time being in the same room in a situation where she can’t leave if she wants to.
A good friend of ours offered to possibly host an engagement party as his mother’s house, assuming she’d be okay with that. She has a large backyard which would be perfect for a BBQ and we hadn’t really thought about how our parents would meet until we talked about it today. I was thinking it’d be nice for them to meet more one on one before any sort of group event like that while I think my FI originally thought they’d just meet at the engagement party. FI is also somewhat concerned that if my parents met his individually then whoever met my parents second would be upset that they weren’t introduced first. He also doesn’t think his mom would like a situation where all six of us go for dinner and she doesn’t have an option to leave when she’s no longer comfortable.
So we don’t really know how to proceed, if any of these ideas are particularly good, or if there are any formalities we should be taking into account otherwise so any advice would be very helpful. Thank you!