I've been lurking on this board and a few others on TK for a couple weeks now and I'm finally crawling out of my hole because I feel like I need both some outside perspective and perhaps a little kick in the ass to get my head on straight (if it's crooked). **This got a lot longer than I thought it would... sorry in advance! Ultimately question is italicized at the bottom if you'd like the TL;DR**
FI and I have been dating for 6 1/2 years, so we've gotten pretty good at this communication thing, thankfully. He proposed about a month ago (is it OK to say "finally!" here? we'd been talking about it for almost 2 years...) and we had picked out the ring together at the end of February, so I knew it was coming and started some low-level planning - mostly venue searching and figuring out a guest list.
I am very fortunate in that my parents are paying for the majority of our wedding. I'm the only daughter and the oldest child, as well as the first to get married among my siblings, so I'm feeling a bit of pressure from my parents. I'm also the first and only child who moved away from home thus far; FI and I live about 2 hours away, in central PA, from my hometown in central NJ and 3 hours from his hometown in coastal NJ. We've lived in our home state, full-time, for about 3 1/2 - 4 years now and we both attended college here before that.
The issue (sorry, finally getting to it!) is that while my parents have offered us this very generous gift of a mostly paid-for wedding, they have said that they prefer we stay either within 1 hour of my hometown in NJ or, if we aren't happy with anything there, within a half hour of where we live in PA. But the preference is heavily on an NJ wedding. FI has found that there are a lot of wedding venues that are our style (craftsman style, restored factories, old farms) that are smack dab between our house and my parents' house, which is great, but they're 2 hours from my parents and not close to our house. FI says that the money for the wedding is a gift and gifts do not (or should not) come with strings and that we should be able to have our wedding in any location we would like. We did find one place close to my parents but it is very expensive and while my father would eventually be OK with paying for it, I just feel like it's too much to ask for one day.
My frustration with this is that while yes, I agree that gifts should not come with strings attached, they are contributing to this wedding big-time and therefore have a right to put some restrictions on it. We then have the right to say no thank you and use our own money but we do not have the funds to have a wedding that I'd be happy with. So I'm in the middle trying to compromise by finding somewhere that has some style elements we like, is in NJ and near their house, and keeping FI happy. And FI is getting frustrated with me because he wants us to have the type of wedding we want to have... but in my eyes it doesn't work that way - we can't just stomp our feet and expect them to give in.
I know it's not really a question of who's right or wrong here but more... am I just being block-headed in not listening to FI? I tend to be more of a people pleaser, especially with my parents, while FI is more towards the other end of the spectrum. I view FI and myself as a team and while this thing shouldn't have "sides," I know that we will always be on each others, but this is probably the first time I've felt so caught in the middle between my parents and him.