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Wedding Etiquette Forum
JBee85
member
Pregnancy and Two Weddings
Hello!
I need some help with phrasing and potentially avoiding family conflict. The bride is my sister.
She got engaged and found the right guy. I could not be any happier for her. So she started wedding planning and picking a date. She wanted me to be the matron of honor.... So here are when problems started:
1. She and her fiancé selected a wedding date in June. I am planning (and hoping) to have my first child around that time. I am a school teacher and do not get paid maternity leave, so having a summer birth is my only option to have a baby. I mentioned to her about my pregnancy plan and said that I will see what will happen when the date starts to get closer. She starts freaking out on me and tells me that I MUST try on a bridesmaid dress in September so that it can be ordered. My husband and I will be trying for a baby around then, so I won't even KNOW where to gauge my pregnancy by her wedding date to get the right measurements. She even goes forth as to say "I don't know if I can even have you in the wedding party then, but we'll see what happens." My mom even agrees with her and has spoken to me privately TWICE about how I maybe should drop out because of a pregnancy. Now my feelings are very hurt, especially with my mother interfering. I'm even more pressure to schedule my pregnancy based on what my family is telling me, which isn't right.
2. My sister is having a dilemma on planning to have two weddings. Her fiance's family are apart of a Methodist church and want a wedding ceremony at THEIR church. My dad is very gung-ho Catholic... Says that unless the wedding is in a Catholic Church, it is not a real "marriage" to him. He has threatened not show up and walk my sister down the aisle if she does not have a Catholic ceremony (even I have called him out for being wrong and demanding, and that the ceremony is up to the bride and groom). My dad is a big time bully and has caused problems with my wedding plans two years ago.
On top of it, my grandmother's health is deteriorating... So now the plan is for my sister to have two weddings... A Catholic one in the Fall for immediate family only so that my grandmother could attend, and a big fancy Methodist "wedding" ceremony of renewed vows in the Summer. Here's the catch- my sister does not plan to tell her friends that will be invited to the Summer ceremony that she is already married.
This whole thing is a hot mess. I want to be happy for my sister, but it has been compromised. I'm not sure what I should do or say about it. Can I get some help?
I need some help with phrasing and potentially avoiding family conflict. The bride is my sister.
She got engaged and found the right guy. I could not be any happier for her. So she started wedding planning and picking a date. She wanted me to be the matron of honor.... So here are when problems started:
1. She and her fiancé selected a wedding date in June. I am planning (and hoping) to have my first child around that time. I am a school teacher and do not get paid maternity leave, so having a summer birth is my only option to have a baby. I mentioned to her about my pregnancy plan and said that I will see what will happen when the date starts to get closer. She starts freaking out on me and tells me that I MUST try on a bridesmaid dress in September so that it can be ordered. My husband and I will be trying for a baby around then, so I won't even KNOW where to gauge my pregnancy by her wedding date to get the right measurements. She even goes forth as to say "I don't know if I can even have you in the wedding party then, but we'll see what happens." My mom even agrees with her and has spoken to me privately TWICE about how I maybe should drop out because of a pregnancy. Now my feelings are very hurt, especially with my mother interfering. I'm even more pressure to schedule my pregnancy based on what my family is telling me, which isn't right.
2. My sister is having a dilemma on planning to have two weddings. Her fiance's family are apart of a Methodist church and want a wedding ceremony at THEIR church. My dad is very gung-ho Catholic... Says that unless the wedding is in a Catholic Church, it is not a real "marriage" to him. He has threatened not show up and walk my sister down the aisle if she does not have a Catholic ceremony (even I have called him out for being wrong and demanding, and that the ceremony is up to the bride and groom). My dad is a big time bully and has caused problems with my wedding plans two years ago.
On top of it, my grandmother's health is deteriorating... So now the plan is for my sister to have two weddings... A Catholic one in the Fall for immediate family only so that my grandmother could attend, and a big fancy Methodist "wedding" ceremony of renewed vows in the Summer. Here's the catch- my sister does not plan to tell her friends that will be invited to the Summer ceremony that she is already married.
This whole thing is a hot mess. I want to be happy for my sister, but it has been compromised. I'm not sure what I should do or say about it. Can I get some help?
Re: Pregnancy and Two Weddings
Well, if she is married in the fall I guess you are relieved of your wedding party duties in the summer. . . . as she will already be married and therefore doesn't have "maids". How will it go over if you tell her that?
As for a potential future pregnancy for you and your husband. . . . . Please don't get caught up in the stress of your sister's wedding or fake wedding, whatever it is. You can attend weddings pregnant most of the time. . . . if you are busy having a child on the day of her wedding redo, or thereabouts, baby trumps wedding always. I'm just concerned about the amount of extra stress you are adding to the already stressful process of starting a family. I'm not a doctor, but I believe stress can negatively effect your ability to grow a human being. . . . who will be here for much, much longer than the one (two) days of your sister's wedding!!
As for your sister's wedding plans, I am afraid that is not your decision. You can talk to her privately, but ultimately, it is up to her.
To the first question; your sister gets to plan the wedding date that works best for her and her FI, you get to plan the time to have a family that works best for you and your husband. It's great to try and plan pregnancies but things don't always work out the way you plan (you don't get pregnant right away/it takes much longer than you want) and your sister can't and shouldn't try and plan around that. Find out if there is a final deadline of when you need to order your dress by, wait until that point to see if you're pregnant. If you are dress shops work with pregnant women all the time and they'll help you find the right size.
To the the second point; this is for your sister and her FI to work out. Yes, a secret wedding and not telling anyone is rude. Yes your father is way, way out of line, but these are her battles to fight/things to figure out with her FI. If I were you I'd stay out of it. If she asks your opinion tell her people don't like being liked to about events they're going to and leave it at that.
If she's at a charter or not protected by tenure or a union she might not get paid leave.
1. Good luck with all of this.
Biological functions often don't work like clockwork on schedules of our choosing, so there's a possibility you aren't even going to be pregnant in June. I wish you the best of luck n your endeavors, but I'm just trying to be realistic.
You have a shitty family if they are prioritizing a wedding and pictures over your plans on starting a family. There are many ways to compromise and still include you in the wedding, like by allowing the BMs to choose any dress of a specific fabric and length and foregoing the 1980's matchy matchy BM dresses all together.
And NO ONE needs to nor should be ordering dresses in September for a June wedding, regardless of who is planning on getting KU or not. That's waaaaay too early for everyone.
If your sister and mother refuse to listen to reason and insist on their irrational timeline, and insist on being petty and superficial, I suggest you do yourself a favor and decline to be MOH. It sounds like your sister is going to be an EF-4 Bridezilla, so save yourself the heartache and aggravation and stay out of this mess.
2. Your sister should absolutely, under no circumstances have 2 ceremonies and lie to religious officiants and family members about her marital status just to appease one set of parents or the other.
I can't emphasize that enough. She should not do that.
She and her FI need to grow a backbone, decide on the one, single type of ceremony that is important to them, and plan their wedding around that ceremony. Anyone who disagrees with their choice can frankly just GTFO, regardless of whether that is your father or her FI's parents. They can choose to threaten not to attend, and they can even follow through with those threats, but your sister should not, under any circumstances appease manipulative bullies if that means faking a ceremony and lying to the 2nd officiant and those other guests.
Not lying is a standard tenet of all Abrahamic religions, right?
"Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends time and space."
I already mentioned in my post that I do not receive pay while on maternity leave.
First- a suggestion is to blend the two ceremonies. My good friend somehow managed to have both a Catholic priest for her and a Methodist reverend for her husband co-officiate. This was at least 12 years ago but if memory serves the ceremony was in the Catholic church.
Second- also trying to be realistic, but babies rarely come according to plan. I do hope you have no issues and have the summer baby you want, but look, that's a 3 month window of time each year. How many years are you going to put off having a child if you're not pregnant in September or October? Just stop trying in all other months that result in a fall/winter/spring baby? What if you do get pregnant and deliver early? It sucks to not have paid maternity leave but your odds are greater of missing work unpaid than having the perfectly-timed summer baby.
And that being said, fuck anyone who thinks one event should trump your family planning. Even if pregnancy didn't end up happening by the time of sister's wedding, I'd decline to be in the bridal party on principle alone.
Definitely decline to be in the bridal party if they insist on lying to people. Word ALWAYS gets out, feelings ALWAYS get hurt.
I am sorry to hear about your grandma. But... I think you should back away slowly from your family and all this drama.
Ok firstly you do not need to get fitted for a June wedding in September (even girls who aren't planning on babies could have huge weight changes in that amount of time!). Talk to the shop and ask the absolute latest you can order the dress. Ignore anything they say about dye lots. If they are hard on September find out the brand and see who else in town carries it. Other shops may be less cray cray.
Also, is this a dress that would even look right if you were heavily pregnant? If it's an empire waist sort of thing, great. But if it's a little baby doll dress or some drop waisted mermaid thing... it may merit a conversation with your sister. Something like:
"Sis, it would mean a lot to me to stand by your side on your wedding day. However if I were heavily pregnant would you be amenable to my wearing a different style dress in the same color and also waiting a few months to order regardless?"
And see where it goes.
If matching dresses is more important than her sister at her side then I say good riddance. Attend the [fake?] wedding as a guest
As far as the rest... this all depends how open and frank you feel comfortable being with your sister and how deep into this shit show you want to get.
On the religion angle:
Is being in good standing in the Catholic church important to her? If it is, she and her fiance really need to have a discussion about what faith they are going to practice and raise any potential kids in. And whatever they choose is really the most obvious choice for their wedding ceremony.
If she doesn't want to be Catholic and raise the kids Catholic I feel like she should just call Dad's bluff now. Because this kind of emotional blackmail is only going to continue if they decide to have kids. Will there be a fit if there's no Catholic Baptism? First Communion? Confirmation? Her children's wedding?
It's her wedding and her faith and she shouldn't be making a major choice about a sacrament because Dad is throwing a hissy fit.
Same thing the other way around. If they are going to be Catholic and raise the potential kids Catholic then fiance's family needs to get used to it. Throwing a big fake Methodist wedding is just going to set the family up for disappointment when they quickly discover they're actually Catholic.
Also, anyone educated in Catholicism will know marrying outside the church is a big deal and causes poor standing. If they see her later participating in other Catholic events it might make them wonder how they got around the whole Methodist wedding thing being Catholic. Questions may be asked and they could be found out that they lied to their guests.
And seriously... a come to Jesus conversation needs to be had about lying to their guests about the fake wedding. Aside from the fact that it's just wrong lying to the people you love about something so important, they are going to get caught.
I know grandma's health is a tricky situation but I would hope that grandma would want them to have the wedding they dream of and wouldn't expect a whole todo just about her. I'd also hope she wouldn't condone lying to the rest of the family. If they decided to wait until June to get married I'm sure she'd understand and hope that she'd still be around to make it.
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I understand why all of this is frustrating. How you proceed really depends on how open and frank you can be with your sister.
If you've always been able to be real with her then address these things.
If you're tired of it all and want to avoid confrontation though, with the exception of the dress conversation (do not stand for ordering a dress in September for a June wedding) you can probably just sit back. Try not to pay this much thought. Just focus on your family. Wishing lots of babydust your way!
Budgeting is not an easy peasy answer.
The fact that you have know other people who have raised families on tight budgets does not mean that the OP can cut anything out of her budget in order to give up working.
She may have to pay for a rent or mortgage, insurance, utilities, groceries, health care (and that's not counting any pregnancy-related issues) and who knows what else and "just budget and live tight" may well not be possible for her, depending on what her housing situation is like, the cost of living in her area, etc. Or she's already doing it to the max and can't cut out anything else.
If I were told "just budget and live tight" on my current income in order to not work so I can participate in a wedding, I would have to tell that person that I'm not going to do it. They get one day, but they do not get to control my budget or my plans to procreate. It's incredibly intrusive of anyone to make that suggestion.
Lots of women attempt to time their pregnancies; this doesn't mean they're not budgeting for their children. I'm a professor and many non-tenured women try to time their children in the summer so they don't take time away from the semester or time off their tenure clock. Additionally if you can avoid foregoing pay for a substantial period of time, why wouldn't you?
ETA: This is also a big part of what's wrong with America. We know paid parental leave increases good outcomes in children's physical and mental health. Women are more likely to return to work and stay in the workforce when they have paid leave and childcare.
My mother married a Catholic and they had a United Methodist minister and a Catholic priest co-officiating at their wedding in the Catholic church. It was not a high mass. Everyone was happy with the wedding.
While, as I posted earlier, this is not your decision, you might mention this idea to your sister as an alternative.
Yes to all of this. I wish you well in your pregnancy endeavors, but know that babies and life don't always happen as planned. As you are not currently pregnant (and may not even be pregnant in the fall), some of this is just worrying for the sake of worrying.
I am sending my cousin a card of congratulations about her new pregnancy. Part of me worries, though.
I guess the OP triggered a reaction from me. I do know all about making do a with tight budget.
That said, while you want to have the baby in June to have the best maternity leave, please look into other budgeting options. Health has a way of making things complicated. You may take longer to get pregnant than you want or you may be out earlier than you wanted. Please look into insurance like Aflac or Colonial life which may at least pay you a portion of your pay while on leave. If you didn't get pregnant in September or October would you just not try for another year? If you were put on bed rest and unable to work, what would you do? Or if you had a premie? Look into your financial options here.
FWIW, I didn't get paid maternity leave. I had to finance my leave myself with sick leave (I had to take all the days I could while on maternity leave) and then supplemented with my insurance. My company paid me for my vacation/sick time which was about 3 weeks but I was out for about 7 or 8 for each baby.
2 - I would encourage your sister to talk to her priest first. The Catholic church isn't a big fan of feeling like their vows aren't the more important ones. And is your sister intending to actually be an actively participating Catholic? That should bother your father more if she intends to marry in the church to placate. That's a sin on his part too.
3 - Your relationship with your sister would determine how I'd handle her handling of two weddings. I would strongly encourage her to be honest because the truth gets out.
This entire thing sounds like it's poorly organized from the start but PLEASE leave your nonexistent baby out of it. When there's a pregnancy, THEN look into it.
In the meantime, you can tell your sister she's out of her mind if she thinks you're buying a dress this early because you might start to stress eat.
Additionally, I would point out that being married in a Catholic church, private ceremony or not, is not something that can be assumed will happen. You sister and her FI will have to go through Pre-Cana classes and counseling with the priest before he can perform he ceremony. Methodist ministers would also insist on some premarital counseling, and may not be willing to go along with the plan. This whole situation just might resolve itself.
If your sister and her FI want to plan their own folly, I wouldn't push so hard on that, that it could really damage your all's relationship.
However, if it could be done without her getting upset, I would point that a LOT of people will be aware of when they really got married. What? Are they going to swear everyone to secrecy, lol? Word WILL get out! And when it does, people who were lied to and attended a fake event will be very upset. Perhaps even friendship-ending mad.
Like the old adage, "If two people know, it is no longer a secret."
2) If the Catholic gets married in the Methodist church, they will need to have a dispensation and blessing. I highly recommend the couple meet with the Catholic's parish priest to go over the details such that they can make an informed decision as CMG pointed out there are consequences however it's pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things for what they need to do. This is on them to do what is necessary to have everything covered, not you.
I agree with all the posters telling you to get out...I'm imagining a situation where she's freaking out because you can't drink at the bachelorette party....or worse, voluntelling you to be DD when you're 7 months pregnant.
Good luck with it all. Watching from the pews sounds like the best possible role to have in that PPD.
See I think the opposite. To me it's just manufacturing drama and attention seeking to be discussing what you'll do if you happen to be pregnant at someone's wedding when you're not pregnant now and not even trying to get pregnant yet.
Thanks for the advice and feedback guys! I got what I needed here. I am definitely stepping down just to lower my stress levels.
I don't think you need to step down quite yet... just see how things work out. I would not change your TTC plans in light of your sister's wedding, though. Go have awesome sex and I hope you have a fantastically awesome baby!
Regarding the Catholic / Methodist situation, I would encourage your sister to talk to the priest prior to making any plans. The Catholic Church takes the Sacrament of Matrimony VERY seriously, and there needs to be an honest discussion between her and her fiance. From there, it is her call. Encourage her to be honest with your dad, and then let them handle the rest. It will likely become a sticky situation, but remember that it is theirs.
All the best to you as you TTC.
I see your point about the drama. I just think that her sister is displaying behavior that will likely get more ridiculous as the wedding draws near, and even if she weren't TTC she'd be dodging a bullet by attending as a guest instead of being roped into all her sister thinks she needs to do as a BM.
Also, I really do wish you all the best, but it takes most women at least 6 months to conceive. I think you need to come up with a plan B if you can't conceive during that window.
Side note: Maternity care in America is just shocking. I can't believe women are expected to just get on with it with no help. I don't understand why this treatment is put up with.