gwendolyn
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2007
- Messages
- 6,770
Ok, so for those of you who don't know, I am an American, marrying a Brit. We currently live just outside of London. All of J's family lives in the same small, fairly remote town in northern England. Most of my family and friends are back in the states, although I do have some friends from grad school and work here in the UK, and my good, long-time friend D who lives in Ireland.
A while back, I posted a thread about feeling depressed about wedding planning because, through a variety of situations (financial and otherwise), J and I will be (legally) tying the knot in England. Because the most important thing to me about having a wedding celebration is the people to celebrate with you all coming together to be one big happy family, we were originally just going to have the UK wedding and that's all. But, the more I thought about it, the more unreasonable it seemed for me to ask all my family and friends to pay mucho dinero to fly to England for the wedding. A number of great suggestions were made, and ultimately we decided to have our version of two weddings--a 'dress rehearsal' wedding in America, followed shortly by the legal wedding in England.
When J's parents opened the subject of weddings up, I told them our plan to have an American celebration and the reasons why, and they were both very supportive. J's dad didn't say much about the wedding after that, but J's mom constantly brought it up on numerous occasions. She had a venue in mind for the UK wedding (10 minutes from her house), had a guest list prepared and everything--I laughed it off and told her to hold on, we weren't sure yet what our budget would be but that we would look into it. She said not to worry about it, we'll have it there, it'll be lovely. We said that's a nice idea, but we want to work out the budget and iron out details and everything. She just kept repeating, "Don't worry about it, we've got it covered, don't worry about it." We were understandably overwhelmed by her offering to pay for the whole UK wedding and said it wasn't necessary and she waved her hand and said that she had money and we didn't. We thanked her for the very generous offer but maintained that we would still work out a budget for ourselves so we could help out since that was the original plan. She asked me a few times for an estimate of how many people I'd want to invite to the UK wedding and, after saying that I didn't know a few times, I pulled the number 10 more or less out of thin air. She nodded and said ok and again, I added that it would all depend on our budget and that it was just a wild guess. Her guest list for J had about 30 people on it.
At some point after this, she changed her mind about almost everything. Now, she says she doesn't understand why we want to have an American celebration at all, claiming that it's not like our "pockets are lined," to use her phrase. On top of that, she was "taken aback" at the fact that I wanted to invite ten people. At no point did she say that she wanted to pay for it all but that she was uncomfortable paying for ten people for me; if she had, we would've thanked her for her generosity and paid for my guests with no problem. But she got angry and offended at me that I wanted to invite ANYONE. Even though we repeatedly told her we were working out our budget to figure out our contribution, so clearly we were not expecting her to pay for it all. She had figured, alone in her mind, without talking to anyone else--that she would pay for the UK wedding and it would include her family, James, his two best friends and me. That, coupled with that fact that she thinks the American celebration would be a "waste of money" (all these quotes are her exact words) and that we shouldn't have it basically means she thinks I should have no one at my wedding who's there for me.
There were a few other strange, hurtful inconsistencies revolving around the menu and drinks, again with us stressing that we are paying for things and that, if she is comfortable helping us out a little, that's lovely, but that it's not worth a year of fighting and bickering if she wants one thing and we want another. She told us she only wanted to help out financially and not interfere, and then she got angry that I had worked out a budget for a certain type of meal she didn't want (it's budgeting! I was doing it for all the options!), and haughtily said that she had thought she'd have a say in food, drink and 'finishing touches' (where she got that from I have no idea--I couldn't care less about 'finishing touches' right now--we have no starting touches!) since she was going to contribute money. I could see another 10 months of this sort of madness lined up...and, rightly or wrongly, we thanked her again for her kind offer to help out, but said that we would like to keep the stress levels on our relationships as low as possible and so we would work within our own budget.
At first, I felt quite angry about all of this. Besides J, she's the person I've talked to the most here about how difficult it is to live away from my family and friends all the time, and how especially hard it is at special times like Christmas, and now, for the wedding. Until this week, she had been (seemingly) very sympathetic. Now, it seems like she has never heard me. I can't imagine how she could think and feel these things about me after all I've shared with her. Now, I just feel really disappointed. Although I have friends here, the only person really holding me here is J. His mum was the only other person who really seemed to go out of her way to listen to me and try to understand how it would feel to be in my position when I'd be missing my family, especially at Christmas. But now, I feel like that's gone. She is a sweet, thoughtful, generous person, so I find all this extremely confusing and hurtful. But please don't misunderstand, we aren't upset about the monetary angle of this. We have told her multiple times that if she does not want to contribute any money that is perfectly fine since she has repeatedly been overly generous with us in the past. It's the lack of communication about her resentment about me wanting to invite people (it festered for about 2 weeks until she finally said it made her feel "taken aback" that I wanted guests). It's the fact that she said things but meant the opposite. But most of all, it's the complete lack of any basic understanding at how I am feeling, after we've talked about it dozens of times. I had thought she had understood, at least on some level, what it would feel like to be me: living away from family and friends and have them missing from my wedding day. It turns out she was just nodding her head and patting my hand, which disappoints me. I had thought we were closer than that.
Thanks for reading.
A while back, I posted a thread about feeling depressed about wedding planning because, through a variety of situations (financial and otherwise), J and I will be (legally) tying the knot in England. Because the most important thing to me about having a wedding celebration is the people to celebrate with you all coming together to be one big happy family, we were originally just going to have the UK wedding and that's all. But, the more I thought about it, the more unreasonable it seemed for me to ask all my family and friends to pay mucho dinero to fly to England for the wedding. A number of great suggestions were made, and ultimately we decided to have our version of two weddings--a 'dress rehearsal' wedding in America, followed shortly by the legal wedding in England.
When J's parents opened the subject of weddings up, I told them our plan to have an American celebration and the reasons why, and they were both very supportive. J's dad didn't say much about the wedding after that, but J's mom constantly brought it up on numerous occasions. She had a venue in mind for the UK wedding (10 minutes from her house), had a guest list prepared and everything--I laughed it off and told her to hold on, we weren't sure yet what our budget would be but that we would look into it. She said not to worry about it, we'll have it there, it'll be lovely. We said that's a nice idea, but we want to work out the budget and iron out details and everything. She just kept repeating, "Don't worry about it, we've got it covered, don't worry about it." We were understandably overwhelmed by her offering to pay for the whole UK wedding and said it wasn't necessary and she waved her hand and said that she had money and we didn't. We thanked her for the very generous offer but maintained that we would still work out a budget for ourselves so we could help out since that was the original plan. She asked me a few times for an estimate of how many people I'd want to invite to the UK wedding and, after saying that I didn't know a few times, I pulled the number 10 more or less out of thin air. She nodded and said ok and again, I added that it would all depend on our budget and that it was just a wild guess. Her guest list for J had about 30 people on it.
At some point after this, she changed her mind about almost everything. Now, she says she doesn't understand why we want to have an American celebration at all, claiming that it's not like our "pockets are lined," to use her phrase. On top of that, she was "taken aback" at the fact that I wanted to invite ten people. At no point did she say that she wanted to pay for it all but that she was uncomfortable paying for ten people for me; if she had, we would've thanked her for her generosity and paid for my guests with no problem. But she got angry and offended at me that I wanted to invite ANYONE. Even though we repeatedly told her we were working out our budget to figure out our contribution, so clearly we were not expecting her to pay for it all. She had figured, alone in her mind, without talking to anyone else--that she would pay for the UK wedding and it would include her family, James, his two best friends and me. That, coupled with that fact that she thinks the American celebration would be a "waste of money" (all these quotes are her exact words) and that we shouldn't have it basically means she thinks I should have no one at my wedding who's there for me.
There were a few other strange, hurtful inconsistencies revolving around the menu and drinks, again with us stressing that we are paying for things and that, if she is comfortable helping us out a little, that's lovely, but that it's not worth a year of fighting and bickering if she wants one thing and we want another. She told us she only wanted to help out financially and not interfere, and then she got angry that I had worked out a budget for a certain type of meal she didn't want (it's budgeting! I was doing it for all the options!), and haughtily said that she had thought she'd have a say in food, drink and 'finishing touches' (where she got that from I have no idea--I couldn't care less about 'finishing touches' right now--we have no starting touches!) since she was going to contribute money. I could see another 10 months of this sort of madness lined up...and, rightly or wrongly, we thanked her again for her kind offer to help out, but said that we would like to keep the stress levels on our relationships as low as possible and so we would work within our own budget.
At first, I felt quite angry about all of this. Besides J, she's the person I've talked to the most here about how difficult it is to live away from my family and friends all the time, and how especially hard it is at special times like Christmas, and now, for the wedding. Until this week, she had been (seemingly) very sympathetic. Now, it seems like she has never heard me. I can't imagine how she could think and feel these things about me after all I've shared with her. Now, I just feel really disappointed. Although I have friends here, the only person really holding me here is J. His mum was the only other person who really seemed to go out of her way to listen to me and try to understand how it would feel to be in my position when I'd be missing my family, especially at Christmas. But now, I feel like that's gone. She is a sweet, thoughtful, generous person, so I find all this extremely confusing and hurtful. But please don't misunderstand, we aren't upset about the monetary angle of this. We have told her multiple times that if she does not want to contribute any money that is perfectly fine since she has repeatedly been overly generous with us in the past. It's the lack of communication about her resentment about me wanting to invite people (it festered for about 2 weeks until she finally said it made her feel "taken aback" that I wanted guests). It's the fact that she said things but meant the opposite. But most of all, it's the complete lack of any basic understanding at how I am feeling, after we've talked about it dozens of times. I had thought she had understood, at least on some level, what it would feel like to be me: living away from family and friends and have them missing from my wedding day. It turns out she was just nodding her head and patting my hand, which disappoints me. I had thought we were closer than that.
Thanks for reading.
- drink lots of tea and eat chicken soup and you will feel better in no time
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