I [M38] am engaged and planning a wedding for November this year. My fiancée [F42] is having a lot of trouble with her family already and I was hoping to get some advice for her on how to handle it. It needs to be noted that my fiancée's family mostly lives on the opposite side of the country (Australia) and one of her sisters (the one relevant in the below issues) got married over there last year.
The first issue arose when we picked a date. The date was not arbitrary. Between months where we have high rainfall, months where we have high temperatures, and months where our work commitments make things difficult, November was the only suitable month in 2020. My fiancée had two sources of complaint on this date.
1) One of her sisters [F40] wants the date changed because she plans on giving birth that weekend. I will note, she knew the date 11 months ahead. She is not pregnant at the moment, and has not yet begun trying to get pregnant, but intends to try mid-February and believes she will conceive on a single attempt. She wants the wedding in January 2021, because she would be happy coming with a two-month-old; the earliest date we could do in 2021 is April.
2) One of her cousins [F4?] plans on attending the 2020 AFL Grand Final in September and does not want to travel to this side of the country twice in the same year. For non-Australians, the AFL season has not begun, there is nothing to say that her team will even make the Grand Final. Even if they do, most tickets go to corporate sponsors, politicians, etc. Very few regular people get through the gates. Her chance of attending this is very close to zero. That said, my fiancée's mother is taking this seriously and wants us to change the date, so the cousin can fit the wedding around her other travel plans.
I personally consider both to be absurd arguments, but my fiancée's family has been harassing her over these since December and there have been arguments.
This week we thought we had settled on a venue for the reception. We have spent two months getting quotes and inspecting different options, including pricing a backyard party option (catering, table hire, etc). The place we like the look of is around the mid-range for price, but was the cheapest option that ticked all our boxes. For reference, the backyard party was not the cheapest option, and there was a pub that is more expensive than this location. While a little more expensive than we wanted to go with none of the cheaper options had what we wanted, and it is not that much more expensive than they were. Immediately afterwards my fiancée's mother and sister called her up. They are saying that it is far too expensive and accusing her of not spending enough time looking at other options. They suggested food trucks in a field. There are no fields-for-hire in our city, and with both of us having complex food intolerances food trucks are not a viable option.
It may sound like we are throwing money around frivolously; we are not. We are working on a below-average budget and hope to instead spend more money on home renovations. Through my contacts I have gotten the ceremony (venue and celebrant) and the videographer for free. My fiancée is looking at dress, make-up, and hair at far below average. We are only inviting a small number of people to keep reception costs low. Even with the reception being mid-range of price our wedding would be well below the average cost.
It has now gotten to the point where my fiancée is afraid to mention to her family what she wants to do for the wedding (eg she has not told them we picked a photographer) because she is trying to avoid the arguments. She is also second-guessing her decisions because they will not support them. How should she manage this situation?
tl;dr: Getting married in November. Fiancée's family has started a pattern of opposing every decision, resulting in her avoiding including them and second-guessing her choices.
Submitted January 23, 2020 at 05:13PM by elricofgrans https://ift.tt/38AGFNs
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