Wedding planning can be a little dramatic, even in the best of times. This is true whether you're making the plans on your own or if you have family and friends helping you out. One bride-to-be is finding out just how dramatic planning a wedding can really be.
She took to Reddit to share that she and her fiancé were beginning the planning process when they found out her parents wanted to pay for the entire wedding.
That's nice, right? Except that it meant the couple would need to change their plans around. Instead of hosting their wedding in the big city where most of their friends live, they are now planning to hold it closer to the small rural town where her family is from. She's OK with that, and is even warming up to the idea, but now it seems that her parents have decided that paying for the wedding means they can call all the shots.
The bride-to-be shares that she's in graduate school, and she'll be in the middle of clinical rotations when she gets married next September. So she was happy to receive her schedule now, so that she could pick a date. September 18 was free, so she called a wedding venue and booked it. Easy!
"So I start my clinical rotations for 2021 and I finally got the schedule and can pick a date. September 18th. I was so excited. My sister told me to go ahead and schedule the venue. I schedule with Venue A and sure enough, I got the date I wanted."
Except that … there's a problem.
It turns out that her parents don't really like the owners of the venue, so she's left with only two other choices. And since they don't like the venue, and they've volunteered to pay for the wedding, they've decided they can go ahead and make arrangements somewhere else. Yikes.
"So [I] go ahead and schedule the venue. I schedule with Venue A and sure enough, I got the date I wanted. I'm so happy and call up the parents just to find out they have beef with the management at Venue A and that I need to cancel. What? There are maybe 3 venues in my hometown and this couldn't have been communicated earlier? Then without my permission, my dad went ahead to schedule at Venue B."
So her dad goes ahead and chooses a new date: September 11, 2021. This happens to be the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001.
"He tells me over the phone September 11th okay? I don't think it needs to be explained in great detail that the 20th anniversary of 9/11 will happen on 9/11/2021. Also, my fiance works on a military base and will be given a hard time about this. Not to mention, he just assumed I was free on that date. I have an end of rotation exam on the 10th and would have to haul [expletive] to the hometown to decorate or whatever."
Now the bride-to-be wants to know if she's the one who really messed up here. After all, she's just trying to get through graduate school and get married, and the 20th anniversary of a nationwide tragedy isn't exactly the most ideal wedding date.
People overwhelmingly agree with her.
One person said that they've been there, done that with parents who think they can make major decisions because they're choosing to pay for an event:
"When my parents pulled the same [expletive], i.e. kept adding strings to their money, my now wife and I just said, nevermind, we are just gonna pay for it ourselves and you can keep your money and strings.
“They came back begging (not because they simply wanted to pay, but because they wanted their strings, like certain people get invites, which amounted to like 40 people who wouldn’t have gotten invited otherwise) and we put our foot down and said no more strings. They ended up paying for it, quit adding strings and the whole process was so much better. The strings would have never stopped if we hadn’t threatened to say [expletive] it.”
Another person also advised the couple to pay for the wedding themselves:
"It avoids being beholden to other people because they have done something for you that you otherwise would have needed to pay for. If you allow your parents to pay, they are going to be 'Our way or no way' all over every single aspect of your wedding. Not only that, but by not making a stand now, you are letting them think they have far more say over your adult life than they ought to have."
Others advised the bride-to-be to be less concerned about the date of the wedding, because it's ultimately not the biggest issue here:
"For the sake of both you and your fiancé, I want you to really take a step back and recognize that the date of the wedding – while enormously problematic – is substantially less alarming than the rest of the story. You had a plan, a budget, and the independence you wanted to create the big city wedding you were hoping for…and along came Mom and Dad. Not that I don't understand your reasoning (weddings are expensive, and we all want our families to be happy), but you gave up the locale, venue, and even some of the aesthetic choices (e.g. trumpets) for their sake, and I can't help but wonder how fiancé felt about it.
"And then, sure enough, your dad stomps all over your autonomy and makes a litter of decisions on your behalf. This could be a pattern in your marriage if you aren't careful."
Ultimately, the last point made is possibly the most important one here. If the couple allows this dynamic to exist before they even get married, it's possible that her parents will continue to insert themselves into every major decision the couple tries to make together … until they finally make them stop. That's definitely not a great way to live a life, let alone to live a life with someone else.
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