Growing up I (26F) never particularly imagined myself having a wedding or giving it much thought, honestly. In my 20s I came to like the idea of destination eloping and having a party later for family to celebrate. When my fiance and I decided to take the next step and start discussing engagement, to my surprise he wanted to have a wedding. He said it was important to him that his friends and family were there to witness the ceremony, whereas I preferred for that to be just us two. We ended up compromising because I felt that I could be happy having a very nontraditional wedding—no bridal party, no first dance, no speeches, more like a short and sweet ceremony and a party in a beautiful place. So that’s what we decided on and it felt fair to me.We started looking at venues, and this shit is expensive. Fiance and I are grad students and poor, lol. My parents will be paying for the wedding, and my mom was thrilled that I had moved away from elopement. As generally very easy-going people, they said even with them paying the decisions, are all mine and fiance’s to make. I believe them on that front. My mind definitely became more open to having a nontraditional wedding vs eloping, and I enjoyed seeing some venues.Then, there was an incident this week with my future MIL related to wedding planning that really upset me and made me stressed about planning a wedding for another 18mo with her in tow. My fiance does have a spine and understands she can be difficult, but dealing with her will probably cause him a lot of stress. He realized that what he had valued before regarding having a wedding might have changed, and said elopement could be back on the table. He just wants me to be happy and says the marriage matters more anyway.I talked to my mom about the whole thing as I have been open so far about our plans, and she was pretty upset about me reconsidering a wedding. I made it known that if she didn’t want to support us monetarily she did not have to. But she ended up apologizing and saying I should follow my dream and do what will make us happy, whatever that may be. I have a feeling MIL will flip if we elope, but I don’t really care what she thinks nor would it stop my fiance.We still have our favorite venue to go look at in a few weeks. But now I’ve started researching eloping to somewhere in Europe, and it’s really resonating with me more than planning a regular wedding had (tbh my mom had done most of the legwork up to this point). And tens of thousands of dollars cheaper, which matters to me even if it’s not on my dime. But I’m torn--I had been getting comfortable with the idea of having a wedding until this blip, and MIL would not stop me from having a great wedding and is not a reason to avoid one IMO. I have thought about a destination microwedding with family only, but fiance’s parents are divorced and hate each other. There’s no way that would fly with few other guests to buffer. I just worry that I would regret eloping with no one but my fiance there and that it might feel lonely somehow? I would still favor doing a party at home after we elope.TLDR: nontraditional wedding that I would enjoy vs previous desire to elope via /r/weddingplanning https://ift.tt/2Y0RRDG
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