Weddingbee Blog

I’m with jlz! Try to convince your mother that this is a “compromise” not just you going against her wishes. Remind her that it’s HIS wedding too, but they are (presumably) willing to compromise and let it be in the middle. But mainly, it’s YOUR wedding and if you & your fiance don’t want it in your hometown, just find a diplomatic way of explaining that to your mom! You don’t want to cause too much friction since they are paying for a lot of it, but that doesn’t make it her decision.

If you want to have it in your college town - then go for it! But realize that you might end up paying for more of the wedding on your own if you mother chooses not to support your decision.

Take it from me - if you start giving in on things you really want now, before you know it you will have flowers you didn’t want, a dress that wasn’t your favorite and an entire wedding that isn’t really your style! That doesn’t mean you should say no to all of your mother’s idea, but try to keep the big picture in mind!

I was in a similar situation. The way I got around it was that I guilted my parents into it. I first told them that if they really wanted to have the wedding in my home town I would do it “JUST TO MAKE THEM HAPPY” (emphasize this)…however I will be very stressed out and unhappy, then I went gave him a million reasons on why I wanted to have it in the city I was living currently. With that, my father felt so guilty that he said, “Whatever makes you happy is fine.” I think he gave in because I loved him enough to give up my dream wedding just to make him happy, and this made him feel guilty, and frankly I’m sure he didn’t want to deal with an “unhappy me” In addition, my FI are planning and paying for the majority of the wedding, so that helps too.

So, if you first state how important it is for you and your FI to get married in you college town, how happy it’d make you, how it was always your dream….(and with that said), then afterwards you can say if your parents still want it in their hometown than you’d only do it to make them happy (emphasize this, helps if you become teary) and emphasize how unhappy you and your FI would be….Hopefully by then, your parents should feel guilty enough to change their minds. If you don’t want the plan to blowup than you can always offer to pay for the majority of the wedding, then you parents would have less input. HOPE THAT HELPS…GOOD LUCK

I agree with D. Having very traditional parents, I understand how your parents have the reasoning that b/c they are paying for most of the wedding, they get to do the decision making. Perhaps if you present the pros/cons to you mother (as you did here), she may understand where you’re coming from. I would probably say something like just as tradition is important and meaningful to your mother, having your wedding at the place where you met and fell in love with your FI is important and meaningful to you too. Hopefully she will understand. I don’t know how much longer you have for your wedding but maybe you can raise funds or budget carefully to help subsidize or offset traveling costs for your family such as finding accomodation or arranging transportation for them. I hope it all works out for you!

well said Chrissie! I agree with what everyone else is saying - it’s really true- if you give in on one thing THEY really want, you’ll start giving in more and more, until your wedding turns into THEIR wedding - it happened to me and still is ongoing …

good luck with everything!

I respectfully disagree with you CT. This isn’t a matter of whether or not the bride and groom “deserve” to have their wedding paid for, but whether the parents’ who do pay get to dictate the terms of the wedding. Yes, the parents do have influence, but I’ve always thought that footing the bill meant having a say in the guest list, not the entire wedding.

Froggie, no matter who pays for the wedding, it is still YOUR wedding. I’m sure your parents want to see you happy so explain to your mother how much it would mean to you and your fiance to have the wedding in your college town. If it turns out that your mother won’t budge and you can’t see yourself getting married in your hometown, then I think you need to consider paying for parts of the wedding yourself.

Froggie I think you have to set your boundaries early on in this planning process. That said, I wouldn’t recommend trying to be manipulative or passive-agressive to get what you want.

DEFINITELY have a talk with your Mom about this, and try to explain how much this means to you, your reasons for wanting to have it in your college town, and respectfully explain that it is YOUR wedding.

Ultimately it’s up to you and what kind of person you are - and how important it is that your parents pay for it. If there is a real chance that they will retract their offer to foot the bill, I would suggest having a contingency plan - and telling them about it (very important - not in a threatening immature way, simply stating “well, this is very important to us, and if you don’t want to contribute financially, we are prepared to do xyz and pay for it ourselves so we can have what we want).

At first we weren’t sure if our parents were going to help us out, and had decided that if they weren’t, we would have a very small ceremony followed by a fancy lunch for 20 of our friends - costing us less than $4,000. Early on in the planning process my mom tried to “offer suggestions” (in a very forceful and bossy way), and I explained that having the wedding/celebration that WE wanted was extremely important to us, and if she didn’t want to support us we were prepared to handle everything on our own.

So, to sum up my long winded answer - I think it is EXTREMELY important that you have a wedding that is special to you and your fiance. Hopefully your mother will be willing to compromise to do what makes you happy. However, if she is not willing, I think it’s very important that you have a contingency plan that you will be equally (or at least close to) happy with.

Good luck!