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I always get so jealous of my friends who live in the same city as both of their sets of parents. Frogger and I are the complete opposite. We live here in Arizona, my parents live in Michigan and his live in Seattle.
Behold my fancy map skills… don’t laugh.
Now that we are very close to the wedding, we have started the dreaded conversations about how to split our time with our families during the holidays. How lucky for us that not only do our parents live in different states… they are about as far apart as you can get.
We came up with a variety of ways to try to decide:
We have yet to really decide how to make this work. Both of our families have traditions that we want to be a part of and both of our families want us to be there to celebrate with them. We feel very loved but very torn.
Anyone else run into this challenge with family holidays/events? Please tell me one of you is smarter than we are and can provide some guidance… we’re desperate for a good solution.
We just decided that we would do a 3 year rotation. One year for Christmas, we’re with my family. The next, with his family. And then the 3rd year, we stay at home. We haven’t actually done this yet beings we just got married this past Christmas. lol But hopefully, it will work. And it seems pretty fair!
My parents started out doing the every-other-year thing. Thanksgiving with one family and Christmas with the other. Once they had kids though it was just too stressful and expensive to travel so we always spent Christmas at home. If grandkids are involved, grandparents are usually more willing to travel.
I would do a combination. Fliping the coin, to start who goes first. Then lets just say that his family won in the coin toss for Christmas. So this year you would go to his family for Christmas then you family gets NYE. Next year swich, your family would be Christmas and his NYE. Hopefully you don’t need to worry about Thanksgiving and/or Easter.
My parents are in Ohio and his are in Idaho. We will be trading off with Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. This past year, his parents got Thanksgiving, and mine got Christmas, and we’ll switch next year. Later on, we might start hosting more, but the idea is to make sure we get to see both families during the holidays each year if at all possible.
I’m in the same situation (sort of). My mom’s in Idaho, my dad’s in New Jersey and we live in Texas. I can’t ever travel for the holidays because of my job. Thankfully his family lives here. So if mine wants to see me for the holidays they have to come to me. It’s no fun. But when I was younger and everyone was split up we did a rotation between each of my mom’s siblings and her parents houses. That seemed to work quite well. Good luck!
I think the trick is to make other events extra special. When my parents divorced they tried to do a yearly rotation, but once we added in step families it became too hard, so now we celebrate Christmas eve with mum and her family, Christmas day with dads family and boxing day with FIs family. Can you start your own tradition? Maybe host thanksgiving or something?
We decided we’ll do Thanksgiving with his family and Christmas with mine (though we’ll visit his family for a few days before Christmas, so we can at least see them). It was the most logical solution for us, because my family lives where we want to eventually live, and I’m very big on waking up in my own house on Christmas!
That is so crazy - my parents live in Michigan and his live in Seattle too!
However we live in Chicago, so obviously Michigan is much closer. We usually go there for shorter holidays (ie Thanksgiving) and make the trip to Seattle when we have more time off - either Christmas or in the summer. We do see my family a lot more but we are trying to make it to Washington as often as we can.
I’d rotate but split it. I have it easier because even though we’re in California and our families are in Toronto and New York, I’m Jewish but FI isn’t, so Christmas is a big deal in his family but my family never celebrated holidays in December (Chanukah is so minor!) And since my family never made huge deals about other holidays (just immediate family would attend) we generally don’t go home to my place for any holidays but rather to visit.
However, for families where presence is important but you’re all spread out I think the most equitable thing is to alternate the holidays. If you have Christmas and one other that are important for you (Thanksgiving? Easter? NYE?) then alternate years. My FI’s cousins do that, where one family is in Toronto and one is in Vancouver and we just know that we’ll only see them on alternate years.
We do Thanksgiving at one, Christmas at another, and switch every other year (if it’s Christmas at his house, we usually would go up to see my mom for NYE only because we live so much closer to his family and see them regularly). I do definitely miss my family, especially at Christmas, but I also have enjoyed getting to know Mr. B’s family traditions as well! There are definitely things from his traditions I will want to incorporate into out own one day 
Who knows what will happen when we have children, or when or grandparents pass away, but right now this works for us.
Right now his family is local in central NY and mine is in ND. We do Thanksgiving with his family because of the difficulty traveling during that time. We both get enough vacation at Christmas where we rotate Christmas and New Year each year. Good luck!
This has been a source of some major drama between us. His family doesn’t really do much in terms of “celebrating” and has few if any traditions; mine is the complete opposite. I was hoping we could just spend Christmases with mine, and Thanksgivings with his, but that resulted in his parents throwing a massive fit. They also didn’t respond to the idea of celebrating Christmas a little early (which is kind of ridiculous, because it is literally just us and his parents so it’s not a problem of arranging with other family members). So rotate it is. I work in the school system and have 2 weeks off at Christmas, so I’m hoping to take off to my parents’ place the day after Christmas. Good luck.
For Christmas, we’ve tended to have my family celebrate it early and then visit my fiance’s family. One year we spent Christmas Eve with my family, flew on Christmas, and celebrated Christmas on the 26th with my fiance’s family. We’ve preferred an arrangement like this so that we get to spend some time near the holidays with both sets of families. For Thanksgiving, we celebrate with my fiance’s extended family who live a long drive away or with my nuclear family who live nearby, but we feel that the flight to the east coast over just a long weekend, especially with Christmas a month away, is too much trouble. New Years, we generally spend with friends but did stay with his family one year. I hate the alternating years idea–we both want to spend time with both of our families!
Blah. Hubby’s family and friends are in England. We hope to do every-other-Christmas there, although it will get expensive and time off will be difficult to wrangle. To tell you the truth, I don’t even want to think about the holidays right now!
I think the idea of alternating holidays sounds great because you’ll actually be able to relax and spend quality time with your families, even if its only one at a time. We live in the same state most of our family. So they all expect us to be there to celebrate with them even if it means splitting the day between groups. So we often have to spend more time in the car driving from place to place than we do celebrating the day with the people we love.
Luckily for us we are from the same town so it makes it easy to go home and visit family for the holidays. But we still split it up and rotate each year at each house. Somehow my entire family (pretty large) got every married couple on the same schedule so one christmas there are TONs of us the next christmas there is hardly anyone there. We rotate Christmas and thanskgiving (we have 3 birthdays on thankgiving also, including mine) It works out well because those who will not be there for Christmas are still there close enough to the holidays and can celebrate a little early.
We live in Vancouver, and my FI’s parents live 3 hours away, and mine live 5 hours away in the opposite direction. My parents always come to us for Christmas and most holidays (Thanksgiving, Easter) because we live in the same town as our whole extended family, so it makes most sense. Throw in the complication that FI works in emergency services and often has to work on holidays, we usually stay here on the years that he works too much to make it reasonable to go away for an overnight, and on the years that it’s possible to go away, we make some sort of arrangement like going to the in-laws on the 23rd, staying till Christmas morning, and then driving to my family’s celebration for dinner and boxing day (two years ago) or the opposite (last year). Now we won’t have to think about it for the next four years, because he’ll be scheduled to work, so we’ll stay here.
We live in Arizona and my parents live in Michigan, too! Thankfully, his mother lives about 5 minutes from my parents.
But my sisters live in Eastern Washington and Florida, so trust me it is complicated for us to get the whole family together.
Last Thanksgiving, everyone came to see us in Arizona because the weather is so nice. I don’t think this will continue to be the case, so we will probably spend Thanksgiving at home and travel to Michigan for Christmas.
We haven’t really come up with a plan, but ours should be a bit easier than yours. We live in CA, but my family is in NH and his in PA. For the wedding we’re having it in NH, instead of CA, because it’s driving distance for his family. After the wedding we are spending a week on the road around the northeast visiting our family and friends who couldn’t attend the wedding. I think our holiday plans will be similar. Fly back east somewhere nuetral (NYC?) rent a car and head north to NH a bit then west to PA a bit then back to NYC to come home. Hopefully, it will work out!
our families only live an hour apart and we still have this problem. to me it’s too much holidays to go to both families for each holiday, but that’s what we end up doing anyway. i really dread christmas and thanksgiving. it was especially hard this past year because we got married in october and by the time we got back from our honeymoon I felt like we had no time to spend together and had to be gone all the time for the holidays.
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Mrs. Frog, Phoenix, AZ/Chelan, WA Age and Occupation: 29, Public Relations Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Online Sales Engagement Date: February 8, 2009 Wedding Date: July 2010 Venue: Amy's Manor About Me: I'm an opinionated Midwestern girl now living in the Valley of the Sun marrying a laid back Northwestern guy. I'm equal parts sass, silly and sweet. I'm fiercely loyal with a strong devotion to my family and friends. I have a not-so-secret obsession with apple juice, a new obsession with DIY projects and I love a really good cheese plate...with lots of wine. After 7 blissful years of dating, I'm having the time of my life planning the destination wedding of my dreams to my Mr. Frog-turned-Prince Charming.
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