Weddingbee boards

I'm going to jump on the sticky holiday situation bandwagon and ask for the hive's input on how to (potentially) break some unfortunate news.

Here's the deal:  My husband and I had initially planned to spend Christmas with his family.  They live, for all intents and purposes, on the opposite coast and have younger children, so we don't see nearly as much of them as we do my parents and brother, who are geographically closer and have more freedom to travel.  We also see more of my family because, well, they're generally a bit more stable.  My ILs are, as individuals, nice people, but together they are a raging ball of hideous dysfunction.  And that was true even when his parents weren't getting divorced.

This new and exciting family dynamic, combined with a hellacious schedule, has made my husband rather unenthusiastic about the proposed trip, particularly as it has become clear over the past few weeks that the expectation is that we will somehow manage to be all things to all people while we're there.  (This happened prior to our wedding, too.  My poor husband was run ragged by parents and siblings, all of whom seemed to feel that he was not giving them adequate attention or sufficiently attuned to their numerous and varied grievances with one another.)

Last night we were finally able to get a handle on schedules (my brother was unexpectedly inthe hospital last week and the world sort of stopped for a bit), and discovered that to fly out to his family on the only days available to us is going to run us well over $1000.00.  This is money that we don't have, and my husband is strongly opposed to putting the tickets on a credit card as we're trying to pay down all of our consumer debt.  He also feels that he doesn't owe his family this holiday and is preemptively pretty angry at the idea that they may be upset if we don't show.

I see his point, but think that at least some of their feelings of disappointment might be justified (we've had to cancel one previous trip because, again, tickets are extremely expensive).  Seeing as it's his family I'm going to defer to what he wants to do, but I'm wondering if there's a way to break this to them that minimizes the potential for upset?

Or do you guys think we ought to go anyway, money be damned?

@kitzy:  It's nt so much a problem with telling them the truth - it's that they probably won't care and will feel free to call us up and tell us how awful we are for not coming OR assume we're lying about the money to get out of makign the trip.

If it were just his parents doing this, fine.  But his youngest siblings will be legtimately disappointed, and we don't relish hearing about how we let them down from their parents for the next, oh, forever.

@JrzyGurl: Yes.  We did consider this.  We had even tentatively picked the flight and budgeted for the tickets. 

Trouble is my husband has law school exams, and doesn't receive a final schedule of when they'll be held until late November.  Turns out he has a test on the 23rd, and the price difference between our proposed departure date (21) and the new date (23) is large enough that it would've been prohibitive no matter when we tried to book a flight.

(And, no, the exam can't be taken on another day.)

@MissHelen:  If they chip in, then we'll definitely go.  This is unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the massive expense of the divorce and their own spiralling debt concerns.

*sigh*

I think you guys are right... It just reeeeeeeeeally sucks.  I hatehatehate disappointing people, and want to protect my husband from being made to feel terrible.

@Rock Hugger: "with song and interpretive dance."

I'm thinking red and green leotards with gold lame accents, glitter covered banners soaked in egg nog and a new composition incorporating elements of popular Christmas carols and death metal hits of the 90s...