Weddingbee boards

:Raises hand sheepishly:  My fiance and I are not religious either but his step mother is and I am really tired of the dirty looks.  I made the mistake once of bringing up that neither of us are really religious and are more agnostic and you would have thought that I stabbed her.  I have had the not in a church fight, not by a minister fight, not having god mentioned in our ceremony fight, you name it, it has come up either with her or my grandmother.  At this point I just don't say anything or say we haven't decided.  I wish I was bold enough to say we aren't doing this and this is what we are doing but I am too nice.  Ultimately, do what you are comfortable with.

I was raised catholic however after high school my parents told me I could make my own decision. I don't believe in god but consider myself very spiritual and if I had ties to one religion it would be Buddhism. I practice Buddhism and my mother still thinks it is weird and that she "can't believe her baby doesn't believe in god!" My SO has a strict Baptist family and although he will go to church sometimes, he does not have a problem with my views nor I with him. I told him I wanted to write our own ceremony and luckily he agrees with a lot of my views that I get from Buddhism and has agreed that it is not a problem for him. However, I am terrified that once we are engaged his family will throw a fit. We will not be getting married in a church nor have any mention of god. There will be drinking and dancing, which was not allowed at his brothers wedding a few years ago. 

I guess my point is that it is your day! You two have decided to honor your mother by having the Episcopal ceremony and that is wonderful but it is not you so if you do not want something read from the bible then I say sit down with her and explain that. She may be upset now but I feel like once the wedding day is here and she sees the ceremony and how happy you two are she will be happy for you. It is your day!

Good luck!

@stellamae: FI's dad is a pastor. I feel your pain. But seriously, this is YOUR wedding, make it reflect your relationship, not your family. Try to put your foot down--I know it can be hard. I think you've done enough by having the Episcopal ceremony. 

I think having a non-religious wedding is completely fine.  HOWEVER, you did agree to have an Episcopal wedding, which is religious, which means you are agreeing to having scripture read at the wedding.  Ours is Methodist and there is no way we could have it without at least one bible reading.

If it bothers you that might, I think you need to re-think the Episcopal ceremony all together and go with a totally awesome non-religious ceremony.  But if you are going to cave and do the Episcopal wedding, then yes, that will include readings from the bible.  Does that make sense?

My mom and I had the big talk about my atheism a couple of years ago. It made her sad, but she told me she respected my ability to think critically and make my own decisions. However, she sometimes makes reference to the fact that I'm "questioning", which makes me think that she still nurses the idea in her breast that this is a temporary leave of my faith.

She suggested a few times that we could get married in her (admittedly beautiful) church. What finally stopped it was when I told her that we felt using a house of worship was plain disrespectful. We didn't believe the doctrine, and so it was rude to just walk through a religious service saying words we didn't mean. Once we turned the issue around as "we're not worthy", the talk of a church wedding died down.