Weddingbee boards

My parents and I are now in an all out war w.r.t. wedding planning.  As a bit of background, they are paying for most of it.  But it's a complicated thing b/c if we didn't have them pay it would be a slap in the face to my dad and probably prevent my FI from ever having a good relationship with them.  I guess he sees this as his last act of fatherhood or something. 

I knew that doing it this way would mean a lot of compromise, but also mean a grander celebration and make it easier for my extended family to attend.  I've gritted my teeth through some of the hard times, and tried to focus on all the great things about getting married and the extra things their involvement will bring to the wedding.

But underneath this all it's been festering that my parents keep trying to go behind my back to do things that I'm pretty sure they know I wouldn't like.  Most recently my mom tried to change the florist mock up to a time she could attend (when I would not even be in town).  Luckily, my florist wasn't having it.  Now, after I spent a lot of time working on the wording for the invitations (which we're having made in India b/c they are like a tenth the cost), my Dad scrawls something unintelligible onto a piece of paper and has my brother type it up to send to the printer without telling me.  Luckily, my brother sent it to me, not my Dad.

I guess these seem like small things, but they are just examples of how at every step of the way this feels nothing like it's about my getting married.  I understand that this is a big deal for them.  So we picked a venue that would serve Indian food from a caterer they like, and we are having twice the guest list we would have liked so they can invite their friends, and we're paying for the many small details that they don't think matter.  But I feel like they just want everything their way and they could care less about my feelings.  After the DOC incident last week, I explained to my Dad that I really did not want to have a big wedding anymore and I was seriously considering eloping.  He said he was sorry it felt so bad and that he wanted this to be a happy time for me (it is no longer any fun at all for me).  But the first thing he did after that conversation is rewrite the invitations without telling me (in a way that comes across as unwelcoming to my FI's friends and family...not intentionally but it does).

We're going through a hard time with the recent loss of my uncle, and you'd think it would be a time to come together.  But I'm dreading the next two months, and I really don't feel excited about any aspect of the wedding.  I think I do want to just elope at this point...b/c being married to my FI is the only thing that appeals to me about the whole thing.  I wanted this to be a chance to celebrate that with my family, but I dread talking about anything with my parents.  I wanted a wedding b/c I wanted to make the biggest commitment of my life in front of people I care about.  But it feels so much like none of the "marriage" aspects of this thing even matter to my parents anymore...so why are we doing this?

Thanks all for your support.  I'm so at a loss for what to do.  I was crying for like hours over the weekend, and my brother and sister both talked to my Dad.  I had been having a hard time with my Mom so I suggested maybe my Dad and I handle the ceremony and reception, and my Mom do everything else.  Well he ended up going nutso on me too.  But after talking to my siblings he called me and said he really hated how upset I was and how maybe we should just do things the way I want with his veto power. 

The problem is that what I want is to not have this be a battle while maintaining a semblance of myself.  I'm sorry, but my FI is not Indian.  We are not serving Indian food (at $120/head BTW) "family style" while also having non-Indian entree choices which his family will likely be the ones eating so that they feel like outcasts (we are having Indian food, though).  We are not wording the invitations in a way that implies that they are only intended for guests of the bride (e.g. "< > invite you to receive the groom's family at...").  It's not that I need things to be in a specific way, but every time I don't insist on having things a specific way they go and pick the one option that is completely unacceptable and offensive to me or my FI.

We don't want two weddings, and it goes against everything that I am to have a religious ceremony that neither of us believe in (this is not a point they are even insisting on, though).  I wanted a wedding that was about honoring the people close to me and celebrating this day in my life.  There are many concessions I'm willing to make, but a few that I am not.  And I feel like they'll stop at nothing to get what they want. My mom informed me that no one would come to my ceremony if I didn't have it half an hour later.  Like my whole family is going to fly over from India but then skip the ceremony b/c it's at 4:30 instead of 5.

And all of this is like a million times worse for me b/c it's already really hard to be planning a wedding.  Probably one of my earliest memories, maybe the earliest, is from my uncle's wedding.  So every single time I think of wedding planning it's also a reminder of him...and it's too soon for that to not be painful.  I talked to my Dad for a long time about this, and we decided that it would be a joyous and healing occasion for my family to celebrate a new union.  But that doesn't change the fact that it's hard right now...so while needing extra support right now, I'm just getting extra pain.  And I've thought about whether that's what's going on for my Dad, but I really don't think so b/c some of these battles began a while ago.  I just feel like I wish my wedding were done and over with...

I know that it was my choice to do this with my parents, but I feel like this has turned into being about everyone except me and my FI.