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Man I dont even know what to tell you....that seems so overwhelming! :(
Assuming you have told us everything and its an accurate portrayal of FFIL expectations, I would have FI thank his parents for their input and then plan the wedding the way you want. Incorporate their traditional ceremony with the traditional dress after you do your vows and ask them to plan that ceremony (whether it is right away or another day).
And then be ready for any reaction they may have... I suspect this is a their way or the highway. I really do believe in compromise on wedding day because its often as much about family and family politics as it is about you, but you do not want to lose your identity either in order to appease someone else that is not your fiancée.
Talk to FI. Decide what the two of you want. And then tell your parents what you've decided. You are adults and its your wedding. Yes, you want to be respectful of your parents, but you also want to be true to yourselves. Have FI talk to his parents (without you there) and talk to them about what you decide.
whoa. well, i just plain wouldnt, but im didnt marry a man with a different cultural background. could you call the mother? maybe she is a little less "i am the man. what i say goes" and you can have a reasonable conversation. do his parents live in the US?
you and FI should really have a talk about what the both of you want. does he want the wedding you FIL has described? maybe you should have him talk to his dad and tone it down a bit. Is this second wedding with "his people" going to be in their native land or the US?
First of all--ouch :(. It seems wrong to dictate your wedding by a culture that neither your nor your fiance grew up with. I would have FI tell him you guys will do the 'traditional' wedding after yours, but that you'll be doing your wedding by your customs first. And good luck :(.
@FutureMrsMorgan: 1st he comes to my parents house with a couple elders (in a week!), to announce his son's desire to marry me, they bring wine, my parents serve him food. in the spring, he comes back with 20-30 of 'his people' and they marry us at my parents house and my parents are to have a party that day- here in the US. he said after our western wedding we will be expected to go to nigeria to be announced as husband and wife to his village there. they expect my parents to join us when we go to be shown off to the nigerian family, which seems like a great $$ after hosting a wedding, but whatever, we'll make it work somehow. i'm happy that they want to introduce me and my family to their family members that aren't here.
That's a lot like Vietnamese culture too..It isn't as bad as it sounds (at least if you are split and still would like to do that to honor your inlaws)..you can compromise and scale it down. We're having a traditional ceremony just with close family, then an outdoor ceremony with everyone there. We're scaling down both ceremonies so that can have both. Hopefully you can work it out..
Okay honey first take a really deep breath, it is going to be okay. It really is not as bad as it sounds, but because of what sounds like your FFIL's somewhat overbearing nature it is coming across this way.
Your FMIL will be your greatest ally in navigating this situation, so please get your FO to enlist her to help out as this will make things easier for you. She will likely do a lot of talking to him behind the scenes to make things go easier. I think if you attended a Nigerian traditional wedding you would feel a lot more relaxed about all this, because it really is sooooooo completely different from the Westernised white wedding that it does not take away from it at all. It also isn't legally binding, so look at it as being 'symbolically' married if you want to.
Your 'marriage' by his people is a lot of breaking kola nuts etc, so don't get too stressed about any walk down the aisle or vows said. It is really more about the families than anything else. I think there is probably a way to get him to chill out and stop being so bossy, but you have to be careful not to let him use the fact that you are from a different culture as an excuse to treat you differently. As for the financials of the whle thing, I think he is being a bit weird about that to be honest. he really should be looking to help with the costs of one or the other. Maybe Igbo people do it differently though as I am from a different part of Nigeria so I'm not sure.
My approach to this would be to go deal with one thing at a time. The initial ceremony that he comes to your house for is called an introduction. Have FI speak to his mother and rope her into helping out with that then take it from there.
PM me if you need help or just want a shoulder to cry on or someone to rant to :)
I am sorry your FFIL is kinda overbearing and wont listen. I am also half Nigerian and I understand what he is talking about. However, I don't think he should treat/hold your family to a standard that people back home who are aware of the culture are held to. I am not having a traditional ceremony but I am including some of my Nigerian culture such as the attire and other little things into our wedding. Is it a wedding that my Nigeria family will like me to have? No but FI is Mexican and German, my mom is west indian, while I am more American though I grew up n Nigeria. So we have to try to blend all these cultures and stay sane at the same time.
I will say do what is comfortable for you and FI. Your FI seriously needs to talk to his father and get him to see he is not in west africa with two africans getting married this is America and two cultures are being blended. Like someone suggested maybe talk to his mom and make your ally that way she can talk to her husband. in my opinion I thin FFIL is being annoying and ridiculous. Some in my Nigerian family are upset because my FI wont be wearing traditional or that we wont be having a full on nigerian wedding. I have told them if they want all that stuff they can pay for it and we will show up but the real wedding will be the one we have in April. Whatever you do don't let him bully you please.
ladies, thank you all for your support! sorry i've been away from weddingbee for a bit, christmas craziness! now i'm back!
saturday his family will be coming over for the introduction (the families have met plenty of times, it's just one of the traditions his father wants to follow). i've relaxed a bit about the whole thing, i think i was overwhelmed more than anything else. FI and i have talked a lot about it and we will be asking his family if there is a specific reason we need to do the traditional wedding ahead of time. if there is no real reason for it- other than 'because he says so', than we don't really see how they can argue that it MUST be done separately. we are both happy to be americans, it doesn't mean we don't value his family history, but it does mean we embrace the mixing of traditions. we want to share these traditions with all of the special people in our lives, not just his father's friends & family. his mom is warming up to me. we talked some at christmas, well, she talked more & i listened=) but that's ok, i figure once she gets more comfortable with me, i will be able to have her as an ally & she can help us with things like talking to his dad. she's very sweet=)
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long complicated situation, but i will try to be concise. please tell me if i'm being insensitive (honestly, i want to know if i'm out of line)!
FI & i met with his parents about the wedding yesterday for the first time. we've been trying since may, but it's like pulling teeth. FI was born & raised here in the US, as i was. his parents grew up very differently than we did, they lived in africa until shortly before FI was born. i expected them to have different traditions/customs for the wedding, and we looked forward to including some of them in our wedding. they haven't been willing sit down and talk about the wedding with us until now, so we were excited to go over what we had planned and hear about any ideas they had.
when we all sat down i started by saying that while this is a special day for us, we understand it's a special day for them as well and that we would like to hear about thoughts they had regarding the wedding. his father immediately goes into his 'man of the house' role and doesn't listen to anything anyone tried to say. he told us that he was going to explain how this was going to work and then started announcing when he would be going over my parents house, that my parents needed to serve him things (my family is not african, they're irish- five generations back!). his mom tried to say that she could get the food, but he cut her off yelling that my parents would serve him. then he said after that meeting, they would show up again in april or so (at my parents' house) with 'his people' and there would be a ceremony where we would be married.
we told FFIL we had read about traditional weddings where he is from and that we would like to start our wedding with their traditional ceremonies, that way everyone could be part of it. we had hired some musicians that often work in schools teaching about cultures and specialize in west african/jazz fusion music. they informed us that FI 'comes from kings and queens and will not have anything if it is not authentic!'. the whole point was that it's supposed to be a blending of families and traditions. we don't want to segregate the two cultures, we want to embrace both and share them with everyone. i understand traditions are important to people. i'm not saying i won't participate in some of FFIL's traditions, i just don't think he's being fair in dictating how our wedding will be.
my biggest objection is that he insists we will be married by 'his people' before the wedding day. some people save sex for their wedding day, or some special thing (def didn't save my virginity for wedding, lol!), but i have said that i will not say any lines from our vows out loud, or practice walking down the aisle, or rehearse the ceremony, because i will only do it once, on our wedding day because that's what marriage is to me. by doing it beforehand, it loses it's meaning, it makes our wedding simply an over priced party. i don't know what to do. i am a girl, so FFIL doesn't pay much attention to what i say, FI is his son so he is expected to do as he is told. my father is going to talk to him, he's very diplomatic and a social studies teacher so he is very culturally sensitive. but what if he doesn't budge?? i don't want to ruin our future relationship on them, but they think it's absurd that i want 1 wedding, even if we have 2 ceremonies that day, i just want a chance to get married with everyone there on our wedding day. they haven't even been part of the planning until now, & now they want to decide all of these things for us.
as a side note- the only monetary contribution they have offered for the wedding is clothing for the traditional wedding, which they will pick out and have made. what would you do? would you just let him dictate how the wedding will go & follow all of his traditions or would you expect him to try to work to integrate his traditions into the western wedding (and where he's from they DO have a western style wedding, just after the traditional one, and not everyone even has a traditional one!)??? i'm overwhelmed...