Hi everyone. I’m so stressed out and I didn’t know where else to turn.
I recently got engaged to my boyfriend of 2 years last week. It was amazing and in Epcot where we had our first kiss. I could tell he was nervous and the ring was absolutely perfect.
Like a lot of people, I called my mother right after and the first words out of her mouth were “when is it?” And I said “probably a year from now” and she said “that’s too long.” We’ve only been engaged a week now and my mother has called me multiple times to tell me that I need to look into dates in July because my sisters are teachers and they’ll be off so they can come down the week before (which is crazy because I work in hospitality so I will be working up until the day before regardless).
My mother is very manipulative - any type of financial support she offers for anything she uses as a way to control someone. When I was younger and driving a car she owned, any time we had a slight disagreement she would threaten to drive to Florida from South Carolina and take back the car. She did that a few times until I finally wised up and bought my own car. It is because of this behavior that I decided my fiancé and I would be paying for the wedding ourselves - my biggest fear is her paying for the venue/caterer and then cancelling them the day before.
Since we are paying for it ourselves, we started looking at venues yesterday. It was mostly for fun but we found a place we love. We decided to do the wedding on a Monday because the cost difference is like $3000 less and it’s open on Columbus Day so my sisters will be off. My mom called me while I was leaving and I told her what we found and she said “you need to do it in July in SC.” She called me later that night to tell me she felt like I was making a bigger deal out of the reception than the marriage and I clearly only care about the wedding and not the marriage. She went on and on about how her wedding only cost $6000 and her and my dad are still married. She’s mad that we want to wait a year because she feels like it means we aren’t ready to be married. My dad called me this morning and obviously had gotten my mother’s version of the conversation, telling me there is no reason for us to go into debt over a wedding and that his sister spent $25000 on her wedding and got divorced (I HATE when people compare wedding costs to the marriage outcome - no correlation).
Not that it matters, but we weren’t planning on spending more than $1000 on our wedding. I’m so heartbroken about the reaction from my parents, mostly my mother. I was so excited for our wedding and now I’m dreading it because it’s clearly going to be judged by my mother the entire time. My fiancé is fed up because it’s ruining his plans as well.
Has anyone else been having a rough time with a parent? Do you think wanting a large reception is a sign that you’re not taking marriage seriously?
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