My wife and I were 6 months into planning ours and so fucking stressed out over making it a great experience for our honored guests. A text from her mother that read “Well if you invite X you have to invite Y or else it’s going to be an issue…” was the straw that broke both our backs, but there had been months of this shit prior to that point, to the point where it was affecting my wife-to-be and I’s relationship and we never argued like we did over planning our “traditional” wedding.
None of the stress was internal, it was all external…people weighing in with their opinions of our plans, what we should serve, oh this person doesn’t like that, you should have this instead, well this person is going to insist on bringing their kids even if they kids are not invited so you’d better plan on having settings for them, dont use that photographer use this photographer or else wedding ruined, dont get this caterer get this other caterer or wedding ruined, dont have it here, have it there, or wedding ruined…
So we both said “Fuck it” and eloped. Found a small bed and breakfast a few hours away that offered a literal Elopement Package…the owner was a certified JP, his wife did all the decorating…they even provided witnesses. All we had to do was show up. The price was just under what the photographer alone was going to cost us.
Happily married for 10 years now. Best decision we ever made.
Oh, tons. Her mom and dad were pissed more than anyone else, her mom for understandable reasons, the sentimentality of it and watching her little girl walk down the aisle, but her dad moreso because he was a major schmoozer that sat on their town board, owned many local businesses, is friends with state-level representatives and was a “VIP” that had already been pressuring us to invite people that neither of us even fucking knew for networking purposes which really pissed me off (less so my wife, she grew up with that shit). He offered to pay for the wedding which in itself was a source of stress as I didn’t want to give him any angle with which to dictate the manner in which the wedding was conducted and damn sure didn’t want it to turn into some state function.
My wife hated that shit, too, but it caused drama between my wife and I because her parents were up her fucking ass about this shit and she felt like she was in the middle despite being in full agreement with me because she’d given in to this sort of shit so much in her life she was used to it…she’d never had so much as a birthday party that didn’t have at least three dozen people there, most of whom were there for her dad, not for her. I was just not going to let her family push her around, and I had zero hesitation in telling them to back the fuck off, which her dad was definitely not used to.
My family is a lot more “live and let live” with that sort of thing. I have some cousins that spent the equivalent of new car money on their wedding, and cousins that did like us and just went to the beach and had a friend of theirs get ordained and perform the ceremony while everyone is in their bathing suits with wet hair, but its very much left up to the people getting married and nobody else gets in the way because that’s not their place. We have our own drama but at least in that regards its way better. My parents more or less said “Congrats, go have fun!” lol