About a year and a half before the big wedding that I’ve been writing about here on So You’re EnGAYged, we got married without our parents. No family at all, no friends. We decided to get married, and then got hitched at city hall 9 days later. We told our parents beforehand, but we made it clear that it was just going to be the two of us. It wasn’t about not wanting them there – it was about wanting just the two of us there. And it was amazing! Everything about getting married was about US. And while it was tough to explain it to our families, I’ll never for one second regret the way we did it.
Our parents were all really good about it, and respected our decision. But we knew they were all disappointed to some degree that they weren’t included.
So later, when we decided to have a big wedding ceremony with all our friends and family, we had mixed responses. Everyone was happy, and excited, but a little… unsure of exactly what it meant. I think they had all worked really hard to be happy with the way we had gotten married, and made real efforts to respect our marriage despite having not been included in our marrying. We announced we wanted to do something that included them, and they didn’t really know how they were supposed to react. Add to this that we didn’t really know just how much of a “wedding” this was going to be, so it’s not like our parents got a whole lot of guidance from on us what to expect.
What we did know was that we wanted our family involved in our union. After experiencing the change that happened in our relationship after the first 6 months of marriage, we felt it was important to bring our families together, celebrate with them, and have some kind of ceremony involving everyone that recognized the new family we had become by getting married. So in planning our “second” wedding, our biggest challenge was putting together an event and a ceremony that struck a balance between those desires for family inclusion and appropriately maintaining the respect and acknowledgment that we were already married.
Every wedding, same-sex or not, brings up family issues. How can it not? The creation of your “new” family, and the merging of your “old” families will stir up past problems, create new conflicts, and see the clashing of a variety of opinions, traditions, expectations, and emotions. But it will/can also mean so many positive things: resolutions, an opportunity to share feelings with loved ones, the beginning of new traditions, a chance to grow and change relationships with relatives, and ideally, the excitement of an expanding support network.
Yes, we were already married so we could have avoided some of those difficulties that come with planning a wedding with your family. And of course we would have lived very happily ever after with only our private wedding to mark our marriage. But I’m grateful that we got the chance to have a celebration that included our families. Believe it or not, I’m even glad I got to experience some of the downs that came with the ups of the our big family wedding. I will always love that I got “really” married, by law and in my heart, on our own – but our family wedding taught me about what marriage can mean to families and what supportive and loving family can contribute to your marriage.
I love that each wedding is special for you guys in its own way. There are a ton of readers who are planning two (one courthouse/legal, one big/”frou-frou”) and I’m sure they’re wrestling with what it’s like to honor them both and keep them both special. Thanks so much for sharing this!