wedding woes

LegacyUser

Okay here is the story.

I am meant to be getting married in September 2013. I have been engaged to my fiancée since last September. We decided on the date mutually and we have even booked it and paid the deposit.

This Christmas gone, my brother got engaged to his girlfriend which I was really happy for him. I have later learned that he wants to get married in July 2013 - just two months before mine. That's all well and good, but here's the real kicker. He wants to get married abroad.

So in order for us to go to his wedding, again stressing 2 months before ours, I need to take time off work. Now the holidays from work would have been used for our Honeymoon but my fiancée is so angry that would could have to take a shorter honeymoon to attend my brothers wedding.

If I don't go to my brother's wedding then I can't imagine my family will ever speak to me again. They most certainly won't go to my wedding.

Now my fiancée just wants to call our entire wedding off because of this. We already had a date set in March 2013 but had to postpone it due to financial reasons.

Please help me because this is just not right. We were planning the best day of our lives and my stupid brother has to get married just before us.

LegacyUser

To go to your brothers' wedding, surely the maximum you'd need to take off work would be two days? With careful planning, you might even get away with just taking a day off work. Once you're there for the ceremony and the afters, isn't that enough?
Now obviously, under other circumstances, if you weren't getting married 2 months later, you'd spend longer abroad at his wedding, but any reasonable person- even a close family member- would understand that your time is not your own in the run up to your wedding, and that your own wedding/future husband should& must take priority. September 2013 is 18 months away, I agree that your brother could probably have chosen a time further away from your own wedding, but equally you'd still have been faced with the lack of holiday time in 2013 if it was January, March, or December.

tannytantans

Are you able to carry over days at work? So if you don't use up some of your holiday days this year you could use them next year? I know a lot of employers allow this, especially if you're getting married. Some also give extra days the year you get married - you should check.

Do you know what day he plans to get married? If it's a Saturday,for example, you would probably only need to take the Friday off and you could fly home on the Sunday.

The alternative is that you have a word with your brother and explain the situation to him. However I'm guessing you'd want him to postpone until the next year when you have more leave built up - which he's unlikely to agree to.

LegacyUser

while i understand completely that NOW you might feel a little flustered with having to change/make plans, i wonder what can be gained by feeling mad at your brother for 'getting married before you''.

without being blunt - no one in the world will ever give as much of a cr** about your wedding as you do. it's just a fact of life. your brother's wedding is just as equally as important to him and his fiancé as yours is to you and your fiancé. i say this to try and give you fiancé some perspective.

i've been to two weddings abroad and only went for 2 nights each time. couldn't afford any more, and both couples understood that. and sher even if they were going to be miffed at me for not going for longer, it's not as if i had a magic wand that could have just conjured up more money to stay for a week!

i think your OH's reaction of wanting to call off/postpone the wedding is a little immature though, to be honest. what he's saying basically is ''if i can't have everything my/our way then i don't want it at all''. does that sound like something a rational adult would say?! would he react the same if it was one of HIS siblings?!

go to your brother's wedding for as short amount of time as you can. could you work up extra days between then and now? could you afford to take one or two days unpaid?

everything is workable. people forget weddings a few years after they're over but family is family. don't let yerselves and your brother fall out over it. xxx

Squiggler

Some good suggestions above, especially with regard to seeing if you can carry over Annual Leave to next year.

Another option would be to postpone your honeymoon for a few months and take it at the beginning of 2014. I know a lot of couples, my husband and I included, who decided to take their honeymoon a few months after the wedding. I know it allowed us to enjoy the wedding fully (no rushing off during the reception or having to fly somewhere tired or hungover the next day), relax afterwards and send off our thank you notes while we could still remember who gave us what. It also gave us time to save a bit extra after the wedding expenses to have a nicer honeymoon than we could have had otherwise. Friends of mine who got married in October last year are taking their honeymoon in July.

It is inconsiderate of your brother and his girlfriend to have planned their wedding the way they have, but if you deal with it any way but graciously it probably won't go well for you. I've two brothers of my own and they frequently make inconsiderate decisions. The only advice I can give you there is to control the things you can, your wedding plans, and try to make the best of the situation.

I hope that you and your fiance will have a very long and happy life together.

LegacyUser

When you say abroad how far abroad are we talking? If it's some remote island that requires 3 planes and a boat to get to then yeah that's taking the piss a little but if it's somewhere you can get a direct flight to and from then really your taking about 2, 3 days max to attend. I think your OH is over reacting taking about canceling over this. 2 months is a decent enough gap that people attending both weddings won't feel pushed to chose one or the other and alot of people aren't going to go to your brothers wedding if it's abroad esp if they know your's is two months later. I've three cousins getting married next year, one in Scotland in March and most of the family have already said they aren't going as they'll see all the family at the second cousins wedding in July then at Xmas 3rd cousin sent out his invites and his wedding is the weekend before the second cousin - now thats being bitchy as we've know cousin twos wedding dates for over a year.

Worse case OP is you take a short break honeymoon right after your wedding and then a longer trip the following year - I know loads of people doing this now - long weekend in Paris or Rome or even somewhere in Ireland [lets face it your not going to leave the hotel for the first few days anyway so doesn't really matter were you head] then save for a really amazing, bigger/longer honeymoon for 2014. Friend of mine in Boston got married over two years ago and they couldn't afford a honeymoon at the time so they just had a long weekend upstate and now this summer they are taking a month to travel around Europe for their delayed honeymoon.

CathyMoran

My husband had 4 weddings in his family within the space of a year including his own (and there were 6 babies born last year!) The only one that was hard to get to was the one in India as the flights were very long but the Portugese ones were easy to get to and return from. Go to the wedding and do not stay long!

Beruthiel

unreg3213 wrote: »

Now my fiancée just wants to call our entire wedding off because of this.

Total over reaction.
At the very most, you only have to take two days off, no?

Neyite

unreg3213 wrote: »

Now my fiancée just wants to call our entire wedding off because of this.QUOTE]

Beruthiel wrote: »

Total over reaction.
At the very most, you only have to take two days off, no?

I agree - a flying visit (pardon the pun) would be suited here - no one could fault you for staying particularly when you have your own wedding to budget for.

I am wondering if its more to do with competitiveness between the brides though? Your fiancée wants to abandon the whole idea because her future sister-in-law booked an earlier date so maybe in her eyes, everyone at the first wedding will compare it with yours a mere 2 months later.

What your brother and his fiancée did smacks of childishness, and a "oooh me first!" attitude, and attending 2 weddings in the family in such a short space of time (with one abroad) puts the close family who would normally be expected to go under enormous pressure financially.

What's your parents opinion?

tinkerbell

A few points:

- you decided to have a 2 year engagement, that's quite a long time. In that time, there will be things you cannot control, such as people getting engaged after you and deciding to have a shorter engagement. It's what happens when you have such a long engagement! I know you had set a date for March 2013 and postponed it, but you could have kept it at that date and just reduced your wedding budget. I know a few people who have been engaged for quite some time and have set a wedding date ages away. In the meantime, people have gotten engaged long after them and have set a date well before them.

- your brother and his fiancée were a bit thoughtless really by setting the date for two months before yours when it is an abroad wedding and therefore will cost the guests a lot to get there (this whole marrying abroad being the cheaper option is such a lame excuse as in my opinion, while it may cost the bride & groom less money to host a wedding abroad, it costs the GUESTS a lot more to attend an abroad wedding than one at home - so you are just transferring the costs to your guests). It's a bit much really considering that there was already another family wedding planned for two months after.

- HOWEVER, you've already changed your date from March to September. How are your brother and his fiancée supposed to know that you won't change your date again because of whatever reasons? They can't be expected to just hang around until you've gotten married.

- Where is your brother's wedding going to be? If it's in Europe, there is no reason why you can't make it a 2/3 day trip - you don't need to use a ton of your holidays to get time off. It's 2013, can you not carry holidays forward, or work up some extra hours to get the time off or take unpaid leave? As other people have said, it seems irrelevant when your brother will get married in 2013 because of the whole holiday issue, so it happening 2 months before yours isn't really a big deal then ...