Armenian/Catholic Wedding

I thought about including translation cards for parts of the ceremony but just didn't get around to it. It'll be tough to do 50/50 on the language but I think there are moments that the officiant can say a few words in English and your own vows can incorporate both English and Armenian.

Also, hubby and I also said thanks to our guests in both languages during the toasts.

Well, we do them all the time; in fact, I'm writing a ceremony for an Armenian/Jewish couple right now.

Does he go to church? Is it an important piece of his life?

I"m not a fan of couples caving to what parents want with out concern of the mutliple sides of the coin.....

OP - when you marry an Armenian, you marry his/her whole family. I am very familiar with their culture.

best of luck to you.

You have a discussion with him and you present a united front to her. Have one discussion, make it clear that you will be having the ceremony that speaks to you.

Having it in an Armenian church when he doesn't go and your family doesn't have an affinity for that?

It's insulting to your family.

Oh wow that sounds rough! Here's what I would do, I would 1. Figure out if parents are helping pay, if his parents are willing to shovel out lots of dough then by all means invite all the friends they want 2. if the parents aren't helping or are only giving X amount of money figure out your budget from there 3. with that budget ask your husband how many guests he thinks is appropriate for your comfort not for his family size (without counting up all of his 20million cousins) and if he says 200 then count up your closest mutual friends, subtract from 200 and divide the remaining number by 2, each side of the family gets that many people and that's it, his mom can decide which family can be left out. Or especially if each parent is paying for half then each parent gets half of the family guest list, although in my experience it's way easier when parents just give X amount they can afford as gift so that they don't have to be too involved in the cost decision process. As for his family, in my mind, you really don't need more than grandparents, parents, siblings, and close 1st cousins and aunts/uncles. So if she is inviting more than that there is one way to start to eliminate some family. I really think it helps to just make both sides even, and your husband should be open to this because it IS fair. I mean if your aunts, uncles and 1st cousins is 20 and his is 80 then your parents might need to compromise a tiny bit, but your parents shouldn't be excluding any of their close family just because of his, this is just simply not fair because it's your family celebration too and your poor parents deserve to feel like they have some say too! I would also ask him why it is so important to him to be married in their church and tell him that you feel like he is only aiming to please his mother, just be honest because you're gonna have that argument at some point anyways (trust me you will, especially by the sounds of his MIL, just get it out of the way now and say its your wedding not his moms so he needs to make his own decisions). Other options include eloping and counseling. Good luck! my FMIL was shocked when I said our wedding was ONLY 200 (huge to me) she wanted 400 in some cheapo hall in the boonies 3 hrs from my home, and we said nope 200 and picked a venue close to us. she only had 80 people to invite, the same amount as my parents and she's fine now. it was shocking at first, but she just had to accept that my family was different and that I'm marrying her son so it's my family's wedding too.

Thanks everyone for the advice! Just a quick update- after MANY discussions/borderline arguments, I think we have figured quite a bit out. We have had several discussions on how I am not Armenian and neither is my family, so it wasn't fair of him and his family to just assume that an "Armenian wedding" is what was going to happen. I'm sure we will have more discussions on this in the future as well! However, we have managed to find a new venue that we BOTH love, and an Armenian church that is 20 minutes away. We have agreed to do most of the ceremony in English aside from prayers/hymns that can't really be translated.

As for the guest list, we are managing to have a fairly small wedding at about 60-70 people. It is still mostly his family, but that is because I don't care to invite my extended family as I was never close to them (lived in a different state my whole life), and my dad comes from a family of 9 children, so you can imagine the aunts/uncles/cousins, etc. So basically I am inviting my immediate family and that's it, and I'm okay with it. He is close to his extended family, but is mostly inviting only local aunts/uncles/cousins and isn't going too far with all of the extended family he hasn't seen or talked to in years. So as of right now, we have managed to come up with a plan that works for us both. I know we have a lot more discussions coming up regarding the Armenian/American differences, and I know it will be an ongoing discussion and at times struggle throughout our marriage that we will have to work through, particularly surrounding his mother, who by the way is very nice, but just has different (lack of) boundaries and communication (like a lot of his family).