Family drama and planning

The only choice my fiance and I really gave to anyone about our wedding was letting the bridesmaids choose their own dresses (as long as they were in the color and length that we specified). My fiance and I are paying 100% of our wedding costs, so we are not giving anyone else input on our wedding decisions.

We're not going against our wishes to cave into any drama or demands.

I gave in for some stuff and not others but by giving in I mean I tried finding a middle. For instance his mom wanted to do a prayer before meals served at reception but that’s not really fair cause only 25% of the guests were Christian. So I said why don’t you just have pastors walk around to those tables or just have those tables pray themselves aha

My family hasn't been too involved with any decisions for the wedding, although as a Chinese-American, I've gotten some comments here and there about doing a tea ceremony. It's usually a good time to show respect to older relatives and they tend to give a lot of money in red envelopes. I've always wanted one to honor my culture, but honestly I feel really weird inviting family members that I haven't seen in years just to get a few red envelopes or so. My aunt has offered to host them in lieu of my father who passed away, but has asked my mom on the side about it too even though I told her I didn't want to -_-

tldr ; I am not having a tea ceremony even though relatives have gone out of their way to suggest that I have one.

Very little. We let our parents invite a few more people than I really wanted them to, but that's the only thing that comes to mind. I was very clear that the ceremony was about us and only us and that anyone else's input would not be considered. They didn't have much to say about the reception. I was also not open to inviting ANY extra people to the miniwedding we ended up having due to covid, which caused drama, but no one came to us directly with their issues and I told my parents (and told husband to tell his parents) that I didn't want to hear about it from them either.

None.

It was our wedding, it was about us, and the only concession we made was to choose a date that would allow the most family to attend. (Which wasn't really a concession, as we wanted them there.)

Honestly, if someone wants to change something about *your* wedding that is celebrating *your* love, they better be paying for it, or making a play to be booted out of your life.

The only thing I’ve given in on was my mother’s request for a different officiant. I had planned on having an acquaintance who is ordained marry us, but she didn’t like his “alternative” appearance. After months of back & forth, I finally gave in. It’s costing $400 to make this change, but I guess if it’s THAT important to her 🙄
Other than that, the only other choices others are making are my bridesmaid & bridesman are choosing their own attire.

Nothing lol it’s our wedding at the end of the day my fiancé and I have the final decision. But also my family was okay with everything that we wanted and our visual. His family isn’t involved at the planning at all

View Quoted Comment Same here!


We did end up changing our local reception menu a bit once we got RSVP cards and noticed several types of food allergies (and a guest called our venue to see if she could bring her own dressing). We wanted the fancy salad but it had nuts & cheese so we switched to a simple garden salad with two dressing choices on the table instead of on each salad. Not a big deal and we certainly wanted guests to be safe/healthy with our food choices.

My husband originally wanted our moms to walk down the aisle together since both of our brothers were in the wedding, my dad walked me down the aisle and my mother-in-law is single. We ended up having our brothers do double duty. My mom walked with my brother and his brother walked with his mom then they looped back around to walk with the person they were paired with. I honestly preferred this option. My mother-in-law tried making some crazy demands like wanting to have a military dance so she could have a spotlight dance with my husband's older half brother/her former step-son. She thought this was a good idea because they are still really close and she was disappointed she get to have a spotlight dance with his at his wedding. We didn't like this idea for several reasons. Number one being that his brother is estranged from their dad so we thought it would be extremely hurtful for his dad to see them dancing together. We also didn't like it because it was our wedding and it would have been weird to us to have a spotlight dance for other people at our wedding. I'm sure my mother-in-law was disappointed we didn't do what she wanted, but sometimes you just have to put your foot down.

Yes, we gave in quite a bit on various things, but that is because our parents paid for our wedding! It would have been very different had we paid for our wedding ourselves.

View Quoted Comment This exactly. But also, I'm super lucky that the family and friends I have are super drama free, supportive of us, and haven't tried to interfere at all with our decisions. If I had people coming at me over my choices, I'd have to politely but firmly tell them thanks but we'll plan our wedding the way we want.

Zero. But this is no accident. My partner and I decided to set our date very shortly after announcing our engagement. Our start-to-finish planning took place in a very short time period and we didn't accept any monetary or other assistance. These were all deliberate choices so that we could do all our own planning with minimal outside input. Consequently, our entire planning process was drama-free.

My mil was trying to add another flower girl to my wedding I told her no I’m not add no more ppl to my wedding my daughter is the only flower girl and the other girl that you trying to add I don’t know her and my daughter don’t know her