Once married...How do you deal with holidays?

Some ppl get all bent out of shape, i mean your child is getting married, you cannot assume they will be there with you for all the holidays its part of allowing your children to grow and become an independant person. its called CUTTING THE CORD!!!! is it going to be easy!? NO, will it be FUN?!?! NO. but its part of life.... ugh sometimes parents can be very selfish....

Since my brother passed away, my parents come and visit us for Christmas. They stay at our place. We do Christmas Eve dinner at our place (with FH's parents, sister and fiance, my parents and us). Christmas Day-open one set of presents at our place in the morning, then later in the afternoon go over to the in-laws for presents and dinner. It seems to work well. For Thanksgiving we usually go to my parents place and then a week later have dinner at FH's parents. Easter-my parents are away, so we just go over to FH's parents place.

My parents are in another state, so its a bit different than us. but my bIL and SIL have both families in the same city and have to juggle this. Frankly, they usually do just end up doing 2 of each holiday, the famliies just make sure to plan them at separate times (i.e. one does a lunch meal, the other dinner, etc) so they can attend both. I dont see why that can't happen for your family. Even if you are stuffed and can't eat at the next one, you can still be there.

ANd, if you want to spend the whole day with your family, why cqan't you still stagger the meals a bit so that FH can eat with your family and then go join his and you can just stay with yours all day.

Thanksgiving is the WORSt in my family. I honestly stress about it every year. Where are we gonna go type thing?? Most years we do two, and I hate it. FH and I are stuffed, and sick.

Christmas has never been a big deal. One half of my family is jewish and the other christian so that works out fine. & since my christian side is so tiny, last year, we got FH and his family together w/ my mom's side at me and FH's house. It worked out great.

Thanksgiving though, man oh man, that's different. My Mom's side, my dad's side, and FH's side celebreate this holiday. Before FH came along, my mom would always do it at her house so my mom's side, and my dad's side could all just come together at one house.

This may sound bad but this year, FMIL is going out of town, so we won't be with her anyway. Whew. But for the rest of our lives, I am not sure what we will do. I don't see why FH's family cannot just join ours though, since they have such a tiny family. But people can be funny about that

Well since we have a son together wee usually used to go to each others family house. Like we used to go to his parents house then go to my aunts house to spend time with my family. One thanksgiving we went to 3 different places so I got frustrated cause I am small and have small stomach so I told him we are doing thanksgiving or any holiday one place. Like I dont talk to my FIL Now we just do our own tradition like have thanksgiving or Christmas at our house. My family comes down to our home. Last yr my FH went to his parents house on Christmas. I just told him if we are going to go seperate ways for the holidas then I rather just stay single. I don't want my son seeing us split holidays.

I told my FH that we are a family now. We created our own little family and it's time to do our own tradition. We still keep his and mine. Like For Christmas my family opens presents the 25 and the 25 his fmily opens present. So now our tradition is the 24 our son is getting the same gift. Christmas Pjs and a tree ornament to open the 34th. So Christmas morning he has new pjs. Every yr he gets a new ornament so by the time he leaves the nest he has his ornaments to take to his new place. This yr I wanted to rent a cabin but instead we are not so we could save enough money. His family is about gifts. My family aint. We do a secret Santa so everyone gets one gift to go home with. Stay at a 30 dollar budget. lol With his fam each fam member need to buy a gift we didnt do that last yr. He just ought Christmas gift to his parents and brother.

His side doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving so no issues there for now but once we have kids I will not travel those first few years and we'll host things ourselves.

Xmas for now we fly down to my parents the weekend before to celebrate because I also have two other family members who can't celebrate around xmas either due to their spouses.

Mother's Day and Father's Day we just do separately until we have our own kids.

When we were dating the first 3 yrs I was always with his fam and to be honest I missed mine so much. Esp cause my fam is not close unless its holiday and bday. I got a little upset cause his fam always together every weekend drinking and stuff. The past 2 yrs now we are with my family. We dont get crazy or drunk. We just eat and catch up on life. We dont see much of each other due to life. FMIL brought it up to me last yr and I told her she sees her family every weekend and she could ask my FH that my family don't see each other like that. I honestly don't feel comfortable with FIL cause they get wild crazy drunk and I don't like being in that environment esp my son seeing tht kind of behavior. My FH and I changed so much over the yrs since we moved a little further our prioeties changed and now it's about us and our son. At first I was a little jealous of them cause I wished my fam was this fam orientated and close but then I was noticing a pattern of drining and drunk now am not.

My family is mostly local, his is on the other coast. When we started dating, the first year he did every holiday with my family. After that I insisted we work his family into the mix. Since they are not religious, they get Thanksgiving (since before me they didn't celebrate that either, that means me going to their house to cook for them and any guests they invite) and a random holiday (like Memorial Day). It works for us.

But I can't stress this enough, whatever the plan you decide on, you must be a united team. If you both made the decision to go to you'r families, he cannot cave and change things.

This year we are doing two of each in a sense!. We will be having thanksgiving lunch at my parents and then dinner at his parents! And then for Christmas eve we are going to my parents for possibly a meal and defiantly Christmas Eve service (may go to his moms for lunch that day) and then Christmas day lunch with his mom and dinner with my parents! Its a lot! But my parents are moving to the west coast after Christmas and im super close to them so we are getting in as much time with them as we can!

As for the op comment: If you start things now they will continue for years to come in your marriage. Great lesson my mom taught me. Im sorry but why isn't your fh spending Thanksgiving with you, if he is choosing her over you for the holiday what other times will he choose her over you!

We just do what works. For example his family eats an early thanksgiving dinner and he usually has to work thanksgiving so we'll go to my families later dinner. My family celebrates Christmas eve and his family celebrates Christmas day so that's easy. And New Years we do whatever we want. If we want to go out on our own we will. If we want to go with friends or family we do that. If you've gone to her thanksgiving 4x's already I think it's only fair that you both go to your families this year. FMIL has to understand that your family is his family too and you need to spend time with both. If she doesn't want to go then she can stay home.

If you want to have dinner with you this time, I would talk to FH and have him there with you? Could you plan to see his family the night before? Or depending on how far apart it is, maybe you could stop by both places?

I am having a healthy Thanksgiving meal on the Sunday before Turkey Day with my parents and his parents and a couple of close friends just so we get to see everyone. This will be our 6th Turkey Day together even though we are not married yet. We swap every year since the families are close by: His parents for dinner, my Aunt's for dessert. Then the next year we go to my Aunt's for dinner and his parent's for dessert.

My family pretty much dominates Thanksgiving. But MIL always whines and guilt trips us. however, my MIL and DH's side of the family all live 10-20 minutes away from us, we see them all regualry. in my family, i have 3 siblings and all 4 of us live in differnt states...since my siblings all have kids of their they dont really come for Xmas, so Thanksgiving is THE holiday in my family. DH tells his mother outright...my family has ONE holiday. Then xmas eve we go to his grandmothers with all his family..and actual xmas day we just kinda 'do out own thing' and usually have either breakfast or dinner with my parents since they are pretty much by themselves. This year for xmas day however, I invited everyone from both sides to come to a brunch hosted at our home. if they want to see us badly enough then they can come join us. DH and I have decided this will be OUR family tradition.

We've been doing the holiday shuffle for 6 years now. The first couple years my family didn't have their crap together so it wasn't any stress. We invited them to his family events. But now my mo has gotten on her feet (yay!) she do a shuffle. It's never really set except christmas eve, his family has a dinner every year, and we all really enjoy it so we always make it to that one. The one time a year where we can get all the crazies in one house

For the most part it's not difficult. When we have kids though... Ugh I don't even want to think about it.

FH I talked about this early one. We agreed that since ALL of his family is out of the country we would spend every Christmas with them in Italy. We live in Chicago where I have all my family. We spend other holidays and birthdays with my folks here. It's only fair. Both sides of the family seems to be happy with this arrangement.

My parents only live 30min from us and FH's parents live about 1hr15min away. we are doing thanksgiving dinner at my parents on thursday and thanksgiving dinner at fh's parents on friday. yaaay 2 thanksgivings!!

apparently no one will come to US for thanksgiving until we give them grandchildren... fh's brothers totally beat us.

i can see how this would be a problem if they dont live close together.. could always swap holidays. thanksgiving at one set of parents house, christmas at another?

We've been splitting up holidays for years. Because our families live in the same town, we alternate Christmas Morning and Afternoon. This year we have Xmas morning with my family, and Xmas evening with his. Xmas eve is with my family as everyone from my dad's side of the family get's together, and christmas day is spent with my mom's side. Thanksgiving and Easter is spent with my family as his parents are busy farming at those times.

Haha... this can be a really touchy issue. It was for us! My parents don't really care about Thanksgiving, but they do care about Easter and Christmas. (His care about all 3.) So we'll probably go to the ILs for Thanksgiving every year, and the plan is to do parents A for Christmas and parents B for Easter - and then switch the following year. We wish we could have everyone together, but my parents aren't up for that. What we have done is try to talk about the parts of the holidays (traditions, food and whatnot) are important to us so that we can incorporate those no matter where we are. Also, my minister suggested something brilliant... once you have kids, say if they want to see you, they come to you. It's tough to travel with young kids and everything so it's a good excuse and it's a way to try to get everyone to actually come together. Parents always want to see grandkids, right?!

FH and I haven't really had this issue, since we live 500 miles away from our families. We live near my grandparents, so if we're in town, we'll spend the holiday with them.

However, growing up, my parents decided that if their parents couldn't come together at one location... we'd just do multiples! (Anyone who lived in the same general area) We did Thanksgiving on Thursday with my dad's side and Dinner with my mom's side on Sunday. We did something similar for Christmas as well, Christmas Eve was at my mom's parents and Christmas dinner was at my dad's parents.

When FH and I get married, going to who's parents house will totally depend on who we live near/affordability.

Ive had to deal with this for MANY years. When my parents split it was a constant battle over who's side I would go to for what day. I finally quit that. Thanksgiving i go to my dads side, Christmas is split by Christmas eve and day. My dads mom started doing Christmas eve to help me in this situation so i could have Christmas day with my mom. When FH's family lived down here we would go there for Christmas dinner ans we would all celebrate then. Since they no longer live here it will be much easier to go to one house per day lol.