First off, let me say that I absolutely love how my last post touched so many of you young-ish brides out there. It was really amazing to read all of your stories and know that I'm not even close to being alone in struggling with this issue.
So in my quest to continue to help you young-ish brides out there (and in turn get the support of you wonderful bees out there!), I bring you the latest installment in the series: family issues.
Many of you wrote poignant comments about how young your parents got married and how many decades they had made it so far, which I loved reading. My parents were also married young: my mother was 21 and my father was 24. My parents, however, were not quite as lucky. They were married for twelve years (pretty unhappily) and got divorced just before I turned 13. They now are on such poor terms that they do not speak at all.
This, needless to say, did not create warm, fuzzy feelings in my parents about the prospect of my getting married in my early twenties.
Now Mr. Star and I knew we were meant for each other just a couple of short months into our relationship. It was a scary feeling to me knowing that I had found my husband when I was only 20 years old, but I knew deep down inside that he was the one many months before I was ready to say it out loud. Shortly after we were separated for 10 days while I went on an overseas trip with my family and shortly before our one year anniversary, we started talking about getting married and were each surprised by the other feeling ready and sure of our decision.
Mr. Star then had the gumption to ask not just one set of my parents, but two separate sets of parents (Mother/Stepfather and Father/Stepmother) if they would give their blessing to him asking for my hand. My mom consented, but asked that we wait a couple of years before getting married. My father gave him a pep talk and approved, but I later found out from my stepmom that he wished we would take our time marrying, as well. Neither had a problem with Mr. Star himself, but both were concerned about our age.
It is no accident that we have been engaged for nearly two years. My mom even joked at my bridal shower that she had asked us to wait two years and we were getting married nearly two years to the day that Mr. Star asked her for her approval.
I will freely admit that my parents were initially unenthusiastic about wedding planning because of their concern. That made it really difficult to be excited about being engaged at first and caused some hurt feelings on my part.
Why I tell you all this, though, is because I want to give those of you with unsupportive parents some hope. My parents have really come around over the past two years and have both become incredibly helpful in wedding planning lately. My dad and stepmom have helped me assemble aspects of our centerpieces (more on them later!) and my mom is flying all the way to New York from Florida for my dress fitting in September. If you currently have unsupportive parents (for whatever reason), I feel for you, I really do. It's hard. I know. I thought I'd share a few things that helped us move past that, in case they can be of help to any of you:
- Giving our families time to adjust. This was the biggest factor for us, in my opinion. Sometimes your families might just need more time to get used to a major life change like engagement, or sometimes they might need to spend more time watching how the two of you function together before feeling comfortable with your relationship. Either way, if your parents being happy and excited for you is important to you personally, it's worth it to have a long engagement, in my opinion.
- Working on getting settled together in other ways before getting married. We had lots of other stuff to do like get an apartment together, graduate from college, start getting our careers off the ground, getting a dog together, etc. I think our parents really benefited from seeing us functioning together as an adult team. We had to weather some storms, too, and I think it helped ease their fears that we were able to cope and work together through them.
- Talking to our parents about why we work together. Mr. Star and I both made big efforts to talk each other up to our parents whenever we got the chance. We tried very hard to emphasize why we think we work and what we love about each other. I always tell Momma Star about the sweet things Mr. Star does.
- Acknowledging that we're young. We know that we're a young-ish couple. Neither of us try to deny it. In fact, we try to use it to our advantage in our relationships with the in-laws. Whenever we're going through some tough stuff, we each use that opportunity to get advice from the other's family and it brings us closer. I think they all really respect that we're mature enough to know that we don't know everything.
- Growing into a family with the in-laws. We've also both tried really hard to make our in-laws family. We spend holidays together, we send birthday cards, we call when their days aren't going so well...you get the point. While this is something that will always continue to grow and evolve, I think it's made a big difference that we're tried so hard to integrate into each other's families.
One thing that we didn't do right was continuing to include them in our wedding plans. I was so frustrated at their lack of wedding enthusiasm, that I started to make decisions about colors, dresses, and other fun things thinking that they just didn't want to be a part of it. But I ended up hurting some of my family members that way, so I don't recommend it. Hard as it may be, I suggest you keep them in the loop at least a little, even if they tell you that they don't care.
Have any of you been hurt by your families' feelings about your wedding? How have you overcome any family disapproval?
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