I once mentioned here that Mr. Parkhurst and I are involved in a long distance relationship. This complicates the whole engagement and marriage process. We thought about not really having an official engagement period. We were planning on getting married this August, instead. We figured we’d have a big, traditional wedding (dress, tux, family, etc.) after we got legally married in August. (That idea was largely motivated by the lengthy, complicated immigration process.) Neither sets of parents liked that idea — especially mine.
In this situation, I am the daughter, the woman. I am the one being given away, as it were. It seems that because I am THE WOMAN, I should be proposed to with a ring. Furthermore, Mr. Parkhurst should ask my parents permission to marry me. We should, evidently, have a period of “engagement,” wherein frantic wedding planning ensues. Even though this is not the big, all-family-included wedding, this is the real thing, so it needs to be nice. I need to find a dress. Holy shit.
I am finding it extremely difficult to cope with all of these expectations (I can’t emphasize that enough). I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I’m torn between the desire to buck all tradition and the unwavering guilt I feel for not wanting the traditional fluff. I do not care about white dresses, especially since the idea is fucking wasted on me at this point. I do not want to be “given away” by my father because of the meaning behind that gesture. I do not want my boyfriend to have to ASK my parents whether or not he can marry me.
Most of all, I do not want to wear an engagement ring. I see very little romance in this. Wearing the ring is like carrying around a giant sign saying, “EVERYONE, I AM ENGAGED. DISCUSS.” I do not want people to judge me for being a married lady in my early 20s. I do not want colleagues and other professionals to look at my left hand and know that I’m married. My relationship has always been something I’ve kept so private, and having some kind of public symbol of my relationship on me all the time freaks me out.
As much as I hate all the traditional bullshit, I’m finding that my mother’s and grandmother’s quiet insistence that there must be a ring, an engagement, and at least a small ceremony (because, after all, the wedding ain’t only about the bride and groom) to be highly pressuring and influential. I’m starting to want an engagement ring, and I have no real reason as to why. I did not want one before it came to light that Mr. Parkhurst and I were scheming a marriage for August. I certainly never cared about being engaged before. But now, if we weren’t, it wouldn’t feel right. In fact, when we announced that there were no plans to be “engaged,” it felt like we were doing something wrong.
So, I’m caving to the pressure. We’re taking things slowly, and incorporating all the traditional fluff into what we originally wanted. It’s hard to differentiate between standing by your values and being selfish. Maybe I can’t stand by my values without being selfish, and without denying people something they really want to see. Don’t get me wrong — this is NOT an issue of commitment. I am wholly committed to Mr. Parkhurst and never intend to be without him. It just feels like all the built up social pressure around being engaged and getting married is one giant trap: at least someone will be unhappy with what we do, traditional values are enmeshed in the whole thing, and there is absolutely no escaping the drama.
Persephoneers, to the rescue: how have you dealt with this stuff? What do you think?
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Inspired
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Smart
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Tickled
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Hungry
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Empathetic
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Smash!
Congratulations! Planning a wedding is stressful, especially when what you and the mister want is different from what your family is expecting. When my future mister proposed, there was no ring for three months bc we had my mom’s engagement ring reset and I was picky about the setting. It was weird that few people that I’m close with treated my engagement like it was real until I got my ring. We weren’t planning on having a wedding, and mister didn’t even want a ceremony; just sign the license and go to dinner with our immediate family. At first, I was okay with that, but when I started really thinking about how I wanted the day to go, I was relieved that my state requires an officiated ceremony of some sort. So we’ve compromised and we’re having a super short thing at a local park and a picnic lunch for our immediate family (parents, siblings, grandmas- that’s it) afterward. I ended up buying a wedding-ish dress, but it was super cheap.
The more I think about it, I realize that the family aspect of weddings is because it’s one of the few happy occasions to round everyone up and get together. Most of the time, I only see extended family for somber occasions like funerals.
I understand why you’ve been private about your relationship up until now (no one ever has nice things to say about long-distance relationships), but the notion of being private about marriage….that doesn’t fly. If you don’t want to wear an engagement ring you don’t have to, but it shouldn’t be attached to the level of secrecy you shroud your relationship in. And a marriage shouldn’t be private anyway. For better or worse, weddings are probably the only time you’ll ever get to throw a huge party of exactly your own design. Why not approach it that way? If you don’t want to bother, it sounds like your mother would be happy to do all the work for you. Why not let her?
well, my not wanting to wear an engagement ring doesn’t totally hinge on my desire to keep my relationship a secret. i don’t want to wear an engagement ring because of its sexist implications.
i have certain values that conflict with having a big wedding with all the traditional accoutrement. in my opinion, marriage can be private.
Can you explain why you want your marriage to be private? The way it reads here, it sounds like you don’t want your friends to ever meet your husband or know you got married at all
Are you opposed to any sort of celebration at all? Why couldn’t you have a small ceremony and then have a casual reception after that? Are your parents super religious? If they’re not paying for the wedding they really can’t control what you do in that realm.
i don’t mean to sound like a dick for asking you to do this, but could you reread this post? and you should read through the comments, too.
my main objection to this whole marriage thing is that most marital traditions are rooted in sexism. my friends know about my boyfriend, as do my coworkers. my friends have met my boyfriend. my friends are friends with him. no where in this post did i ever indicate otherwise.
my parents are not super religious, they just like the idea of the archetypal wedding.
i really thought i was clear about all of this in my post, so my apologies for getting defensive.
ETA: i’m not ashamed of my relationship. that is not why i shy away from talking about it – i just don’t like to have to explain all the nuances and complexities of our situation. people tend to ask lots of questions, and good on them for being interested in my life. but, at a certain point, i want to have what is mine for myself. i suppose it is how we on the more private end of the spectrum operate.
You mention tradition but not religion. You don’t make it clear exactly which traditions are important to your mother and what the stakes are, which makes it hard to come up with ways to counter them. I was raised in an atheist single-parent household. Your “traditions” are not mine, so you have to fill in the blanks if you want advice of substance. I was under the impression that parents who expected to be asked for permission should be laughed out of the room. I’m certainly not going to read through 150+ comments before asking questions. It can be hard to gauge the degree to which we’re allowed to ask questions of someone who claims to be private and yet writes about her engagement on a popular website. I did read your entire post, and it gives the impression that you don’t want people to know that you’re engaged. I read it again and that impression is still there, whether or not you intended it.
For the sake of fact-checking and tying loose ends, I’m going to answer a few points below.
“You mention tradition but not religion. You don’t make it clear exactly which traditions are important to your mother and what the stakes are”
- It seems that… I should be proposed to with a ring.
- Furthermore, Mr. Parkhurst should ask my parents permission to marry me.
- We should, evidently, have a period of “engagement,” wherein frantic wedding planning ensues.
- It needs to be nice. I need to find a dress.
- I’m finding that my mother’s and grandmother’s quiet insistence that there must be a ring, an engagement, and at least a small ceremony (because, after all, the wedding ain’t only about the bride and groom) to be highly pressuring and influential.
“Your “traditions” are not mine, so you have to fill in the blanks if you want advice of substance.”
“Blanks” filled. See above.
“I’m certainly not going to read through 150+ comments before asking questions.”
You don’t need to read all 150 comments. The first five or six will give you a good gauge on the conversation.
“It can be hard to gauge the degree to which we’re allowed to ask questions of someone who claims to be private and yet writes about her engagement on a popular website.”
You realise her real name is not Milly Parkhurst, right? Those are hardly equal standards of publicity. And isn’t this supposed to be a secure, safe space to air these thoughts and feelings anyway?
“I did read your entire post, and it gives the impression that you don’t want people to know that you’re engaged. I read it again and that impression is still there, whether or not you intended it.”
Considering your above comments, I don’t think you’ve read the post – not with as open of mind as most others here. The general crux of this post, and the thread, is not about privacy. It’s about dealing with oft-archaic traditions that she doesn’t agree with but feels pressured into by family.
It seems you’ve come in looking for a fight, and frankly, this isn’t the place for it.
Congrats!
I was in a kind of similar situation. We were planning on just going to city hall, no fuss. But then we told our parents, and my mom definitely wanted a celebration. She sent me my grandma’s engagement ring, which I don’t wear but I do appreciate. I was planning on just wearing my jeans, and my mom wanted the white dress, and we compromised on a blue dress. My partner got a suit. We even bought gold bands (because my mom insisted we should have wedding rings – he wears his, I don’t wear mine except on rare occasions). We wound up doing immediate family only at city hall, and a more extended family lunch afterwards. The city hall wedding was a nice ceremony, non-denominational, the justice asked if we wanted to exchange rings or not, and there was no ‘giving away’. I think my dad was maybe disappointed, but he did get to make the only speech at our reception (which was just lunch at a nice restaurant). I know my parents probably would have preferred a church wedding, but they didn’t make it as issue thankfully.
I was super reluctant about it all, but I wound up having a great time. And it was a good reason to have a good meal and see family members that I hadn’t seen in ages. If you can make compromises without feeling like you’re betraying yourself, do so. It can be tricky to balance what you want with other people’s expectations. So much depends on how your relationship works with your family – if you think you can sit down and negotiate ‘this part is out of the question, but i will do that bit since it means a lot to you?’ it might be worth a try to give yourself a bit of peace over what exactly is going to happen. Good luck!
When I first started here, I was doing the DIY Bride series, as pretty much our entire wedding was a DIY affair. We didn’t want a bunch of traditional stuff, and there was some pushback from the families on some of it. I am kind of a pushy asshole, so I don’t know how comfortable you would be doing some of the things I did when people got too pushy, but if I can be of any help, I would be delighted.
You can check them out here-
http://persephonemagazine.com/category/features/diy-bride/
thanks! i’ll definitely check it out :)
Congratulations!
Ah families, why can’t they leave well enough alone? Mr. Marginally & I are not even discussing marriage, but my family has assumed we’ll get hitched anyway. And they also assume he’ll convert to Catholicism, since it isn’t okay for me to marry a Protestant (apparently). They’ve also decided where this imaginary ceremony will take place, and how many children will result from the union, as well as their sexes (But Mr. Marginally & I get to choose names. For now.).
In a situation like yours, I’d normally suggest eloping…but considering the families involved, that might not be the best option. Maybe you can make subtle comments over the engagement period, applying just enough pressure to get them to back off?
I don’t know if this will help you since it adds another country into the mix, but I can’t say enough good things about my wedding at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. It’s (comparatively) inexpensive to weddings in the US and you plan all of the wedding details in about 2 hours with the resort wedding coordinator. It’s literally a picture book with your flower selections, cake selections, etc and you just point to the selection you want. The resort has the photographer, officiant (we married secretly at the courthouse before we went down so we didn’t have to deal with the legal requirements of marrying in Mexico), restaurant for the dinner party afterwards, etc. It was so easy and, since booze is included in an all inclusive, it was super fun for everyone! We didn’t have attendants and 33 guests were willing to pay out of pocket to come down. Most people used the event as a vacation and even asked if they could bring assorted family members and other friends along, which we didn’t mind a bit.
Coolest thing? Our wedding certificate is all in Spanish and neither of us can read it, so we continue to make up “legal duties” that are supposedly in it.
I hope that helps you even a bit. Good luck!
for immigration reasons, we actually HAVE to get married in another country. we’re considering toronto because it’s close and pretty convenient.
I think you could totally use it being in Toronto as further justification for keeping it super small. Toronto is a REALLY expensive place to have a wedding. (Like I’ve heard that $75/head for food is at the low end of things for catering from recently married friends of mine). You could also try St. Catharines or other parts of the Niagra region. They are just across the border, really beautiful in the summer or spring, and would be less expensive too.
First of all, congratulations. Secondly, I can see that you have already gotten some excellent advice and encouragement. It’s so good to see a place where women who don’t want all the expected things from an engagement and wedding can come and talk to each other.
My husband and I both come from families where children are expected to respect their parents’ wishes and where the wedding is emphatically not about the couple but about the whole family, so I understand that you feel conflicted. I was lucky in that my parents knew that I would not go for all of the traditional stuff, but I still had more of a party than I wanted to please my family. In the end I had to decide what I was not willing to let go of and then compromised on the rest. I’m afraid I can’t give a better suggestion than that. Sometimes you will feel selfish, but you can’t give in to everyone.
We got around the big white dress and the father giving me away by going to the courthouse. I, too, dislike being the center of attention so we had a few close family members at the wedding, and then we had a big party where my parents and his mother got to shine and all of our relatives got to attend. When we decided to get married we had lunch with all three of our parents and said, hey, we’re getting married. That way they all knew before anyone else without his having to ask permission, which neither of us wanted. I didn’t have an engagement ring until the month before the wedding. It’s an emerald and it’s also the ring we used to get married. We split the price of it halfway. I don’t wear it all of the time. I know some more traditional people judge us as weird, but we got what we wanted and kept our parents happy.
dude! i have been completely overwhelmed with support from fellow persephoneers, it’s AMAZING. i was so afraid that people would have the opposite reaction, or accuse me of not actually wanting to get married. p-mag is my safe place, for real.
anyway, i love the idea of an emerald engagement ring. i think we’re going to end up using a ring my grandmother gave me for my engagement ring, which has little emeralds.
i’m really encouraged by your story because it shows that you can have it both ways – you can hold to your values while also pleasing the parents. :)
Hello, I am you! I, too, was in a long distance relationship across international borders. I, too, got married in my early 20s, and I, too, ran right up against my family’s expectations and wants. I didn’t want to do a quickie courthouse wedding within the 90 days window, then have a bigger ceremony. The problem with my family was religious. I ended up having the wedding I wanted (almost) that I planned and executed without my mom’s assistance (because my parents were going to boycott, you see). It was the worst, and best, time of my life.
well, rock on, lady.
the visa we’re pursuing relieves us of the pressure to get married in 90 days after filing paperwork – in fact, we have to get married first THEN file paperwork.
i suspect that this, too, will be the best and worst time of my life. ah well.
Congratulations :)!
After having been a couple for more than 12 years, and having lived together for more than 10, my husband and I got married in December. He proposed to me with a ring, down on one knee and all, and you know, I kind of loved it. I never thought that I wanted an engagement ring, but I really liked looking at my finger and being reminded that someone loves me (my husband had to take a job in another city, so we are temporarily living apart, and it’s just really nice to be reminded of him throughout the day). My husband didn’t think that he wanted a wedding ring either, but I said that if I was going to wear one, so was he. Now he says that he really likes wearing it as well. He forgot to put it on one day after doing the dishes, and he said that he just felt incomplete. So: I vote in favor of rings. Sure, people fuss over them at first, but that’s over pretty quickly, and after that, it’s just for you.
We toyed with the idea of a traditional wedding, and we toyed with the idea of a small wedding with just our parents, but in the end, we decided to elope. We considered Vegas, but it didn’t feel like “us”, and we found a deal on Priceline that would take us to Maui for a lower price than Nevada. Just the two of us barefoot on a beach with an officiant and a photographer. I wore a short white dress that my husband found at a local shop a couple weeks before the wedding for fifty bucks, he wore shorts and a white aloha shirt. It was absolutely the right decision for us. No stress, we didn’t spend a fortune, and it just felt right. We combined the wedding with the honeymoon, and it was perfect. Our parents were a bit sad to miss the traditional stuff, but got over it. We gave them copies of our photos.
If you think your families won’t ever get over it, eloping’s probably not worth it. But you might be surprised…
what an awesome story! i’m glad you were able to do what felt right for the both of you. it’s good that your parents were able to eventually move past their sadness at not being there for the actual wedding. congrats!
My keyboard is faulty so I’m just going to say congratulations and don’t lose your head.