Dealing with your own parents during your planning can be one thing but… you know what they say, when you marry someone – you marry their whole family! In a lot of ways this is amazing, you gain new brothers, sisters and of course parents. I’m really lucky that my soon-to-be in-laws are awesome and we get along really well.
But inevitably, there’s bound to be a time when you’re likely to butt heads with your fiancé’s parents during your wedding planning. And of course, you’re also likely going to disagree with your own parents as well.
So how do you handle this? Here are some tips and tricks of how Karma and I made sure we got what we wanted, but also considered our parents’ opinions during our wedding planning process.
Have an initial meeting
Karma and I made a document with all of the rough details of our wedding. Everything from our decor ideas, to rough costs, to a mock itinerary of how we thought the days would go. This was really helpful for making sure that at least overall, everyone was on the same page. It was also a good opportunity for everyone to ask questions and clarify things that were on their minds. This is a bit of a hump to get over, but it’s bound to happen and for us it was good to go through this and put out any little fires that did occur. We also made sure to have dinner together afterwards, this way there’s no tension in case there are any disagreements and everyone leaves on a happy note!
Only speak to your own parents about situations in which you disagree
This really helped for us – especially because there’s a language barrier. Everyone’s communication dynamic is different, and chances are that your fiancé and their parents have already developed some sort of dynamic. Providing it’s a healthy one, it’s probably just easier to relay your thoughts to your fiancé and have them communicate them to their own parents. In person, if you’re all in the same room and you feel comfortable doing this on your own – go for it! In my experience, when you’re not there in person and things can get lost in translation, relay your thoughts and have your fiancé speak to their parents, and you speak to yours.
Always involve them when you can, but don’t make decisions for other people (including your parents)
To be honest, Karma and I didn’t want a large or luxurious wedding but we realized that for immigrant parents, their child getting married is a sign of success and celebration. So we decided that to a certain extent, this celebration was also really important for our parents and thus – we decided to involve them as much as we could without compromising too much. For example, once we chose our venues we took our parents to see them before we made our down payment, this way they had the ability to approve and be there when we made the final decision. We also involved them when choosing things like food, so that they had their input and we can make sure their guests are getting to eat what they want!
Compromise, compromise, compromise
Again, as much as this is our day, Karma and I really place a lot of emphasis on our parents and the sacrifices they made as immigrants to give us the life we have. Thus, we really try to compromise everywhere we could to also make sure that they’re happy and they feel like it’s their day too (because really, it is).
One example of our compromise was on the size. Our parents wanted our wedding to be slightly bigger, to accommodate their many friends, family, co-workers etc. We came to a compromise and decided to invite certain guests to the wedding and others to just the reception. In the end this ended up working out better too because some of our older guests expressed that they’d enjoy our Hindu ceremony and mini reception more than a full on party anyways!
Those are just some ideas, but you get the gist – there’s always a way to make it work for both parties!
I hope the tips that we used throughout our planning process will also be helpful to you.
Just remember, everyone’s experience is different and that filters into their wants/needs/demands. As long as the right communication process is implemented, and things are approached/dealt with in a calm fashion, there shouldn’t be a problem having everyone get a little of what they want! (We hope so anyways!)
Thanks for reading!
