When Parents Cringe
Apr 15th, 2008 by Diar
As I’ve told you, my family (especially my dad and my stepmom, the ones in my family that I have talked about this eco-wedding plan with so far) doesn’t take the ethical wedding idea earnestly.So at first, I expressed to them how my husband-to-be and I sought after a very simple wedding. I kept emphasizing the “the marriage is the most important thing, not the wedding” perspective, but they—until now—insist to carry out a pretty big wedding, not to mention that I’m the only daughter in the family. And what ironic is that, my dad keeps saying something like “It’s going to be a simple wedding—because we’re not rich, after all—but it’s going to be fancy-simple.” What on earth is that?
After some time, I told my parents about how I wanted to have a green wedding. I even had to say something about how green weddings had become a big trend now. The good thing, my dad cared to ask, “What’s that?” in a nice manner. So I gave them a few examples: that you might want to use a secondhand wedding dress instead of buying or making a new one, that you’d conduct a simpler kind of ceremony and reception, etc.
The response? They laughed. They even compared me with other brides-and-grooms-to-be who prefer new materials for their weddings, not secondhand ones. And their ‘magical’ denial is always, “What would other people think about that?”
My stepmom even told me to stop being confused and stressed and worried about my wedding planning and let others do the thing for me. Actually, that’s sort of customary in most of families here. Mothers and her relatives generally become the ‘powerful’ group when a bride is getting married. They decide what food to serve, how the decor is going to look like, how the wedding dress should be designed, etc. Brides, most of the times, can only suggest a few little things. So far, my parents have only allowed me to handle the wedding invitations based on my and my soon-to-be husband’s personal choices.
This is a pretty tough phase in my growing-up life, really, but I’m going to do this slowly.
Anyway, plan to show my dad some articles and pictures of actual couples who manage to have ethical weddings. Hopefully, this way of persuasion can work for him.