<p>Well, there’s also the concept of breaking “family” dysfunction and going your own way and setting up your own traditions, like, “you can always come home if things don’t work out,” for example. :)</p>
<p>It’s natural to be a little upset about the troubled kid getting the attention. They always do, don’t they? I used to listen to that prodigal son story in church when I was a kid and wonder how the kid who stayed home and helped his dad and did everything ‘right’ felt about that party. I know, not very “good,” but I was young.</p>
<p>Now, I have my own kids and I see that I don’t love either of them more. So, I know, but you can’t know that yet. What you can know is that your parents have been worried about your sister for a long, long time, and in their “book” this is a solution. </p>
<p>It wasn’t right for her to “steal” your wedding date, but maybe, since it’s likely not going to work out, she’ll have simply reserved the date for you to use when the time comes. 21/2 years for something like this seems pretty dubious. (which is a good thing, as you know.)</p>
<p>So, since there’s nothing you can do about it, and since it isn’t happening for a loooooong time, I’d just put it out of your mind for now. It’s likely much ado about nothing, as the Bard says.</p>
<p>It’s one and a half years, and I only have so long to plan my own wedding before things will be booked up, so that ship has sailed so far as me getting the day I wanted unless this caves in the next six months-- which I guess is possible but then I am not sure how much in good taste it would be to jump in and snatch up her date the moment they break up, and then make my sister come to a wedding on the day hers was supposed to be. I am hoping after an evening of mourning I’ll get over it, because it really ISN’T worth starting a war over. I’m just really disappointed. Family traditions are /extremely/ important for me, the last entire year I have been planning a “traditions” themed wedding that all centered around honoring my grandparents, and that’s all a wash now. </p>
<p>But, focusing on the bright side, that is a lot of time for my sister to either rethink this or get to know the guy well enough to go in eyes wide open. He’s getting deployed before then, so she’ll also have lived through that before making the big commitment. I am still going to want to strangle her if she backs out after squatting on my wedding date so I can’t have it all that time, but I’d rather she have that opportunity to realize what she’s doing than have her get married next month like she originally wanted. So I am just going to try to focus on that, and try to come up with a new wedding theme for myself, I guess. Sounds like she’s using the same color scheme I was planning to use, too. Not sure whether or not that bothers me. </p>
<p>Of course, after all the DRAMA that erupted after my graduation party a couple of weeks ago, I announced (jokingly) that I was going to elope because it just wasn’t even worth it to try and throw a family party, so maybe I’ll just do that and take my stupid day.</p>
<p>Did yoru sister know that was the date you and yoru fiance picked? If so, thats pretty tacky. You could plan a double wedding and then maybe she’ll drop out anyway…</p>
<p>Emaheev, I of course don’t know you or your family, so take this with a grain of salt, but you might want to start basing your future life around what’s best for you and your fiance, and forget about the family tradition. Maybe you’re just upset and are only presenting the downside because it’s all kind of raw right now, but it all sounds so dysfunctional, that I would probably just look at my whole family and say “whatever” and then go make your own happy life.</p>
<p>Ema, I know you are dissapointed… but maybe you should think about it this way… Your wedding should be about you, not about your grandparents… Maybe you can start a new tradition.</p>
<p>Once you are married you are going to have to figure out how to interact with your family and your in-laws without everyone getting mad. This becomes particularly difficult at Christmas. The solution for me involved a shift in thinking of who my family was, (it turned out it was my husband and kids). A few years spent with us staying put at Christmas not even seeing them turned out to be so much easier and less stressful. Everything fell into place from there.</p>
<p>Your wedding would be a good time to start thinking in terms of you and your fiance, rather than honoring your grandparents. As long as the weather is nice any date should work.</p>
<p>“the last entire year I have been planning a “traditions” themed wedding that all centered around honoring my grandparents, and that’s all a wash now.”</p>
<p>Why can’t you honor your grandparents on any day of the year?</p>
<p>So, if you really want a theme wedding, how about: “Traditions, old and new”–on whatever day you feel like. I agree with the above poster who said: it all sounds so dysfunctional, that I would probably just look at my whole family and say “whatever” and then go make your own happy life. </p>
<p>Your sister sounds like she just trying to escape a dysfunctional situation. It probably won’t end well, but it doesn’t appear from your posts that your sister gets much real support from your folks. So she’s desperately looking elsewhere for it. </p>
<p>Go grab the happiness you deserve, you sound like a fine young woman. Best wishes to you.</p>
<p>Why do you have to start over?
I confess I’ve never heard of a wedding having a real “theme” per se (it’s not a bar mitzvah!), but why couldn’t any family traditions you wanted to pass on, or any special family members you wanted to honor, be done on a date other than your gparents’ 60th wedding anniversary? Lots of birthday / anniversary parties aren’t actually held on an actual date, but some date nearby that is convenient. Everyone’s happy to celebrate great-grandmother’s birthday the week before so that people can be in town, or on Saturday night instead of Tuesday so people can come to dinner. I don’t see why this is different.</p>
<p>I thought the sister was rushing into the marriage. Why can’t her wedding be on the grandparent’s anniversary in 2011 and Ema’s wedding on the anniversary in 2012, 1.5 years from now?</p>
<p>She was rushing in, she wanted to get married next month, but once she realized last night that there was no way in hell my mother was going to be able to throw a wedding together that quickly and that she couldn’t just go to the court house and then have a “real wedding” later, she reneged. What I have been told is that marine is being deployed in March, and will be home and have a month leave in Oct 2012, so that was why they picked it-- my mom pushed it so they’d have time for a honeymoon. She doesn’t care about the anniversary, that’s just what’s convenient for marine’s schedule, which I can’t really complain about. It sucks all over but it’s nobody’s fault, so I am just trying to move on and come up with a better idea. </p>
<p>What had excited me about the “traditions” bit was because I had realized that I could get married on my grandparent’s anniversary, and they are sort of my role models in marriage so that was really cool that their anniversary just so happened to fall on a saturday the october I had wanted to get married in, and it’s a tradition in the family to get married in October-- EVERYONE has, and I had found all these different ways to tie family traditions in that I was excited about, but none of them are going to work in a different season and I can’t stagger my wedding on top of hers. So that isn’t going to happen anymore unless I pick a different year and that SURE AS HECK isn’t happening. XD So I’ll pick something else, we’ll just have to be the first ones to pick a different month and I’ll have to change everything I had in mind. It’s not earth shattering, it’s just a day and I get the marriage I wanted in the end and no one can touch that, it’s just a bit of a disappointment. Having slept on it I do still feel like we’re losing out for not being the irresponsible ones, but such is life for the middle child. :P</p>
<p>I haven’t left my room for the day yet to see what’s going on, but my mom texted me and told me I needed to put on a happy face when I see her because she is upset that her friends are not being supportive. I decided a year ago that I’m not inviting any of my friends to our wedding since they couldn’t be appropriately happy for me, either, so I know how she feels. So I guess this is the part where I go do that so that we’ll still have a relationship when all this is over, and so maybe she’ll listen to me when I suggest an IUD. :P</p>
<p>Well, that was weird. I just went to tell her how happy I was for her, and was actually genuinely happy, and she blew me off and just looked uncomfortable. She doesn’t know I was upset yesterday so it can’t be that. Maybe she’s just grumpy because of something her friends said. I know my feelings were really hurt when mine wouldn’t support me-- I’d been with my boyfriend for two years, we had a healthy relationship, and I was planning on waiting until we finished school but they all told me I’d be divorced in six months because we were too young, so I can only imagine what her friends said. It seems that when people our age can’t imagine being ready for marriage themselves, they can’t imagine that anyone else their age could be ready, either. Though, I suppose my sister really isn’t ready, but if she makes it through his first deployment and really waits until 2012, maybe she will be by then.</p>
<p>I’ve got this really long quiz that’s like “things to discuss before you get married” that my boyfriend and I did when we first started talking about marriage, and I think I’ll send that to her-- it’s an interesting thing to go through. When we did it a year ago we got into the world’s biggest snit over buying versus leasing. XD</p>
<p>I missed that he was verbally abusive. That is very alarming and certainly an even worse start. On the military side of things,
</p>
<p>If he deploys in March that means he’s scheduled to return in October (Marines are on a seven month deployment schedule.) Scheduled is not the same as guaranteed to be home, deployments can go long depending on what is going on in the world. Personally, I think trying to schedule a marriage to a Marine more than a year in advance is nuts but that’s just me. I think marrying someone who has been verbally abusive is a terrible, terrible idea no matter what time of year.</p>
<p>I suspect your sister’s interest will not hold and this marriage will not take place, which really would be the best thing. But if her interest does hold, hopefully they’ll both mature a bit.</p>
<p>Your grandparents are the model for a marriage? I can tell you right now how they managed to stay married for 60 years. They put each other first, to the exclusion of parents, in-laws and siblings. In all your posts we barely hear anything about your fiance. Mostly it is about your parents, your grandparents and your sister.</p>
<p>Maybe someone will discuss that with her, the possibility that he won’t be back on time-- I am betting my mom encouraged her to push a long engagement so she’d have time to grow up and back out. It doesn’t sound like she’s prepared to book anything right now anyhow. I have ALL KINDS of wedding planning stuff around the house</p>
<p>The only thing re: verbal abuse I’ve personally witnessed since August (the prior incident was during their couple week encounter before then when she was seeing someone else, and he was only with her to get back at her for cheating-- i think that counts, she doesnt) is that he is really insensitive to how his being in the military affects her. When he was only supposed to be fixing tanks he had assured her he had a relatively safe job and she had nothing to worry about (dubious at best, but we knew that), and then when he called to tell her he’d changed to the “most dangerous job there is” and she got upset because she was worried, he yelled at her and scolded her for not being proud enough of him. She thinks this is just the reality of being a military wife, and maybe it is, but I feel like he could have gotten that point across more gently and if this is how it is she is going to be in hell for the entire time he’s in the service. We are not a military family, we’re not used to this and my sister has depression and anxiety as it is, you can’t just throw something like that at her and not give her any support to deal with it. He had no sympathy whatsoever for her fear. That’s what scares me, and I wonder what other aspects of their life that will trickle into. She is a very fearful, insecure person.</p>
<p>If he has yelled at her twice already, regardless of the reason, red flags shoudl be going off!! I can’t quite follow who whas getting back at who for cheating, but regardless, htis sounds like a recipe for disaster. Abusive guys like timid women to boss around. Make your wedding plans. I’ll bet $10 hers won’t happen.</p>
<p>More than 40 years ago, one of my dad’s cousin’s daughters married on her parents’ 25th which was her grandparents’ 50th. She even managed to have the same minister who had married the parents and grandparents do the ceremony. As this fell in the middle of the week, the only people actually at the wedding were the various grandparents, parents, and siblings. All of the rest of us got to turn up at a blow-out reception about two weeks later. The bride wore her gown, and the groom wore a tux. We had a great time.</p>
<p>If you really want that particular date. I say go for it. Let your sister and her Marine sort their own things out. They may decide to elope long before then, or they may break up long before then. If it ends up that your family has two weddings that are the kind that a bunch of people are invited to, and they fall in the same week, well the relatives who are showing up for both of them can just book an extra day at the hotel.</p>
<p>Well, Pea, I hadn’t meant for the thread to be about my wedding-- that just came up in yesterday’s drama because I was disappointed about how the date came out, and my parents tried to tell me that my engagement wasn’t as serious as my sister’s is because we weren’t willing to book a church immediately without getting our finances in order-- I think that would ruffle most young couples feathers.</p>
<p>My drama aside, it sounds like things are all pretty messy but the dust is settling-- this has been one extremely tense house this week. My mom did push for them to wait until after his first tour to give them more time to think about it and so that the reality of this lifestyle will be more clear to her before she locks herself in it. My sister agreed because she wants a big wedding and it will take my parents that long anyway to save up. So for now we just wait and see what they do. I am not as worried about it if they are going to wait that long, when I started the thread the plan had been for her to get married NEXT MONTH so this isn’t /quite/ as scary, there’s time for her to wise up and for them to grow up-- maybe by then things will be better. And my mom made it clear that sister really has no idea when she wants to get married and that she is just shooting for that October, so I guess maybe I could still get my date if we get the money together. I am tired of being angry about it at this point and don’t have the energy to be upset either way, what will be will be. I just wasn’t expected to be blindsided by the engagement police yesterday telling me that I had no place making any plans since my engagement wasnt as legitimate as my sister’s.</p>