I can think of several couples who canceled their weddings–relatives, school friend, neighbor, etc. Most canceled after the invitations had gone out. Most of them married someone else within a few years. One couple essentially just postponed their wedding because the bride was dealing with mental health issues–they married the following year. Yes, it is painful and embarrassing- -having to contact everyone, return gifts, etc., but people will understand that canceling is preferable to divorce. I recall one “bride to be” was joking about divorce at her bridal shower. That was a bad sign!
In general I agree with the advice to not bad mouth either party, but there are times…
I help run a small wedding reception hall. A couple of years ago I get a call about 6 weeks before a wedding from the groom – they are cancelling the wedding. He is clearly upset and goes on to tell me that he came home from work and found her in bed with a guy that he works with and hates. Well, TMI, but. Our contract is signed by the bride to be, so I call her to confirm that the wedding is cancelled and she grudgingly admits that yes it is canceled and then she says “I don’t know what the big deal is, so he caught me with this guy. It was just a hook-up It’s not like he caught me with his best friend, who I’ve been sleeping with for the last year.” I almost called the guy back and told him to get new friends.
Wow.
Years ago, my H and I were looking through a cabinet in my in-laws house. Not snooping, looking for a board game. We came across a box of wedding invitations for my in laws that had a June date. They married in September. Mother in law confessed that she’d gotten cold feet but then came around again. They were married for over 50 years.
Someone in our town had cancelled a wedding a few years ago. It was planned to be at a beautiful spot that is known for its great events. They ended up spreading the word that its was now an open event - anyone could come and pay for a ticket and the money all went to charity. I missed it but have friends who went and said it was a blast.
It’s always tough to know when to speak up and when to keep your mouth shut. I was in a similar situation two years ago with a friend who was marrying someone I had serious reservations about (drinking problem). I did ask a few gentle but serious questions… and told her I would support her no matter what. It was a difficult conversation. They broke off the engagement but then got back together. So who knows?
I wonder if it’s more common for the bride-to-be or groom-to-be to back out. I’d think it would be the girl, since the guy’s usually the one who had to get up the guts/pony up the ring to propose.
I am constantly surprised by the kids we know (DH’s students age) who date for a long time, get married and are divorced within a year. I have to say it kind of irks me that I’ve given them wedding presents and all the rest of the hoopla. I always wonder if they already had doubts.
I once worked with a young woman who had been divorced about 2 years. She had married a longtime boyfriend someone she had known in high school and college. The issue that he was gay and not out of the closet emerged relatively soon within the first year of their marriage and his issue was that he thought he might be able to be married, have a family and all that and just ignore who he really was and what his identify wanted and needed. Because he was not happy with himself his way to compensate so that she would not leave him or force him to confront his issues and tell his family was to buy her lavish gifts and spend way too much money on furniture and decorating their apartment instead of saving to buy a house. The lavish gifts that he bought that she didn’t need or want caused them huge amounts of credit card debt and when they divorced, her credit rating was totally shot. She couldn’t get a car loan, had to move back home with parents. Ultimately she relocated to another state and although we are not in touch any longer, I know that has gotten remarried and has had a child.
Engagement break-ups do happen, and it’s actually a good thing. The best thing is to be non-judgmental and supportive. Perhaps she realizes that she just wasn’t ready. Wedding expenses? No matter how much you spend on the wedding, they’re not any more married. Why not go small? For our wedding, we did Chex mix for snacks, 7-up/lemonade for punch, and a $30 CD boom box for wedding music. We had a Wal-Mart wedding cake and we had the reception in our church basketball court…free of charge! 18 years later, we’re still happily married and none the wiser.
There is a reason for an engagement period before the wedding- it isn’t the finality of the legal commitment. Otherwise people would do the legal bit then plan the big church/party thing.
One nephew was in the Navy after HS- married his HS girlfriend when she graduated from HS. His sister was not in favor (she told me so). He went back to his ship for a year and she lived in a college dorm. Then they divorced. I guess it was common for sailors to want to be married, plus there was extra money for being deployed. That nephew had a second marriage ending in divorce (her drug habit) and now has a two year old child without being married (yet??). In today’s world paternity can be proved and men cannot get out of child support as easily years ago.
My H was engaged to a woman his mom and sister hated. If his dad had been alive, he would have hated her, too. I didn’t care for her much, either, and the feeling was mutual. After their pre-Cana, H wanted her to go for more counseling, but she refused. H went for some and eventually canceled the wedding, but not the engagement. About 6 months later, it was this girl’s birthday so he called her home to wish her a happy birthday. Her sister said she was on vacation with some girlfriends! A week later, she got back and it turned out she had eloped with some other guy on her vacation (a guy she’d been cheating on H with). She had her first child a few months later and mine came along a few months after that. H had to threaten to call her new in-laws and ask why she was keeping the engagement ring he gave her before she would return it.
I’m confused… this was your H?
I called off my wedding in 2016. Well, first we postponed it three months and cut back the guest list to a handful of immediate family and close friends. I should have realized that the profound relief I felt I felt when he agreed to the postponement was a huge red flag, one of many. We had been friends for a long time, and we’d done premarital counseling (with someone who, by his own admission, ought not to be counseling couples).
I’m not proud of how I handled the eventual cancellation. Although I’d had doubts about our engagement from the time he proposed two years before, I didn’t work up the courage to lay them bare and not be mollified by platitudes until Wednesday or Thursday of the week we were to marry. He yelled at me and cried his eyes out on Friday. The thought of hurting him further horrified me, and I spent the rest of the day shivering and texting my best friend under a blanket on the couch. Finally, at the last minute, I pulled myself together, went to the church, and told the pastor what I was dealing with. For once, he rose to the occasion and advised both of us to think things over seriously that night. I slept better than I expected and woke up in the morning still wavering. It wasn’t until I walked into the church that I knew, without a doubt, that I could not go through with the wedding. I took him into the pastor’s office and said my piece and held him while he cried again. It came out in the course of that conversation that his tears were not because of humiliation or fear of losing me but because he had promised his family that there would be a wedding that day.
A wedding. Not that he would marry me. I was just an accessory, the necessary piece that would make him a married man.
We still had the reception we had planned, a dinner at the local restaurant. I still flew off with him for our “honeymoon” in a different state; it was already paid for, so we would have lost quite a bit of money, and we managed to enjoy our vacation. The plan was for him to join me in my new town (we had been long distance up until that point) for us to try to work things out, and he did so a few weeks later.
Our attempts at reconciliation over the following four months were a disaster. He’d always had a habit of becoming blind with rage over minor problems, a fault that became more and more apparent. It also became plain that he was not merely a critical and unhappy person but verbally abusive. Counseling did not help our issues, but it did identify a possible mental health issue in him, and the therapist referred him to a psychiatrist. When he refused to go, I pressed him on it, and he grew so angry that, by his own admission, he would have hit me if I had been close enough for him to do so. That was the last straw. Two or three weeks later, he left, and I haven’t seen him since.
Wow. That was much more than I intended to write. I guess my point in saying this is that none of these problems were apparent to outsiders, even the people who knew us best. It’s very possible that a couple whose wedding is cancelled at short notice are dealing with more than just a hesitation to commit.
As someone who has been there, I’d make the following recommendations to those expecting to encounter a cancelled wedding:
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Try not to speculate about why it was called off. If the couple wants you to know, they’ll tell you. Please spare them the worry that people are talking behind their backs.
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If you’re someone with a financial stake in the wedding, I am sorry. I know that people paid quite a bit to travel to and prepare for our wedding, and I offered to make it right when we cancelled. But please don’t come to the couple in the immediate aftermath with your bills, demanding recompense, and try not to hold a grudge. If you’re a parent, after the dust has settled, it might be appropriate to talk about how to handle the finances with your child. I feel very blessed that, despite our limited resources, both his parents and mine were willing to eat the cost of the cancellation.
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Let the couple bring up the cancellation with you; don’t start the conversation about it.
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Don’t badmouth the other person; don’t say that your loved one will find someone better to marry.
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Parents, please no comments about how you’ve lost your chance for grandchildren! Whether the relationship was good or bad, your child is dealing with the loss of the future they thought they’d have. However difficult it is for you, the pain goes even deeper with them.
I’m not sure if this post answers the question, but I thought I ought to speak up. I’ve not shared my experiences before, and, as I mentioned, I’m not proud of how I handled the situation. I have zero regrets, however, about not marrying my former fiance.
My BFF (of 50+ years) broke off her engagement about 6 months before the wedding. Back then, little needed to be done much in advance, so she had a date and the church. I had known both of them in high school and beyond. I’ve told my story on other threads, but she had a master’s, he flunked out of college after a year. We were talking about her plans and she asked me what I REALLY thought of her fiancé. I asked her if she wanted an honest answer (we were 24 at the time). She did, so I said she could do SO much better and not much worse. They were too different: she was brilliant, he was average; she wanted kids, he was iffy; she wanted to leave our HS town, he was happy there; etc. I also thought she would be bored with him after a few years.
She broke her engagement the next day, and her parents later called to thank me. She met a wonderful man 6 years later and is still married to him.
If that question was for me, yes, it is my H I was talking about.
He and I became friends in grad school but we were never single at the same time. Shortly after he met this girl, I broke up with my long time bf and started dating casually. During his engagement, we did not see each other for 18 months because his fiance hated me. This is the girl I referred to in the toxic in laws thread as being the one who ironed H’s undies. That visit was the only time I ever met her. When he found out about her elopement, he called me to cry on my shoulder. Since I was single again (as in not dating as I had never been married before), we actually got together in person and the rest is history. When he finally got the engagement ring back, he wanted to sell it and get me a new one, but I actually really liked that one, so I kept it. From the time we met until we married was 11 years and one week. His wedding to the other girl would have been about 4 years before we actually married.
TechMm, wow, just wow
Long time,posters may recall that I moved to CA to marry my former HS b/f. We definitely had an attraction, and dated on and off, e.g college vacations. He came with me to Boston for my grad school interviews. He ended up in law school in CA, and me in grad school and then job in Boston. Years later, both of us single, we started a long distance relationship. Everything was fine until i moved out to CA. Disaster. It was hard, but I broke that engagement and so happy I did.
@Finnlet, thanks for your very helpful post.
You said:
I was hit once by a former long-term live-in boyfriend. Once was all it took, and I was out of there.
@VeryHappy, I’m so glad you got out of that situation right away!
So am I. 