I’ll echo what others have said - (1) it’s NOT a wedding; you’re already married, and (2) if you’re asking people to travel long distances, or to another country, at their own expense, don’t expect them to come.
A similar situation just happened to me. My very best friend in the whole world ran off to Las Vegas to get married. There was no way I could afford to go to that! None of their friends could either, so they had only like 4 people at their wedding (not even their parents could attend!). However, in a few weeks, they are having another “wedding” at my friend’s mom’s church, just for show or whatever. Well, I in no way consider this to be a real wedding, and if it weren’t just a few minutes away, I probably wouldn’t go. They asked me to be a “bridesmaid,” and I said OK… and then I was told to just wear any dress, as long as it was pink. Well, I’m not going to go out and buy a pink dress for a fake “wedding” (I do not wear pink, so it would be something I would never wear again). Now if it were a real wedding, I would be more than happy to buy a real bridesmaid dress, and I would even travel. But not for a “wedding” redux.
So anyway, I don’t really think you have any right to be angry. You could have postponed your real wedding a bit so that everyone could have attended, if that really meant so much to you.
Not if we wanted to live in the same country we couldn’t. Which is the only reason we had a civil ceremony first. We’d been in a long-distance relationship for a year already–we weren’t willing to stretch that out any more than necessary.
Sometimes thats the choice we have to make but we also have to accept that the family we are making it harder for may not be able to make all the accomodations we would like of them. (Damn I think that’s the smartest thing I have ever said and I’ll bet it’s still wrong somehow.)
That is the choice I had to make for my wedding. Half my family is out here in California and the other half is in Oklahoma but most of her family is out here so we had the wedding here. The only people from Oklahoma that showed up was my dad, grandma and one of my aunts. The other aunts and cousins did not come but I was fine with that and felt a little bad because it was our choice that screwed them out of being able to come to my wedding because they could not afford to.
I do agree though at least hearing from them that they are not coming would be nice and relieve some pressure. Maybe one of you needs to contact them to get the no. At least then the air would be cleared up.
Not even a few months? Well, in that case, you made your choice that being together ASAP was more important than having a real wedding with all of your relatives. So don’t complain about it now - you can’t have both.
People are clueless on the concept of the RSVP today - they do NOT regularly send in their notes, emails, etc. Heck, I try hard and still have to be harassed at times.
For fun I checked on what it would take to get from Chicago to Nova Scotia next month. The plane ticket alone is $600. So, let’s do some mental math:
To go to a wedding ceremony / celebration of the (as you admit) black sheep of the family:
Plane: $600
Hotel: Another $600? Assume 2-3 nights lodging
Food: $100+
Parking/taxi/airport shuttle: Another $100 - $200 easy
Simply put - the numbers hit $1,500 pretty fast for one person to fly to a wedding. When that is for relative with minimal direct contact, a lot of people make the decision to not go.
I make good money. I still skipped a cousin’s wedding after I ran the numbers and came up with over $2k in costs to go. That is a chunk of disposable income that I chose not to dispose of to just be another face in the crowd.
The worst I would take this is “They don’t think it is worth $1,500 to be guest at my ceremony. Oh well.”
From me (a random person on a message board): Congrats, and enjoy! I hope the ceremony is a great one, and I wish you the best.
Jayn, don’t expect anyone who hasn’t gone through this ordeal with the USCIS to understand the choices and sacrifices that they force you to make when you want to bring a fiance into the country. Fuck, my own sister didn’t get it, and pitched holy fits about our plans not meeting with her timetable or approval and whatnot. It got so incredibly frustrating to deal with, I finally put up a website so everyone could see the bullshit we were dealing with and leave us the hell alone about it.
I, too, was very sad and disappointed that so many of my husband’s family and friends weren’t able to make it over from Denmark for our ceremony. Everyone had lots of good reasons (really!); pregnancy travel restrictions, just lost a job and bought a house at the same time, etc. And my husband’s step-sisters couldn’t afford to bring their whole families and simply wouldn’t travel that kind of distance without their spouses or children. The only thing you can do is accept it and focus on making this the best ceremony and party you can.
The only other thing that I would recommend is, as far as the sister who may be able to get the time to come, but can’t afford it – pay for it yourselves! We did that with Thomas’s sister, who is his only “full” sibling and whom I refused to get married without, if expense was the only deterrent. We just made adjustments in the wedding budget elsewhere (flowers, photographer, etc.) and considered it part of the wedding expense. Trust me, you will never be sorry if you do this. But make sure it’s understood by all (including yourselves) that this is not a gift and not a loan, it’s a wedding expense, plain and simple.
Congratulations, and I wish you and your husband the very best of luck!
To answer some of your questions, no there wasn’t a big party nor were there gifts at the first ceremony, no they’re not broke, and yes they knew last summer that we’d be having a ‘real’ ceremony later. We always made that known, and told them the date as soon as we had one.
Thanks for the feedback all. I will see about getting in contact to confirm if they are/aren’t coming. I just needed to vent my frustrations and clear my head a little bit.
Ooh, link? And when did you go through all this? The fees just went up last year, which was another factor is rushing the legal aspect–waiting even a couple months would have cost us an extra grand.
Hasn’t the U.S. started requiring passports for travel to Canada and Mexico? That could be complicating things for folks as well.
I didn’t even want to go through the RSVP headache for my wedding. Thankfully, our plans were such that I didn’t need an accurate head count. I just planned on a 60-70% of the people I invited turning up.
Try not to fret too much - the only people from my husbands side of the family were his parents and a single family friend. It didn’t dampen the fun of the day, because we decided not to let it. The way I see it (and I know people will disagree but,) an invitation is just that, it’s an invite to attend, not a summons.
Here it is, along with the corresponding checklist. It’s very out-of-date now, as we went through this in 2002, right after all kinds of changes that were instituted as a result of the 9/11 attacks, and I haven’t looked at it, let alone updated it, in probably 4 years.
Why is everyone assuming this would be any different if the civil ceremony hadn’t already taken place? I’d expect his family to behave in just the same way regardless. It’s expensive to travel, people may have other plans for their vacation time/dollars, and besides, believe it or not, that’s a whole separate country up there, and some people don’t have passports, and may not wish to get them just for a wedding.
But, I agree with others, your expectations may be too high–especially given the travel thing and the fact that this is not the first, legal ceremony. If it’s really important to you that your husband’s side of the family do something to show their support for you and your husband and your wedding, you may want to have a simple, informal, gathering with limited travel involved–which maybe doesn’t even come with the word “wedding” anywhere near it.
And you still won’t get everyone to RSVP.
And really, no one’s going to care that the wedding is 90% or more family of the bride, especially with the travel factor involved.
It’s a long distance, with considerable time and expense involved. I wouldn’t expect very many of them to make it. Not to mention the border crossing considerations. That said, they should have let you know. RSVP means respond, no matter what. Not telling you one way or the other is just rude.
If that’s the only, or main, thing holding them back, what about a party where you live, to celebrate your anniversary or something? Then the midwest people could be with you for that. It wouldn’t be quite the same, but it would be something, and it might help establish more contact in the future.
Don’t let this get you down. Do what you have to, phone calls or whatnot, to find out if they plan to be there, then have a nice wedding.
No, this is pretty much the type of situation I was talking about, from the Canadian perspective (where Jayn is from, and where her family still is, and where I am). If someone gets married away, you expect them to have the party when they come back. We wouldn’t really be focussing on the wedding aspect of it, though - it would be more of a reception. Weddings and receptions are usually split; one at the church, and the other at a hall or something; this is just more of a split than usual.
Are you treating this like more of a party/reception than wedding, Jayn?
And for the record, from everything I know about partying with Maritimers, your husband’s family is going to miss out.
I can see why the USA is different, but I dunno. I’ve had a passport since I was 16 (the only country I could travel to without one was the RoI). It’s no big deal, but I suppose it’s a shame that this wedding has fallen during the adjustment period.
To the OP - I’ve done the USCIS thing, so I know how difficult it can be. Specifically, I know how little people understand about the requirements of the K1/CR1 and to some extent, they seem willfully unable to comprehend.
Bear in mind that most folks conveniently fall in love with someone from the same country, and so are never faced with the prospect of months or years in a bureaucratic hell, separated from their partner without knowing when they can meet again. They never had to blow whole months salaries on three days of desperate love. They didn’t stand at the airport gate, waving off the love of their life in floods of tears, knowing that their fates were in the hands of government officials who try their best, but have thousands of others in identical situations to worry about.
So people are probably thinking “But they’re already married!” The idea of a technicality marriage just so you can be together doesn’t occur to many folks. “Surely it’s not really like that!” they tend to think. All the patient explanations in the world won’t get the point across.
I don’t know what to say about your concerns, except that I wish you the best, and urge you to have the happiest day of your life when your ceremony comes around.
You know, stuff like this breaks my heart. I feel for you Jayn. You did what you had to do and now you’re simply frustrated at the lack of an answer, with the possible reason of the family not coming over things that don’t seem to make a lot of sense to me (IE: I decide whether or not this counts as a “real” wedding. I can’t fathom what difference that would make if the person involved is someone you love – family member, best friend, whatever – and you want to be part of the celebration. Otherwise, I believe like my loved one’s feelings are more important, especially if it leaves me doing something [or not] that seems less than respectful.) and aren’t really relevant if you are operating with honorable intentions. I mean, you’re not trying to score gifts here.
Anyway, you probably are stuck between a rock and a hard place if their attitudes are like that. I’d say focus on who will be there, what the service means to you and how important your relationships are (in- and outside of this context). Ultimately, it doesn’t matter nearly as much about the peripherals as it does about the meaning. Fixate on that and everything will turn out golden.
Congratulations and good luck on your wedding. I’m sure it will be an absolute beautiful and blessed one, and for those in attendance, you’ll all be grateful that you could share it.
Anyone who willingly misses out on a Nova Scotia wedding can’t be right in the head.
Jayn, I’m willing to be adopted into your husband’s family if it gets me an invitation to the party.
In all seriousness, though, I can understand and empathise with having to skip a wedding because it’ll simply cost too much to get there and back, let alone stay a few days… We very nearly had to do it when a close friend got married in Michigan last year but decided to go anyway as many of his friends and family couldn’t do the trip, and did have to opt out of another friend’s wedding in Cali this year because both time and money were lacking. No one planning a wedding expects ALL their guests to show up, and will usually be understanding about it.
However, there is NO excuse for not sending a prompt RSVP so that the couple can plan appropriately. That’s just plain rude.
And quite frankly, I’m amazed at the number of people who don’t consider it to be a “real” wedding simply because you took care of the legalities in advance. I’m wondering if it’s a regional thing, because all of us Canucks seem to have no issue wrapping our brains around it.
