That’s not the situation here. Jeez.
How is it being a busybody when he’s coming to you for advice and money? “Hey, should I move out on my girlfriend?” is not really the same thing as “Hey, should I move out on my wife?” Sure, a lot of the conversation is going to be the same, but there is that pesky piece of paper thing.
Good luck with that bit of wisdom in a court of law. The state and every other person on the planet, and any extra terrestrials passing by, understand the marriage occurred at the time they were legally sanctioned.
This wasn’t a sin of omission, it was an outright lie. What’s worse is that this arrogant jerk rubbed their noses in it right after it took place.
What does this have to do with anything? Some people celebrate their anniversary on the date of the paperwork, others on the date of the wedding. The paperwork is the state’s business, as I already posted. Sometimes that paperwork happens before the wedding, after, or never. It’s still a wedding if they want it to be one.
It is being a busybody when the OP feels he is owed personal information. People often ask for advice based on incomplete information. It affects the quality of the response, but you don’t come back angry if you find out the circumstances you imagined weren’t the case.
Of course you are free to say that. You can be one of those parents who decides the kids aren’t getting married the right way, or he isn’t marrying the right person, or he’s bad because he wants a non-religious ceremony, and you can show them by withdrawing the money that you had been willing to provide.
Asking your advice entitles you to nothing. Asking you to chip in for the wedding costs entitles you to nothing.
Maybe he thinks you would like to be there to celebrate their marriage, not to get in a huff about the legal particulars or about the lack of an asterisk on the wedding invitation.
I realize now that you’re not the OP, so you’re just making up hypotheticals. Got this far, might as well continue…
You would think people would know they weren’t legally married, wouldn’t you? I did too. I was wrong. And yes, they got legally married when they moved out of state. That’s not when they celebrate their anniversary. And they didn’t feel the need to have a wedding then, because they’d already gotten married.
Thanks again to all for your responses.
Stop bugging us, Mr. Busybody, we don’t have to tell you anything.
You’re right, I forgot.
If the kid didn’t think he was doing something underhanded, he wouldn’t have confessed afterwards, as there would be nothing to confess to.
I don’t know why people are going out of their way to make it not a lie. Did someone feel deceived? Yes. Was this deception intentional? Seeing as he did it so his mother would come, yes. That makes it a lie. Did this lie get people to spend money they otherwise would not have? Yes. That makes it a scam.
What he thinks about the wedding is completely immaterial.
Let’s try this: I make $600 a month. My rent is around $500. I often wind up going hungry because I can’t afford food. My air conditioner is completely busted. My poor doggies got sick from the heat and stuff. Would you please contribute money to help me?
Nothing I just said is untrue. And my personal information is private, so I don’t have to share anything else. But if I got money from that, it would be a scam.
Why? Because I live with people who make a total of around $2000 a month. While I do go hungry, it’s a short time until they can buy me more. My air conditioner is busted–that’s why we have a window one instead. My dogs got sick because of a weird flea infection, and a $6 antiflea medications fixed it.
Despite everything being true, I was still lying. And since I was trying to get money from people who probably wouldn’t pay if they knew the whole story, it was a scam.
And if I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, I would have had no reason to come out and give the real story.
BigT, this post is not directed at you, but was triggered by something you said that made me want to clarify a couple of things.
My wife (Prodigal’s mother) and I always intended to attend the wedding. When it was in doubt whether a wedding would happen at all, we booked a vacation in California for that time and hoped for a wedding. We also always intended to pay for a portion of the celebration, actually a fixed amount that matched what we had contributed to the weddings of our other children.
The idea that the bride’s mother needed an unmarried couple actually getting married to justify a trip to the USA is speculation on my part, an attempt to come up with a reason for the lack of candor from Prodigal.
The part about the brothers and father of the groom not attending was explicit and argued about. It stemmed from some bad blood between Prodigal and his brothers and father and the expense and logistical difficulties of attending. Prodigal’s relations with his male blood relatives are fraught with baggage. He and I get along great by comparison.
Consider this 1 more vote for those who think people can celebrate their commitment to each other however they want.
There’s an issue about the deceit, though. If it was just the one issue about a secret marriage and then a public one, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. People’s lives are complicated enough; there’s no point in us adding to it by introducing more complexities with our expectations. I’d assume there were good reasons, many of which might not be appropriate to voice at this time (or perhaps ever). But there’s an issue of repeated deceit, and that’s troublesome.
But let me chime in with the fact that I got really good at lying to my parents (both lawyers, so I was well-trained!) I think I was in my 30’s when I got caught in a lie, and realized how utterly stupid it was for me to hide aspects of my life that my parents disagreed with by lying: the resulting loss of respect and trustfulness was far worse than the transgressions I hid. I learned my lesson and I’m pretty sure I haven’t lied to them once since then (I’m 57). It was a good lesson to learn, and I’m not proud that it took so long.
My suggestion would be to support PS fully in the wedding and the marriage, even if you think it’s a bad idea. Make your objections clear if you want to, but then give your blessing and move on; this is family. But be sure to clue PS in that deceit has a very great cost, one he should consider carefully before resorting to it next time.
2 points, despite the historical caveat. (And regardless of the caveat, that’s a commonly recognized symbol, even if it’s not commonly significant in point of fact.)
My point is we’re fools to impose our attitudes about ceremonies on others. Utter fools. We get no benefit from this, but it costs us and those we love. One lives a far richer life supporting others in what they choose to do than in quibbling about what color the linens should be, or when the certificate is signed. Well, I guess some folks enrich their lives by criticizing others. Joan Rivers made a career of it, which is why I generally adopted the policy to change the channel whenever I see her.
Right. Pissed off is a natural reaction. But the more important consequence is the loss of trust, which is important to convey. Then let PS decide whether trust is important or not in the future. For example, I tend not to give money to people who lie to me, even close relatives, because I can’t tell whether the reasons were valid.
I agree, but again, there’s a cost to deceit. As above, if this was the only case, it shouldn’t be an issue at all.
Feel free to apply your principles to your own life. It’s your perogative. Feel free to try to apply them to others as well, and see what it gets you. Especially the relatively arbitrary ones, without any ethical basis, just a matter of tradition. (Note that I’m committing the same error that I’m accusing you of. See how much fun it is, and how much I benefit from it?)
LC Strawhouse: Missed the edit window. My response is clearly non-sequitur to this comment of yours. My apologies.
That. This marriage you attented was very real in my book.
Certainly, he could have told you that technically he was already married, but it certainly wasn’t a “fake” marriage, and you weren’t a “prop”, especially since apparently they organized it so that family members (on both sides) would attend. So, your presence was in fact the point of the ceremony.
By the way, I agree that P lied and shouldn’t have, but I guess he thought something like “my relatives are so narrow-minded that if I tell them that we already signed the papers for practical reasons, they won’t want to attend our marriage ceremony”
And when I think of it, one of my brothers did exactly the same as Prodigal. When the ceremony took place, they had been married legally for a while, like Prodigal for very practical reasons, and they hide this fact to a part of her family (not parents and siblings, though. I remember her grandmother) who, being very religious, would have reacted badly (even though they knew they had lived together unmarried for years…go figure). We (close relatives who had been present a bit before the ceremony) were told to say, if asked, that the civil ceremony had taken place the day before.
This is off-topic, but this sort of thing is the reason why I wondered if it was odd that I have only been to two weddings in my life, including my brother’s, not that I mind, as such.
I guess I really don’t understand why the OP is so upset. They got engaged, signed the legal paperwork and had a ceremony/celebration with their families (in that order). As near as I can tell, they love each other and are committed to each other and want to have a real marriage, so what’s the issue?
Quite a few couples don’t do the legal paperwork at the ceremony, for a variety of reasons: sometimes there are just logistical issues that make it impossible or difficult at the ceremony, sometimes outside deadlines make the legal paperwork necessary at a different time than the ceremony (as in this case), or maybe just the couple don’t feel like spending time on legal paperwork when it takes them away from their families and friends celebrating with them.
Seriously, would the OP still be upset if they’d gone to the courthouse with their paperwork two days before the wedding ceremony? Would the marriage then be a sham? Would the OP still feel like a ‘prop’ rather than, I don’t know, a parent celebrating a life event with their child?
Maybe this is another way to put it. Would the OP have preferred that the couple had told everyone they got married back in the spring, and refused to have any kind of celebration with their families because that would be a sham? Really? You’d seriously prefer not to celebrate your son’s marriage with him?
And, I can’t help but notice that the OP’s wife’s first husband is evidently still alive. If they want to take a very traditional view of wedding ceremonies, they might have to wonder about whether their marriage is a sham; after all ‘until death to us part’ was traditionally taken seriously.
I suspect you’re projecting a bit yourself, frankly, given that I explicitly said people would be happy for you. But a lot of people who are planning a wedding, they don’t just want people to be happy for them–they want people to be excited for them. Unfortunately, when you’ve already been treating someone as married in every way, it’s just not all that exciting when they finally decide to throw a party to celebrate being married. Like I’ve said, I’ve seen a lot of hurt feelings over the subject over the years.
That’s the reason people are speculating that the brothers and father in the OP’s situation wouldn’t have gone to the wedding if they’d known PS was already married. People will go to a lot more hassle and expense for “OMG, you’re getting MARRIED!!!” than they will for “Oh, y’all are getting around to having a party to celebrate being married, cool.”
A religious ceremony is not for show; it’s to fulfill the sacrament in a lawful way in whatever tradition or denomination it is taking place in.
It seems that different people seem to place different amounts of value on the “legal paperwork” part of a marriage. Is there no difference between an engaged couple and a legally married couple in your mind? Is there no difference between calling off a wedding and getting a divorce?
My interpretation in reading this thread is that the OP feels that there IS some significance to the “legal paperwork” part of the marriage, and that it is important enough of a detail to mention to your family, the family who you are asking to help out with your wedding. It seems clear to me that the OP has no problem with there being a gap in time between the legal paperwork and wedding ceremonies so much, rather the OP is upset that he was not even informed of the legal paperwork having been done.