I was reading another thread and it had mentioned that the future Mother in Law was being picked up at the airport on the weekend of the wedding and all they had to go on was a 2 year old description.
Is it normal in the USA for you not to meet the in-laws until very late in the relationship:confused:
When did you first meet your in-laws?
I drove from Baltimore to New York, picked up my soon-to-be fiance, drove to Laguardia airport, and took a flight to Pittsburgh. I met my (future) mother-in-law on Saturday afternoon, and met my (future) father-in-law when we all went out to dinner on Saturday night. The funny thing was, they were so overwhelmed that they were meeting a (future) son-in-law that they barely said a word the entire night, and the future Mrs. KVS was in tears after they left. They came around by Sunday morning, though.
I should have added that this was a week before we got engaged, and 7 months before the wedding.
I first met them when I was dating their daughters roommate during Freshman year in college. We gathered at Lady Chance’s parents place just prior to a gaming convention and I stayed with the roommate in Lady Chances bedroom with Lady Chance also there.
Way to start things off right!
My beloved was still living at home when we started dating, so meeting the In-Laws happened quite naturally.
Grim
The (then) future GrizzWife and I were working together in the DC area and took a, last-minute, Fouth of July getaway to her parent’s yet-unfinished home near Bar Harbor ME. This trip was to inform them that I had asked her to marry me.
Because flights were so expensive last-minute, we took the overnight train from DC to Boston, then picked up a rental-car and drove the rest of the way (six hours).
Her Mom, the ultimate hostess (step aside, Martha Stewart) greeted us with open arms and a snack. Her Dad was on their beach (they have a beachfront home) picking mussels.
We walked down to the beach and saw her Dad some 50 yards away bent over, picking mussels and wearing an ugly purple felt hat. His first words to me were yelled from that distance…
“Hey you two! Get offa my beach!”
I can’t imagine any nicer couple to have for in-laws.
I first met my future father-in-law at my girlfriends appartment. I was drinking a beer. He was alternating coffee and brandy-Sevens (mixed half and half, no ice) chain smoking Lucky Strikes, and giving us a lecture on the evils of marijuana.
He was best taken at a very long distance. Fortunately, for most of our married life he lived over 800 miles away.
I wonder sometimes. I mean, I know it’s a movie cliche (e.g. Meet the Parents), but it seems like American society makes WAY too much ado over meeting one’s SO’s parents.
I met my in-laws after my wife and I were dating two months. If she had been reluctant to have me meet them, that would have been a huge red flag.
Before I met my wife, when I dated other women, I always made an effort to meet my date’s/girlfriend’s parent(s). When the women I’d date lived at home with their parents, I’d never just show up, pick up their daughters, and cruise. I’d always stop in, introduce myself to her parent(s), and strike up some small talk.
Honking the horn for your date from the driveway, like you see in movies? Extremely bad form IMHO.
Others’ MMV.
I think he introduced me to them a week after our first date and 3 weeks before we eloped. They were nice but a bit reserved - he tells me I intimidated them. ME? Intimidating?? Pshaw!!
He met my folks after we were married but before we told them. My dad’s first words upon hearing we’d eloped: “You’re not pregnant, are you??”
It was almost 19 years ago - I think both sides of the family have gotten over the initial dismay and our hasty courtship and nuptials.
Guess I should have mentioned that I was one month shy of turning 30 and he had just turned 27. So it’s not like we were impetuous kids…
Very shortly after I met my wife, her grandfather passed away. So, it ended up that the first time I met my father-in-law, he was sitting shiva for his father.
Zev Steinhardt
… and I should point out, that even though my wife and I had only known each other for a few weeks, we both knew that this relationship was matrimony-bound. So when I visited my father-in-law-to-be that day, I knew he was going to be my father-in-law.
Zev Steinhardt
I met my first wife’s mother, Millie, at the start of one of our early dates. Julie and I had hit it off very well . . . very well, if you get my drift. It was just a quick hello before Julie and I headed out. In the course of the evening, the date ended up back at my apartment, where Julie and I spent the night together for the first time, pretty much as we expected.
The next morning, I got a phone call from my boss at work. Millie hadn’t been told what we had planned, and knew nothing about me other than my name and place of employment. She had definitely not expected her daughter to be out all night and was frantically wondering who and where I was.
Needless to say, it wasn’t the best of terms to start out. But it did get straightened out and, after a little awkwardness on my part, she warmed to me quickly. (She even sided with me at the time of the divorce.)
I kind of wondered what they thought of me at work, though. 
I met my ILs long before I met my husband (epeepunk). I had a dance class at their house, he was in boarding school (nearby, but not living at home). I was all of 14. I didn’t hook up with epeepunk until our early 20’s. I didn’t start going over to their house for dinner and other events until around when we were engaged. But I knew them.
Distance is usually a factor - lots of people go to college and get jobs far from family, and then hook up with people who are far from their family, which means ‘meeting the parents’ is a long-distance proposition. Without the college shifting around thing, there’s a higher likelihood of a local hookup and more familiarity with ILs before the fact.
Lessee… of my friends, I can’t think of one who married someone who is also from nearby. Few relatives did, either (my youngest brother, my second-youngest sister…).
I met my future mother-in-law the day before her son was going to have major surgery on his head. This was several years before we got married (unfortunately, she died before our wedding). She flew up to NY from Florida and took us out to dinner. I spent the next day in the hospital with her while we waited for the operation (a success!) to be over, then I watched her in mom-takes-charge mode when hospital staff “lost” him in post-op (they put his stretcher somewhere, then couldn’t remember exactly where he was). She stayed for a while during his recovery. It was weird to spend all that time in the hospital with my boyfriend’s mother, but we got along very well.
I met his father on Father’s Day, early in our relationship. Nothing like spending Father’s Day with someone else’s father and his 3 sons, when you hadn’t met him or his other two sons before. But it was a nice day anyway.
I first met my wife’s parents about a year and a half AFTER our wedding. Worst two weeks of my life. Had I know then what I know now and had been given the choice, I’d have taken two weeks in solitary at Cook County Jail.
The wife’s parents are (almost) subsistence farmers in a third world country far, far away. Somehow, a few years after our visit, they hit the US Visa lottery and were given ten year tourist Visas, which, given their present health conditions, is probably life.
So we don’t go there anymore, (yee ha) but they come visit us for eight weeks at a time, twice a year. My wife insists this is normal.
Among my more typical friends, I know many gals who don’t want to meet the parents right way (some would prefer the weekend before the wedding) because the more family one knows, the harder it will be to break it off.
I’m not certain but I think I must have first met my father-in-law a year or two after we were married. I have not yet my mother-in-law. Pretty sure that I never will, although I did see her at my sister-in-law’s wedding. Have been married for 12 years this month, plus we were together for about 4 years before we were betrothed. I’m fairly certain that this is not the norm, and I wouldn’t recommend it.
I checked, at first, to see if you were in the UK or similar. Many furriners don’t realize just how vastly big the USA is. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, however, since Canada is darned big, too.
I live 450 miles from my mother-in-law, nearly 600 from my father-in-law, and around 1200 miles from my parents. Visiting for casual reasons when dating can be hard - families being scattered around the country is pretty common.
That being said, since my wife was living at her mother’s home when we met, I met my future MIL on our first date. I met her father about six weeks later. My wife met my parents only after we had started living together, maybe 3 months after we started dating (…not my normal pattern but there was external pressures that accelerated the “schedule”.)
I have no f-i-l as my husband has not spoken to him in over 10 years, and from what I’ve heard, that’s just fine. I met my m-i-l at 8am after driving all night from Denver to Sioux Falls, SD. Leifsdad wanted to get his stereo from his mom’s house and didn’t tell her we were coming. I also discovered that he hadn’t told her that he had a girlfriend either. Oh, and I got to tell her that she was going to be a grandmother that day as well. My m-i-l loves me now, but what she must have thought then!
Oh, we were married a little over a year later.