Getting married outdoors with no ordained minister

[Book_Worm]

It’s impossible not to attend a child’s wedding quietly. I’ve been to one wedding where the MOB did not attend and it was a Big Deal and noted by all the attendees. Twenty years later, we’re no longer in touch with those people, and I don’t remember if I even knew why she wasn’t there, but I still remember vividly the look on the bride’s face.

I disagree that attending a wedding is a show of approval. I’ve attended a couple where I felt reasonably certain that one party was making a mistake (and, not surprising to me, both ended in divorce) and a few more where I barely knew one member of the couple. I do not see attending a wedding as giving my Bookworm Seal of Approval, but rather a show of love and support. I think that’s even more important when you have reason to suspect that both will be needed in the future.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I am serious. I didn’t say parents wouldn’t attend a baby shower, I said they wouldn’t have approved of the actions that got the young girl pregnant. Your analogy is off. In this analogy, not approving of the wedding is equivalent to not approving of the premarital sex. Attending the baby shower is about welcoming the baby.

And I think you know this, but no matter what a person SAYS to you, a person who believes everything the Catholic Church teaches, BELIEVES that that marriage isn’t valid. They can say what they want, they can go to the wedding, they can cheer and dance, but it doesn’t change that they BELIEVE that the wedding either shouldn’t have happened, or shouldn’t have happened that way. If they don’t believe that, then they are not fully accepting the church’s teachings. You can’t change what someone believes. But you can threaten them with no grandkids to get them to fake it in front of you.

I have no idea if your in laws believe everything the Church teaches. But if I were in their situation, and if it were my child marrying outside of the church, it wouldn’t matter what they would threaten me with - that wouldn’t cause me to stop believing all of my faith. It also would be entirely possible for me to love my child, love their significant other, think of them as a person that I love to be around, and be capable of being kind and pleasant and respectful of them and have a relationship with my grandkids without undermining their authority. But it still wouldn’t change that I’d believe what my church teaches. How sad that would be if my kid decided that my love and respect wasn’t good enough to earn their love and respect.

I don’t need anyone to see my marriage as valid. I know what my in-laws believe and we all get along great. But while they don’t see our marriage as valid, they do see it as something to celebrate. Their son/brother/grandson has found someone to build a family with and to get through all of life’s hardships with.

You see this grandkid thing as a punishment, and it isn’t. If you tell my husband that his family isn’t real and his marriage is nothing to celebrate, then you’re no longer really family. Not showing up to a wedding is something that gets noticed, and if they did that in front of my relatives and all of our friends, my husband would have been done with them. They can have their beliefs, but if that’s how those beliefs cause them to treat their own son, then maybe we aren’t all meant to have a relationship.

And if we don’t have a familial relationship with you, then what sense does it make to try to have a relationship with our kids? Sorry, but if you would rather their father be single and alone than married and having kids, stay the heck away from all of us.