Wedding Forum - An Alternative Ceremony - Decisions...

Uber message coming up lol. OK Well I have mentioned before we are having a ceremony which some would find "alternative", to us it's what matters but still alternative to others. We are having a handfasting ceremony outdoors, which is no longer legal. We were not really bothered when we got legally married but our parents wanted it on the day in the ceremony room of our venue so we said ok. Recently we had a bust up with MIL2B and she was very upset that all the immediate family were not expected at the legal marriage. We argued our point that the reason we've gone for ceremony and hog roast/seafood bbq/buffet with all 180 guests is because we couldn't select enough people from the list that could only come to an evening to make a difference. All invited are loved, special and we want them to be there for our ceremony so to keep the wedding under 10k (a reasonable figure we thought for a nice, large wedding without being extravagant) we ditched tradition and dropped the traditional 3 course reception with evening buffet. We feel it will be more relaxed. Soooo after said bust up we decided fine then, we'll now get legally wed on the Monday after with just our parents/step parents as originally planned and to hell with trying to keep everyone happy. Most have accepted that but I wonder if it will feel weird to us, even though handfasting is more in keeping with our belief system than a church wedding and a legal ceremony will not allow the celtic symbolism we want.

I am a fairly relaxed bride and I started off trying to keep everyone sweet but a fair amount has become very bitter indeed. It seems everytime we concede to what other people want it seems to backfire. What would you have done?

There is a lot of history here and so much unsaid but our ceremony is really important to us, we see it as a very spiritual binding, H2B said to me the other day it made him angry, the lack of respect and understanding for our ceremony and the emphasis wanting to be on the legal one when to him our ceremony is about joining our hearts and souls forever not just in life that it waa a binding stronger than traditional marriage and it hurts him that some people just don't see or understand that.

It may not help that I suspect I am not the first choice for him for some but I wonder will the constant ear bashing make us feel like we made the wrong decision on the big day.

I agree. We are having a ceremony that is based around our family uniting (me, h2b and daughter). we are doing the legal bit on the day too.
Our whole wedding is to be about love and family and bonding which 'normal' ceremonies just don't seem to really cater for.
Your ceremony sounds lovely, I hope you have a great day. Maybe people just focus on the legal bit as thats what a lot of people expect when going to a wedding. who knows..