Wedding Forum - HELP! In-Laws and Venue.....

Hi all! I don't know what to do at the moment..

Background: I'm originally from UK and all my family is English. My parents and sis and I moved to Ireland when I was young, so I basically grew up in Ireland. OH is Irish with all Irish family. So my immediate family and his extended family are in Ireland, while my extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) are in UK.
So me and OH moved to UK 6 months ago, for me to do a masters and for him to work.


We're getting married in 2017 (July ish), and we had just about settled on venue (have one more to see), and were beginning to think about deposits and plans and things to do on the day and all the little bits and pieces! We decided to get married in the UK as his family are more able to travel than mine, and it would be too difficult to organise a wedding from a different country (I don't like the idea of being so far away - I may be a little bit of a control freak!)

So we basically had set in our minds what was going to happen, until I got a call from the in-laws just half an hour ago!

They've essentially offered to pay for the wedding package (venue hire, catering, reception) up to about 70quid a head for 110ish people.. If we have the wedding in Ireland!
It's nothing to do with them wanting us to get married there, it's for tax reasons - they can claim back for expenses from ireland but not from England (or something like that I don't know).

So for that price we could have an amazing wedding - the packages and deals are a lot better in Ireland for weddings than here, you get a lot more bang for your buck and you don't pay the ridiculous venue hire charges you often pay here in the UK.

We're now stuck as to what to do, as we were perfectly happy with getting married here and were pretty much set on it. Part of the reason for doing it here was that there's a lot more choice of venues and different things you can do (our ceremony was gonna be in a museum!), whereas in Ireland it's gonna be a hotel wedding start to finish, same as every other hotel wedding...
Also our wedding was to be quite modern and quirky and relaxed - I don't feel like we'd get that with the venues in Ireland.
We would also more than likely have to push the wedding back by a year - the first chance we'd have to view and book venues would be June of this year - barely a year out! Availability would become an issue (which it isn't in the UK for the venues we've seen).

I don't know what to do.. It would be easier for 90% of our guests to come, and it would take a hell of a lot of pressure off us financially (as I mentioned I'm a student, and OH has just started a new job so things are a bit rocky). We would manage money-wise, as the venues we've looked at are very low-cost (cos they aren't hotels/exclusive venues).

In-laws did say several times we're absolutely free to refuse their offer, if we wanted to do it in the UK it's absolutely no issue at all and they won't be offended.

Me and OH both feel awful for feeling gutted over their offer - we feel like they've thrown a spanner in the works when we were just getting ourselves organised and ready to go! We don't know what to do....

Would normally thrash out with my sis/mom but they're very private about financial stuff so I'd feel bad about talking about it to my family. So you lot get to hear it instead lol!

Don't feel you have to give advice, I know this is something we need to sort ourselves - just needed to rant!

Thanks Stephanie, it makes me feel better to know that we're not the only ones feeling put out about a generous offer! Looking a gift horse in the mouth and that. I think overnight I've settled on the fact that I don't really want to do it in Ireland. I'll have a chat with OH today and hopefully we'll come to an agreement :)

Maybe we could suggest that if they still wanted to help even if we had it in the UK, they could help us out with the deposit or registrar as those are the most immediate things that need paying, and those are the only thing's we'd really struggle with (OH's first pay check, there's a backlog of bills to go out!!). Would be a LOT less money than they originally offered but they'd still get to help out as their wedding gift.

I dont see why they wouldnt offer that, you could even pay for their hotel room when they come over for the big day. :-)
My mum wasn't able to offer anything but she has paid for my wedding dress and will bepaying the DJ on the day, it's two huge costs off my mind so I'm happy. :-)

Ultimately you need to go with your heart. It sounds like you have a wedding in mind that you really want, and that if you do it in Ireland you will have to sacrifice some of what you want. I can see why they've done what they've done, but really I think they should have just offered the money to you to do what you need with. If you have your heart set on the wedding that you've started planning then stick with it.

Just spoke to the MIL2B and told her as much as we appreciate the kind offer, we'd prefer to have our wedding here in the U.K.! She was absolutely fine with it, but I get the feeling that was the only offer of help they were prepared to give - so we're probably on our own financially. This makes me think that the offer was more to do with getting us to marry in Ireland than was put across!! But I could be wrong, who knows really. I'm just glad to be back on track and moving forward with the original plans :)

Thanks all for helping me feel less like an ungrateful cow lol :)

Quick update on this if anybody's interested - a few days after we chatted, the in-laws offered to help us still with the UK wedding :) They just can't help as much as they would have been able to if we'd have gone for Ireland.

I feel bad for jumping to conclusions about their motive for offering help - but they have been known to do such things before. 'We'll do this for you, IF you do it our way' basically.

All's well now anyway and plans are going ahead full steam as before, but with a bigger chunk of change in our pockets ;)

That's great news, hope it all goes ok for you x

Thats great news xx

Great news, fantastic!!