A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I'm a level headed girl in my late twenties. I've been with my boyfriend for 10 years. He proposed to me five years ago, but I wasn't ready. Now I'm scared he'll never ask me again.I don't usually think of weddings. But I think with all the hype over William and Kate's, that I've started thinking about what mine would be like more and more.For me, all I want, is a little gathering with my family and my boyfriend's family.. getting married in my favourite little park here. I think it's more about the vows and the commitment you make to each other than the huge lavish dress and hundreds of guests. I want mine to be small and special and not be a debt we're still paying off 10 years later. We have plans to travel instead.Anyway, that's my DREAM wedding.. that's all I'd want.. but only problem is... I don't have the family to ask.My sister hasn't spoken to me in over a year. She is definitely fighting some kind of mental illness (that has never been diagnosed). She absolutely loathes me. There's no real reason, I've tried to find out before. When I ask, she just says she's allowed to hate a member of her family for no reason. She's very angry with life and herself and she's chosen to vent all of this at me over the years. With a history of drug abuse, theft, violent relationships, she's become possessive of my parent's undivided attention. They're so afraid to get into a fight with her, that they agree to whatever she wants. My parents are not well off, but she'd take their last dollars if she could. Anyway, my mother and my sister are absolutely the BEST of friends. So much so, that my mother and I don't speak anymore.. haven't said a word to each other in months. If she ever did talk to me, it was to insult my life and the fact my relationship hasn't progressed fast enough. I'm the girl that's never gotten sick from alcohol, never touched drugs, never puffed a smoke, but my mum will happily sit there and run down my slowly progressing relationship and the fact I should be married by now with a house. Even though my sister is very sick and on her way to a breakdown, but she tells her she's doing so well and is such an inspiration. Yeah, I can't figure it out either.My sister's illness has poisoned my family. My father and I get along, on the surface, but he thinks that the reason they don't speak to me is my fault, because I should apologise for "whatever I said that caused it".I've always been the problem and the scapegoat for everything.So when I read, like the wedding magazine that's come out today because of the royal wedding, I feel sad that I'm never going to have that little dream wedding I'd want.. with my immediate family, watching me take my vows with the man I love. My mother and sister wouldn't even show up if asked. But I don't want people there that don't love and respect me either. None of my family do. And I've spent my life doing everything I can right so that they WILL one day look at me and be proud of who I am. I'm quite successful in my career and I get people I hardly know say that they think I'm doing really well.. yet it would mean so much more to hear that from my own family.Anyways, has anyone else ever been in this situation? I love my man with all my heart and if the time's right one day and we do decide to get married, what can I do? If you've been in this situation, what have YOU done? Eloped? I don't want a day of falseness, with some family members standing there with fake smiles across their faces. I would only want my family to come if they loved me and it meant something to them, but it never will. So I guess my dream can never happen.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (29 April 2011): Thanks so much for your advice. Interesting tip about 2012 :)
Sorry to hear you have the same dysfunction in your family that I do. I think you have a really healthy attitude about it though. It's only one day right?
Like you say, we can both have our weddings while we're on vacation. It's our day and we can do it our way.
A
female
reader, chigirl  +, writes (29 April 2011):
 Im exactly the same place. Well, with regards to my family, I haven't been with my boyfriend for 10 years. But I would like to get married one day, and I know that when/if that day comes, I will not be able to have a dream wedding either. My mother and father loathe each other, my brother refuses to speak to my father, and my father is a nut case who I would not know if I would even want to invite to my wedding. I am too scared that he'd spit out some poisonous words and make the wedding all about him rather than who it's supposed to be about, and that he'd start an argument. I am the ONLY one in my family that ever stood up to him, and I can just picture standing in a wedding dress having to mediate between him and someone else, calming him down.
It would break my heart to have to do that. While having a family wedding is important to me, and a dream such as you have, some things are the way they are and can't be changed. We don't always get everything we want. With my father I know it would hurt me too much having to not invite him (to a hypothetical wedding) as it would if I invited him and he trashed it. So in the case that I got married I would have just had to risk it.
But this is how I deal with this sad picture: screw that. If I get married, my guest can create havoc if they please. My wedding won't be about my guests, it'll be about me and my husband, so screw everyone else. Come or don't come, be my guest, if they pick a fight I will ask them to leave and not bother any more with it. I have thought about the idea of skipping the traditional wedding (church, dress, dinner etc) and just get the formal paper work done, then have a party with family and a bunch of friends, and spend the rest of the money on a honeymoon trip. That being the worst case scenario, and it's not looking that bad. It is what it is.
I also learned something important. When we do not have family to support us, we need to find our "family" in friends. Good friends that will support us instead, and those friends become our family.
Until the day comes that you are planning a wedding, don't dwell too much on this. Things might change by that time, and you never know what opportunities will arise. Perhaps he will propose again while you are abroad and get married right there and then on the beach, and celebrate with friends and family once you get home. You never know.
By the way, 2012 is an "odd" year (not sure what it is called in English) with February 29th. According to tradition women are allowed to propose to their man on that date.
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