Family Etiquette

[syngirl]

How you treat an event sets the tone for everyone else. If you said not to bother coming to the civil ceremony, here they will take that quite literally as in don't bother, don't ask, don't celebrate, don't even make much acknowledgement as to it having happened. In fact telling people not to come would be offensive to a lot of people here, and therefore they may feel like well if I wasn't even invited why should I acknowledge it? I'm sorry, I know as a newbie I would have seen it the same way as you, but now after 9 years the moment I read that you told them not to go to the civil, I hate to say I immediately said, well that's why no gifts then. There was only a civil, no formal, not even a planned lunch in your house it seems or a toast? If you'd really like your husband's family to acknowledge you can still rectify this, you could invite everyone for a toast to your marriage in your home. It will be a bit odd for some locals but you could just invite everyone for 6pm ish one sunday and have a dessert and a glass of champagne. You may not receive any gifts (which sorry, sounds likely from your accounts of the Argentine family!) but you may at least receive a warmer welcome to the family.

Most weddings I've been to here there is quite a process, even if the final event is rather informal -- the card gets dropped off personally, never mailed and certainly never invited over the telephone. The engaged couple goes to the house of each invited guest and delivers the card in person. You have a mate or whatever, they leave the invite. Along with the invite is usually included the information for the gift, whether it be a bank account number for where you can deposit money or a registry list. The inviting of guests can take quite a while... we lost many weekends despite only having 50 guests. But even the events where it has literally been in the back yard of the father's house have had this formal invite process.

After the wedding people do have 1 year to give a gift as well -- that's quite common in many countries, so perhaps don't give up?

 

[syngirl]

An addendum -- telling people is NOT the same as a printed invite. Especially here. For instance one of our friends (my husband's friend since birth) invited us the other evening to her wedding in Corrientes next march -- of course we will go, and yes we "feel" invited, but until we have the actual invite in hand we certainly won't consider our invite formal.

 

[nikad]

I totally agree with Syngirl. I can understand you guys feeling hurt, but when you said do not bother, did not invite anybody to the civil register except for the needed witnesses, and the fact that you had been living together for a few years, must have made everybody think that you were married mainly for paperwork purposes...

 

[Girino]

I totally agree with Syngirl. I can understand you guys feeling hurt, but when you said do not bother, did not invite anybody to the civil register except for the needed witnesses, and the fact that you had been living together for a few years, must have made everybody think that you were married mainly for paperwork purposes...

We put it in those terms due to internal family feuds.
If we could have invited whomever we liked, well, that would have been the grandpa who has always been very helpful to us, and my FIL's brother, who always showed he cares.

But then...
Due to recent/past FIL's behavior with us, none of us was in the mood to invite him (never supported my husband and SIL for 25 years and never helped with our move here this year)
Obviously, we cannot invite the FIL's brother and not the FIL.
If we invited my FIL, my MIL would have blamed us for not getting married in Italy at her presence.
If we invited the grandpa, the MIL would get offended since she hasn't been speaking to him (her father) for ages and in the past she already commented our time with him as "a great insult" to her after what he allegedly did to ruin her life.
Once invited the grandpa, then we could not avoid inviting my MIL's brother, and his 8 children. Btw, my MIL can't stand her brother, as well as her father, so we would have to take pictures without them. Plus, also my husband is not comfortable with this uncle and cousins for several reasons I will omit.
Then there are my SIL and his boyfriend, who are neutral.

I hope you can imagine the weird set of pictures we would have to take: one to please the MIL, one for the FIL to keep, one for the grandpa to frame, etc.
If you lost track of everything, or are simply bored to death, you can imagine how we felt when planning our wedding and realizing how complicate things would get if we had to make a honest choice. You pick the two witnesses you want, and you are in for some serious shit from both sides.

Also, we cannot tell the people not to come to the civil ceremony but to come to the party, and the party would bring more issues than the civil ceremony because all of these people would actually get the chance to interact and argue. So we should actually have different parties... Since you cannot tell there would be a party with the FIL and his brother (uncle 1), but not a party with uncle 2 (my MIL's brother), which we can't stand.

A month ago, totally randomly, our preferred guests (the grandpa and the uncle from my FIL side) casually met at our place. The uncle was here for an unplanned tea, when the grandpa showed up unannounced (=Argentine crisis). Immediately the uncle jumped up and said he was going to leave (clearly, he had strong issues with my MIL's family), but we talked him into staying. Followed by a weird hour where both our guests were trying to act casually and in a civil way, but the tension was palpable (they talked about politics... of all the subjects!!)

I hope this explains it a little. We should have gotten married in the US with two office clerks as witnesses.

 

[nikad]

I am sorry to hear, it is not nice to have to think about this things when you are getting married Some families are just difficult. f**k the gifts, be happy, be merry, and get married again in Italy or wherever you have a great set of friends

 

[Tilda]

Serafina, I feel with you. I thought that I married into a soap opera family, but yours seems to have taken it to another level. At least mine were are at the reception, except for the FIL's brother's ex-wife since he threatened her with a gun as they were divorcing. But she stopped by our apartment when we were getting ready to congratulate us.

My advice is to let them be as much as you can, don't expect anything, talk to your husband about it (very important) but without using the phrase "your family" it might make him defensive.

Nikad is right, celebrate your love again with people that you feel good with.

 

[Girino]

We are thinking to throw a party with our friends in Italy at some time in the future. If not, we will party with each of them as soon as we get the chance!

I am very happy to be married and that it was something true to our hearts. I was just deluded about the FIL's behavior. He lost every moment on the life of his son since he was 11 y.o.. No birthday, no graduation, no turning 18, no first job to congratulate about. This was his chance to greet him. And he failed.

 

[Girino]

Serafina, I feel with you. I thought that I married into a soap opera family, but yours seems to have taken it to another level.

They're pro! But no guns in the story... yet!