Anonymous wrote:New family rule: NO MORE DESTINATION WEDDINGS. Period. Hate 'em. Too expensive. Too exhausting. No fun. Too disruptive to family life here.

If the bride and groom hold the wedding in their hometown or the place where they live, do you consider that a destination wedding? Do you expect all weddings to be held in your town no matter where everyone else lives? OP didn't say this wedding is on a Caribbean island or a random inn somewhere, she just said that she and her family would have to travel to get there. It may be very convenient for 90% of the guests. These days a lot of people live far from their extended families, and you can't always make everything convenient for everyone. It's one thing if the bride and groom are expecting everyone to go on some exotic vacation just for their wedding, but I don't get the impression that that is the case here.

On another note, do you hold some kind of special family leader position that allows you to make "rules" for other grown adults? That sounds like an interesting dynamic, I'd love to hear more.

Anonymous wrote:Another tragic case of DCUM Broken Spinal Column.

This stupid cliche gets stupider every time you write it, which has been often lately. Find a new one please thx.

Anonymous wrote:Another tragic case of DCUM Broken Spinal Column.

Another tragic case of DCUM asshole who doesn't understand what asking for advice looks like because they probably have no friends and thinks all questions about delicate social interactions are the equivalent of weakness.

A couple thoughts:

-No you don't have to attend all family weddings, we just recently missed one of my DH's cousin's weddings

-You mention you don't really know the fall wedding, but there's no discussion of your husband's relationship to the cousin. If this was a cousin with special meaning for him you should go, even if you don't know the person well, because it is meaningful for him. If it's just because he likes family weddings but there's no particular importance to this one, that's different.

-What's the big deal about the 5-6 hour drive? Is one of your kids a particularly crappy car traveler? If not, it's really not that big a deal, especially when you have 2 adults to take shifts / let the other person run in to pee if both kids are asleep / etc.

OP here. Thank you everyone. I really appreciate the thoughts. I needed the perspective; my MIL has been giving us so much pressure that I thought perhaps I was in the wrong here, and that I should attend all family weddings. Family is so important to her. It is just hard for us to travel 5-6 hours by car each way for a wedding, particularly when we have young kids. Don't get me wrong, I like the cousins (well, the ones that we know -- I really don't know the cousin getting married this fall), and I think weddings are fun, but the upcoming weddings just don't seem feasible to me. And I was starting to feel resentful that I was having to pick the wedding in lieu of an anniversary trip (note: we have never ever been on a trip just the two of us, our anniversary trip was going to be our first getaway).

I am going to discuss with my DH tonight and we'll come up with a plan.

I have 11 nieces and nephews. I alone plan to attend all of their weddings which have been/and will be all over the country. I do it to be there for their parents (my brothers). My husband and young adult children attend if they want, if they can, if we can afford. One of my brothers does not go to family weddings without his wife, and she rarely wants to travel (although she could travel) I think it's ridiculous he won't go/isn't willing to go without her. I would feel the same way fro my husband, except he doesn't have a big family ~ he should attend all family weddings ~ alone if necessary, if all we can afford. I do, however, feel no obligation to attend destination weddings out of the country. Weddings are wonderful. And our family tends to not-do funerals.

you can easily come up with a reason not to go. if you arent particularly close with the bride and groom skip it. send a nicer gift than you would otherwise and they wont think twice about your absence.
personally, i think it depends on the family, but i think having kids and living out of town from the wedding location buys you some free passes as far as weddings go.

Make a policy such as those within X hours drive away (something like 3) where you can drive in the day of an evening wedding, attend the wedding, spend one overnight and drive home the next morning. Or for a daytime wedding, you can drive in the day before, stay overnight, attend the wedding and drive home that evening. But basically establish ones that are close enough to one spend one overnight and not have to spend all weekend just getting to and from the wedding. And that should cut your costs per wedding down drastically if you only have to deal with one night hotel stay, a tank of gas and gift. Even if you have to hire childcare, you should be able to keep this to under $500 a shot. Then only go to the ones that fit the policy. If anyone asks, you just say that it was too far for you to travel leaving a young child at home.

I think it's not unreasonable to expect you'll attend two family weddings per year, even if it's not so easy to get to them, especially if your husband wants to go.

If you're not willing to do that, then I think you just have to be willing to face the consequences; people will prbly gossip, some people will be unhappy, not going may affect some relationships.

DH and I both come from huge italian families. We live close to about 10 percent of our family and within a 6 or 8 hour drive to the rest. Going to weddings post kids is def harder but we still try and make most. We budget 9k a year for weddings and related expenses. We are an HHI of 180k so its a huge expensive but we correlate it with visiting family and sight seeing. We had 9 weddings this year and made it to 6. Its also a PTO time suck but I love seeing my family and so does DH. It comes in waves though, 2012, 2013, and 2014 are packed with weddings but then it will clam down for 5 years or so.

I have a MIL with a strong personality too who can get pretty bitchy if we decide not to follow her "advice." But the thing is, we get to decide what we're going to do for our household. We're never disrespectful (even though she interprets it as such sometimes, but there's nothing we can do about that), we tell her what our plans are as far as she needs to be included with them.

If your kids aren't invited, I would have absolutely no qualms about saying no. Make the effort for cousins DH is really close to--either send him, make it a weekend away for the two of you, or a family trip and then hire a babysitter there.

But you get to say no--including for your anniversary weekend.

Anonymous wrote:Go to the family weddings you can afford to and want to attend. Send regrets and a gift if you can't/don't want to. Ignore external pressure.

This is what DH and I have done/are doing. MIL has put some pressure on us in the past, but we stand out ground.

Go to the family weddings you can afford to and want to attend. Send regrets and a gift if you can't/don't want to. Ignore external pressure.

To to the ones that you want to go to/are close/are in a location that you can make a vacation of. Otherwise send a gift and be done with it.

With a family of this size, no one will be bean counting exactly who attended what wedding.