I will not surrender

I feel like my engagement should be a happy, fun time but it's not starting out so well. We wanted a small, simple wedding. Nothing elaborate, nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Just simple, small, and about us. Unfortunately there are MANY stressors that are making this time less than awesome. Here they are for you in level of stress inducing power.

1. Girlfriend's family (specifically dad and step-mom)

They are not coming, are not talking to her at the moment after telling them we are engaged. Exact quote, "Don't you think I (dad) already have enough on my plate to not think about this?" When posting engaged as her Facebook status-another direct quote for your enjoyment, "Please delete all personal information. At least try to have a facade of dignity for the family." (I would like to state she did not delete anything)

2. My family (specifically my mom)

She want me to invite everyone in our family, people that I know including God-parents, God-siblings, friends from back home, friends from school, etc. I'm not talking about people that I don't know, don't care about. These are all people who love me, would be/are supportive of the wedding, and who I talk with on a regular basis. That just makes the wedding not "small" anymore.

3. COMBINE ONE AND TWO

Girlfriend's family is NOT coming except for her mom, brother and his fiance. My ENTIRE family wants to come. See the problem? Just rub it in her face that her family doesn't support us, won't acknowledge that we are getting married, and see me with everyone I have known my whole life happy and joking about. Telling my mom it was only going to be immediate family sent her in to a fit of tears, which made me cry, and now the whole thing just sucks all around. Realizing that I still need to tell the rest of my family that I'm engaged AND then tell them they're not invited...fun times all around.

4. Finding/Agreeing on a venue

Apparently if you want to get married at a bed a breakfast, you have to rent the entire place. Um, we don't need that many rooms and seriously need a courtyard/pretty area for 20 minutes. Why is it so effing difficult??? What I like, she doesn't. What she likes, I don't. We FINALLY agreed on 2 places that we like, one for the wedding (in front of a cool looking historic house with a garden in a park) and one for the reception/dinner (at the inn where we will stay and DON'T have to rent the entire place.)

5. Money

The smallest of the stressers because my parents are being VERY, and I mean VERY generous with helping us. Most of the stress is how I don't understand why it costs so much for so little. Girlfriend made a good point of suggesting we need to say we are having a "gathering" or a "dinner" instead of "wedding" and "reception" because it cuts the price and is more accurate to our needs. We don't want a prearranged dinner, we want our family to eat what they want and just a room for us to sit in without it being in the middle of random people. Too much to ask for? Apparently so. We have to get married within the area of DC to make it legal, and everything inside of DC costs a freaking arm and leg. Ridiculous.

Here is my engagement mantra: I will not surrender to make everyone else happy. This is our wedding. We will have the wedding we want, the way we want.