Are my future in laws the issue here? Or am I/my family in the wrong?
Long story short, my future in laws have made my engagement the most miserable few months of my life. We live in the US but are Indian originally so families do get very involved in wedding plans/often pay for it etc.
I feel like I’m losing my mind but genuinely open to views here. They have a narrative that my parents are controlling and that we are trying to do things our way, but I feel like they’re projecting. Some examples:
- my dad offered to pay/organize as he is in the position to financially and to minimize any stress on them (they are not a family that like to plan and openly say they get very stressed about this type of thing). I asked him to phase this carefully as I didn’t want this to come across badly, and he suggested they could gift us the money towards eg a house if they like instead. They didn’t want this which is fine and I do get it’s sensitive. But on the flip side, any suggestions I have made on venues or plans have generally been met with the response via my fiance that it is all too expensive (this is after lots of research and concluding the venue hire for places around us is similar so it is what it is). So my family isn’t allowed to pay to help out too much but equally my fiance and his family aren’t happy with the expense. I’m left in this endless loop.
- our living situation is taking time to resolve as my fiance has some issues to sort out. My parents have a small apartment rented out and said we could live there temporarily if we like to begin our lives together. His parents said (to my fiance) that this was highly inappropriate and that it is controlling behaviour. My fiance thinks similar to them. I truly cannot see why it’s so bad, I’d have been thrilled if they offered us this.
- they have said to my parents on more than one occasion that their other older child is their priority to get married first. Other child is not engaged. It’s a super outdated custom that I don’t think people back in India even do. I’m trying to push ahead and ignore this but i find it so insane that they could say this out loud.
- my cousin does events planning. I thought we could get some ideas from him as Indian weddings are a beast. They aren’t keen on his suggestions and my fiance as a result isn’t sure either. MIL sent ideas after 3 months of no contribution of ideas, most of which were entirely unsuitable for our guest size, or insanely expensive.
To me, I appreciate I am biased, but my family have tried every possible way to offer solutions to be helpful. I’ve set boundaries on how many guests my parents have, I’ve called them out when i disagree on ideas and they apologize/ accept what I say. His parents to me are very in the wrong here but I keep wondering if I’m not seeing their point of view.
Most of it obviously is whether my fiance can really hold his own here but am I wrong to think my in laws are a real issue? Or have I acted incorrectly?