Hard time telling my family that we eloped
Hi,
Me and my wife got together 6 years ago, got engaged on the 4th anniversary and just this week eloped... literally. We told absolutely no one, traveled out of country and got legally married Wednesday at noon with a very intimate and sweet town hall ceremony. The town hall provided the witnesses for us and took a video, some candid pictures as we exchanged the rings.
The same day we announced it to our friends, and my wife told her parents over phone. Everyone either congratulated us or was ecastatic. I did not tell my parents, and I honestly am not sure how to do it.
My family is tiny - my parents and grandmother. Very traditional, my mother was a SAHM for most of my childhood. They almost divorced but chose to "stay together for me" when I was 12.
In my entire life, only my mother has known if I am dating, but often spoke ill of my relationships, even simple friendships. My father is more extreme in his opinions, and I am careful not to mention personal details in his presence. My mother also does not tell him unless she is 100% the news won't make us angry or argumentative.
So, in the last 6 years of me living with my wife, studying in the same university and working in the same corporate field, only my mother has learned that we are together. Early on, during Covid, my mother said she "hopes I will change my mind" about my wife and find someone else, which upset me enough that I threatened to never speak to her again. She has obliged and gotten more accepting over time. We still speak every day over the phone and she comes to our place sometimes. When with us, she is nothing but polite and funny, even warm and caring, according to wife. My mother had several health scares in the last year and my father left her with us, so either me or my wife took care of her and helped her. We even took her with us on a trip to France. I believe she will take the news okay at some point, but she breaks down at the idea of my father or grandmother learning about it.
My grandmother (in her 80s) believes that me and my wife are simply "very good friends", an impression I have not tried change since my mother has expressed (tearfully and dramatically) that my grandmother will not be able to take the news.
My father, on the other hand, may not even remember my wife's name. I have introduced them, she has been at their house three times for several days, she's helped me and my mother countless times... he does not bother to remember. We have a tense relationship. He has accused me of "rejecting my family" because I do not visit often enough. In general, I exchange about twenty sentences with him year-round, unless we get into an argument. According to my mother, he is jealous of the relationship I have with her.
So I have minimal contact with him, only when I visit them every two months or so for a couple of days. He's hot and cold - sometimes he rushes to pick up my mother's phone for the chance to speak to me, other times I can hear him mocking me or arguing with her in the background of a call. I believe he loves me in some way, but he definitely does not respect me or anyone else in the family and thinks himself above us and deserving of obedience.
With all this in mind, I'm really strugling on how to tell them. Hell, my father and grandmother know nothing of a relationship, let alone engagement. I'm wearing my ring and I do not want to take it off, but that is just inviting the obvious question. My wife is traveling for the week for MILs birthday and I am using the moment to also travel and housesit for my parents. We will see each other after they return from their vacation and are supposed to spend 5ish days together. I cannot imagine even my ignorant father will not notice the ring, let alone my noisy mother and grandma.
I know exactly how they will react and I do not want to sully my joy or memories of the event with their irrelevant opinions. What do I do? My wife and I discussed that it was okay if I did not tell them outright, and that she had no issue if I took of the ring around my parents' house or wore it on another finger, but I feel like this would be an insult to us and our family and I do not want to do it.
And even if I do that, I will be wearing the ring all the time in our home and my wife has not taken off neither her engagement ring nor her wedding band, so when my mother inevitably visits us (a monthly occurance for health checkups) she will see. While I believe she can handle the news, she will be anxious and stressed that she knows but my father and grandma do not. That is when she usually both pushes and warns me about telling my father at least - "the longer you wait the worse it gets" and "I don't know how he'll react, you don't know what he says when you're not around".
This has turned into a rant, but I am still looking for advice. Recently I came close to "riping the band-aid off" with my father (it was our first time in years alone and he made a comment about a relationship, for the first time) but I literary couldn't speak the words. I opened my mouth several times and was ready to hit something, but I didn't make a sound. It felt crushing.