What is the best way to combine family traditions and gatherings after you get married?

Question

My fiance's family gets together for everything. Labor day memorial day, 4th of july all religious holidays and everyone's birthday including the old and the young. My family gets together on Christmas, Easter a family reunion in the summer and one other gathering a year. I am completely overwhelmed. I can't possibly go to this many family things it drives me nuts because they usually put on the sports channel and watch games and I get really bored. I don't mind going to some family parties but if we keep going to all of these parties for his first cousin's children we are going to be obligated to invite them back when we have kids and that can get stressful and expensive and since I will be doing the cooking and cleaning for all these parties I don't think I will want to invite the whole world like they do. I also would like to have some weekends to ourselves instead of always being with other people. How can i compromise without being thought ill of by his family. I suggested going every other year and that didn't seem acceptable to any of them.

Answer 1

My family gets together just like your fiance's family, and my now-husband's family does not.  What you have to understand is that the two of you have to be comfortable with what you work out.  Don't worry what either family thinks, they don't wake up with you in the morning.  We struck a happy medium by alternating the major holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter.  We celebrate New Year's by ourselves or with friends and only do one "outside" family gathering a month for each side.  This gives us the opportunity to choose and takes the demand off.

Answer 2

Here is an issue that me and my fiance have been dealing with our whole relationship.  We have been through two sets of holidays thus far, and will be married for our third, the ones coming up.

We discussed this in our pre-marital class, and came to somewhat of a painful, but very healthy decision.  Biblical marriage states that a man LEAVES his family and CLEAVES to his wife.  Most marriages have the most difficult time with the LEAVE part.

My fiance and I have decided to set a precedent to either sets of our families that we are now our own family.  We will spend our first round of holidays just the two of us, implant our own traditions, and see our families in honor of the holidays another day.  We will not have them schedule around us, but we will try to see them in light of the holiday.

This sounds harsh and painful, but it really will set up our new family firmly in their sight.

We have decided that despite the fact that our families will probably get angry with us, we won't humor temper tantrums, and we are our own unit.  I hope this helps!

Answer 3

I would talk to him (your fiance) about it and tell him if he wants to keep things like this up, HE can do the cooking and cleaning for the parties!

Let him know that spending alone time together is really precious to you (Especially once you're newly weds), and you want to find a way to compromise.

My fiance is kind of the same way, they have a lot of get togethers and such for holidays. My family is very small,and we celebrate the bigger holidays but nothing big. We decided that once we get married, we're going to spend the major holidays with families (go back and forth every other year) , and the smaller ones we'll figure out once the time comes. If we don't have anything planned for just the two of us, then we'll decide if we want to attend/host a party for his family or mine

Good luck!

Answer 4

We tried the every other year thing but someone always got petulant. So we started traveling every holiday to get away from it