selenay | Update on wedding/family dilemma thing (Reply)

Follow-up to this post. I kept trying to go back and reply to all the comments, but it would have been pretty much the exact same comment that I sent to everyone and my brain sort of...fritzed every time I tried. So, thank you to everyone because you guys helped me work through a lot of the feelings I had about the entire Wedding Thing, not just the part where I had to pick between the wedding and my best friend's visit.

I sat down and had a talk with Mum a few days ago. I've been reluctant to mention to the family how much the cost of getting to the wedding was terrifying me (between flights, the hotel in Wales for a couple of nights and all the other parts of visiting England for a big wedding it was...a not insubstantial amount) because I was worried that my parents would offer to help and/or there would be comments about why my money isn't stretching far enough to be able to do that kind of trip on a whim. I was also concerned there would be follow-up comments if I mentioned any expenditures that weren't absolutely 100% gold-plated survival necessities after claiming that the expense was part of the reason I couldn't go to the wedding.

After all, it's not really that I can't find the money, just that it was a large sum of money I hadn't allocated for and would have to take from somewhere else in my budget plans.

So, anyway, Mum and I had the talk about the wedding. And it went surprisingly well. Shockingly well. Apparently she's been worrying about the expense ever since she talked me into going and feeling guilty that she'd commited me to spending a staggeringly terrifying amount of money to spend four days attending a wedding for a cousin I see, at best, every couple of years. She'd also been worrying about the physical effects of me travelling so far, being incredibly busy for four days, and then travelling all the way back with no vacation left over at the end for me to recover in.

We talked it over, I mentioned that Best Friend in America might be visiting and she immediately told me to pick BFiA if that's even a slight possibility. She's practically Mum's third daughter and she wants me to enjoy my niece while she's tiny :-D And even if things fall through and BFiA can't get up here, the wedding doesn't need to go back on my agenda.

And then we talked to Dad, because this is his brother's kid after all, and he told us both that he'd already told his brother I probably couldn't come due to the distance and expense. This, apparently, was news to Mum. Well done, parents, excellent communication there.

Upshot is, we had a mature and rational discussion. There was no offer to pay for me (phew!) and no criticism of me not being able to afford two big trips to England in one year. And I feel much calmer about the whole mess because Mum is not giving me the stink-eye over it.

She's even encouraging me to get the damn book cases already now that I don't need to worry about paying for a wedding trip :-D