Why parents feel it's their wedding, too: the short response

Why does a wedding bring out the worse in families?

There are obviously no cut and dried answers. My proposition is this. Whereas friends (well, at least the majority of them) know that it's your day, that it's about you, and that they are there as your support crew, families feel that your wedding is just as much about them, too.

Your wedding is your family's wedding, too. I know this from my own experience. After lengthy reflection, I realise that this conclusion also holds true for other weddings I've attended and been involved in.

A very good friend of mine got married in 2005. Her wedding was witnessed by 500 guests. A grand wedding that seemed even larger than life given that it was held in Sydney. Most Australian weddings peak at around 120-130 guests. Of her demi-thousand guests, she only knew 100 to 150 personally, with whom she had contact on a sufficiently regular basis during the course of a year. The rest were her parents' and her in-laws' guests.

She lamented that she had felt manhandled into accommodating such a large number. In the end, she felt that she owed it to both sets of parents, especially to hers, whose tearful entreaties about "the family's reputation" and "lose of face" really sobered up whatever opposition she had. She didn't want to be the daughter who sent her ageing parents to intensive care.

"They are usually such reasonable and loving parents", she told us.  It seemed that her reasonable and loving parents had temporarily abandoned their parental hats to become, over the course of this special event, show ponies. For a time, they were no longer her parents as much as they were social butterflies who had a set agenda about maintaining this reputation. They felt that their standing in the community was weightier than the significance of that day for their daughter.

To them, she became again a child, and not this well-adjusted successful career-woman. Perhaps the fact of this anticipated social ritual, this wedding, community-centric as it is, simply magnified how they really saw her, how they would always see her. A child still, their child, a product of their aspirations, a ward in their care. And by jove, she couldn't possibly know what was best for her. They knew! They were her parents after all!