We’re about to disappoint everyone.

My fiancé (23m) & I (22f) have been together for almost 8 years now. Last September, he took me to Scotland and proposed at Loch Ness! I kind of saw it coming because we had talked extensively about it before hand, but it was absolutely amazing and he did such a wonderful job.

I called my mom and told her the news, and of course she was ecstatic. Within the hour, pictures were all over my family's social media sharing the news to hundreds of people that we don't know, both of our phones were blowing up with text messages and phone calls, and everyone wanted to know the wedding date pretty much immediately.

I have a pretty big family, and I'm the first-born granddaughter, niece, child, etc. I'm also the oldest of my cousins, and none of them are anywhere near ready to get married, so of course everyone is super excited about our wedding and future children and etc etc etc…….

But the thing is…. we don't even really WANT a wedding.

This past December, we moved into our first apartment together. Then, in January, on our 7 year anniversary, we sat on our bedroom floor and got married. We exchanged vows and rings, ordered fancy food, ate a fancy dessert, and had an incredible weekend together. He's my absolute best friend, and while we absolutely will legally get married soon, as far as we're concerned, we ARE married. It was the perfect night, and neither of us could ever ask for anything more.

Everyone keeps asking us for a wedding date still, and we DO need to get it done "officially", so we decided that we'll have an actual wedding this January, on the same day that we did it alone last January. We don't want to pick a different wedding day because it's been our anniversary day for the past 7 years now, although it seems a little short notice to start planning and telling everyone. I mean, I had one of my grandmothers reach out and let me know she needed at least a 6 months notice of the wedding date!

The other thing… we still really don't want a wedding. We simply aren't comfortable with having a ceremony in front of everyone, and I know that neither one of us will truly feel comfortable being ourselves. We're both very private people with everyone outside of our relationship, and if we have a wedding, we'd prefer to do it alone again.

Ideally, we would have a private ceremony with just the two of us, an officiate, two of our close friends, and maybe our dog lol. Our parents can stand far away and watch. Then, everyone else could come to some kind of after party / reception.

But we don't even want anyone at the reception!! We would be happiest going out for dinner with the closest people in our lives, and that's all, but everyone is expecting something huge from us – they've told us so. Not to mention how guilty I feel taking away my father's only chance to walk a daughter down the aisle.

I told my mother what we want to do, and she told me that it isn't fair to the people that love us. That it isn't about us and that we have to let everyone come and watch the ceremony. If we don't, it'll cause a huge tiff and everyone will be bitter about it. It's making me not want one at all.

He and I want something very small. We'll do the dress, we'll do cake, we'll have a little ceremony, but we're really not interested in spending tons of money and would rather put it toward buying land and starting our lives together. We're huge introverts, and honestly, we already consider ourselves married. We'd be happy going to the courthouse!

It's frustrating because I also know no one will take our marriage seriously unless we DO have a wedding of some kind. Regardless of whether or not there's a marriage certificate.

Anyway. Rant over. Are we being a reasonable? I genuinely don't know how to continue from here. If we did it the way we're expected to, we would be looking at about 250 people at the wedding. If we do it the way we WANT to, we'd only have about 15.