When You Aren't From the Same Place as Your Parents

As I've mentioned before, Mr. Knitting moved here from Poland when he was four. While he is proud of his heritage, he is really much more Canadian than Polish and this is definitely reflected in our wedding. Pretty much anything Polish in our wedding is there because I pushed for it (except for the mushroom dumplings).

However, his parents are still very Polish and haven't been assimilated in the same way, which is understandable as they were a lot older when they came to Canada. At first, they seemed to expect that we'd be having a very traditional Polish wedding complete with a Catholic church ceremony. I think our heathen Christmas wedding complete with grown up FGs, a groomswoman, and a first look (we haven't mentioned any of this to them yet!) is very much outside of their understanding of what a wedding should be.

I think our wedding is also somewhat difficult for them because we will be doing things that are a bit socially awkward for them. For example, we limited our guest list at 100 people which means they aren't able to invite as many people as they would like. They're getting to invite a lot more people than my parents, but they aren't able to invite all their friends and every single member of their friends' families. For Mr. K and myself and my parents it's not difficult to explain to some people that space is limited so we have to be really selective, but for Mr. K's parents, I think it is.

They are being really good sports about our wedding and while they don't talk to us about it very much, they haven't said a single negative comment about our wedding to Mr. K or myself. It's definitely not their idea of an appropriate wedding, but I think it's pretty nice of them to refrain from making any comments about this to us. I think maybe they really just want us to be married after we've been living in sin for 2 whole years!

Has this been an issue for anyone else? How do you and your parents' ideas about what a wedding should be diverge?