***EDITED to add – January is not a bad month to get married if you’re Hindu. I believe it has to do with you and your fiance’s birth dates, and it may be an inauspicious month based on when your birth dates fall. For others, it may be a good month. This is explained better in the comments. January was just a bad month for me and my husband to get married (according to MIL anyway).***

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The day we were supposed to get married was August 14, a year from our engagement. A mid-August wedding in the Midwest is risky (think melting makeup and wilted hairdos), but we had dated for 4 years and didn’t want to wait more than a year. We thought, too, that Saresh’s parents would hop on board the marriage train finally as well.

We could not be more wrong. Instead of accepting the marriage, Saresh’s parents presented him with pictures of potential brides for an arranged marriage. They refused to cooperate or participate in the planning. We talked it over and decided to move the wedding back 6 months to the following January (a now 18-month engagement), in order to give them more time to adjust.

I wish we had never moved the wedding date. Saresh’s parents never came around until 3 months before our actual wedding (which probably would have happened 3 months before August anyway). I was unhappy because I had to wait another 6 months to get married. I told myself a winter wedding would be fun and unique. Instead, when August 14^th rolled around, it was the most beautiful day – in the lower 80s and not humid at all, sunny and flowers in bloom, sunshine until after 8pm. In January, it rained the day of our wedding – I mean full out thunderstorm downpour for most of the day. Everything was barren, and the sun went down at 4:30. Obviously, we had no outdoor garden pictures.

Here we are, 3 months before the wedding, and his parents want us to move the date AGAIN to a summer wedding. They inform us that:

• January is an “inauspicious” month for us to get married based on our birth dates.
• Because of our birth dates, a Hindu priest won’t perform a ceremony for us.
• No family from India can come because it’s cold and they’ll die and we’re so rude for not thinking of that (though I don’t think anyone was planning on coming anyway).
• It’s the millennium and the world is probably going to come to an end and we’re so rude for not thinking of that.
• There’s sure to be a blizzard and ice storm and no one from out of town will be able to travel, or they’ll travel in dangerous conditions, and we’re so rude for not thinking of that.
• Saresh has to finish law school (he had one semester left) and we’re ruining his future law career. His career is doomed.
• Why are we in such a rush? We could wait even more than the summer.
• Our marriage is doomed because we’re getting married in a “bad month.”

We let them know that had they accepted the marriage and helped us plan, we would have already been married and they could have planned the Hindu ceremony of their dreams. I was amenable to performing both a Christian and a traditional Hindu ceremony, and we said so all along, but it was too late by then (well, and what with the doomed marriage, too…).

When their little uplifting and supportive speech didn’t quickly set us straight, Saresh’s father actually wrote a letter to my parents imploring them to get us to move the wedding date. He did it in secret, but my mom called me. She was fairly steamed, which did not compare to my fury. He outlined all the points above, highlighting on our “rudeness.”

A few months ago, we were cleaning out old files in our office and Saresh came across the letter. I had actually forgotten all about it – blocked it from memory would be more apt. I wish he hadn’t found it because when I read it even more than 7 years later, all those feelings came rushing back. I had forgotten how awful it all was. Luckily, he had also saved my mom’s response letter. My mom and I have our disagreements and spats, but this was a glowing letter of support for us and our decisions, and held a lot more tact that I would have mustered. It smoothed some of my re-ruffled feathers, but Saresh threw the letters away lest we find them again in another 7 years. I wish we would have kept them because I would have liked to give them to our daughter when she’s older – when kids hit that age that they think you’re so unfair and have no idea what it’s like to be that age and you’re just an awful parent. You know, when we’re just being “so rude” to her.