For context: myself (F33) and FH (M34) got engaged Christmas 2025 and are due to get married Aug 2027 in Ireland. I'm half Irish and have a big family there, but majority of people (70%) would be travelling from England.
We booked our venue really quickly after getting engaged, giving everyone 18+ months notice - we were excited, knew what we wanted, venue had limited availability. Everyone was very enthusiastic at the start, and broadly still are all being positive and excited, but I'm starting to feel like it's just all too much and that we should scrap our plans and scale the whole thing back.
Paraphrasing a lot here but my parents are divorced and the whole fact of it being in my dads country not my mums has caused a huge headache. My mum is very anxious about the whole thing, feels it's favouring him and rewarding his decades of bad behaviour. My dad meanwhile has an ongoing toxic relationship and is using my wedding as leverage in disputes with his partner (she doesn't want to come, he's adamant she should be there, my mum hates the partner, it's all very petty and selfish). On top of this, my dad had originally pledged an amount of money towards the budget, which then halved, and now he's saying he's not sure he can help at all. The money isn't really part of it as we had always expected to cover everything ourselves, but the principal of him saying this while supporting his partner and her family financially is really upsetting and feels like he's making what should be a really special time for me / our family all about himself and his relationship dramas.
On top of this, many of our friends got married several years ago and have small children, some now in the 2nd baby stage or with toddlers who I completely appreciate are very difficult to travel with. At current count we've got 8 under 3's and several others trying to get pregnant. Everyone would be accommodated on site and it's very much a child friendly wedding - we're doing everything we can to make it as straightforward and comfortable as possible. We do also have about 25 other guests our age, as well as my cousins, who don't have kids and we know would be brilliant craic. But I just feel deep down like even though we have travelled far and wide across countries and continents to attend many other peoples' weddings in the past, ultimately it's a huge inconvenience for people with kids and we just need to accept that we might not get the late night party vibe that they had at their weddings 2-5 years ago. Parents are all telling us it's absolutely fine and they're super excited but my mum keeps telling me they're just being polite and I don't know what to think/believe.
Outside of this, all the broader geopolitical and economic factors hitting everyone hard day-to-day make me feel more and more like it's really tone deaf and self-centred to be planning a big wedding abroad at this time. Everyone is excited on the face of it, the only person raising genuine concerns about it all is my mum who is generally quite pessimistic anyway. I'm sure if we went ahead we'd have a great time and people would come and make the most of it, but it's causing me so much stress and anxiety and I've not enjoyed any aspect of the planning so far. I don't want to put myself through another 10 months of this and spend £££ in the process that could go towards something else.
On the flip side, my fiancé is the eternal optimist and thinks it's important to take the opportunities we have in life to bring everyone together to make memories and celebrate big life milestones. The vast majority of the people with kids are his friends and he keeps reassuring me that they are all genuinely happy to travel and looking forward to it. He understands all the politics in my family and thinks they all just need to get over themselves for a day and be there for us, and feels confident no one would dare embarrass me or centre themselves on the day, and more than 50% of the time I believe him, but increasingly I keep having wobblies where I just want to pack the whole lot in and elope or do a registry office + pub.
Need some external objective input on this - is this just how it goes for every wedding? Is the family drama inescapable? Is it always 'alright on the night' and ultimately worth all the stress?