My Parents Are Blind So I Want to Have a Lights Out Wedding, but My In-laws Don’t Like the Idea

When we need to organize an event, it might feel like an enormous task to accomplish. Creating a guest list, choosing the right vendors, or even sorting the right music for the party are essential tasks that might cause some stress. When arranging a wedding, you have to multiply that stress times 10, since it’s also one of the most important days of your life.

A soon-to-be wife sent Bright Side a letter asking for our help, because she doesn’t know if she should listen to her gut or her fiancé’s family. We wanted to support this bride through her thought process and to give her some advice that might help her make a choice.

Thank you for your letter, Emma! We are glad that you contacted us. Our Bright Side team gathered to discuss how the conflict can be resolved in the best way possible, and here is the most helpful advice we could put together.

• It’s a beautiful gesture that you want to embrace your parents’ disability in your wedding day, it shows how much you care for them. Remember that it’s a special date for you and your partner. As a couple, you should be the ones making decisions over how it should look. But taking advice from others can also be beneficial for the party’s sake.

• Consider the possible liabilities. Sometimes when we really like an idea, we don’t stop to think about how it might affect others. In some countries, 1 in 4 adults live with a disability and having people stumbling around might not be the safest plan for deaf people, old people, wheelchair users, kids, even your parents. You might end up with an unfortunate accident.

• Try to have a heart-to-heart conversation with your fiancé’s parents. Perhaps if they see that you really care about honoring your parents at your wedding, they would try and help by suggesting other meaningful ways in which it can be done. They can give you great original ideas and your relationship with them might get stronger.

• You can achieve a middle ground. Finding other ways to celebrate your parents can be a way in which you can include them and the other guests. For example, having a time frame in which the lights will go off, maybe letting every guest dress in a funny way without having to turn the lights off, etc.

• If you still decide to make your wedding a lights out event, take precautions. You wouldn’t want any accidents on such important date. Having professional and medical services present can minimize the odds of any contingency happening. We hope that you can have the wedding of your dreams and that everything works out fine for you and your husband to be.

Which do you think is the right course of action? Do you think there is a middle ground in this situation? If you have any advice for Emma, please share it in the comments, it may also help others to overcome a similar situation.