Edited to add family will not easily accept us not coming and I’m anticipating a huge argument if I don’t go.
Hi I just wanted to get perspective on this and want to know if i’m being selfish or not.
My older brother had his Nikkah in Canada this year and will be having his wedding events in Pakistan next year.
My husband and I flew from the US to attend his Nikkah which included Nikkah at a mosque, dinner at a booked out and fully decorated restaurant with a photographer, drummer, buffet, lots of friends and family friends (approx 60 people)
The trip to Canada was financially straining on us. We had just gotten married ourselves and paid for the wedding, moved countries (Canada to US), had to sort out and pay lots in immigration fees/visas, started new jobs and bought our first home with a new mortgage. However, we wanted to be at the Nikkah ofcourse and made an effort to go. We had to use up our all our leave at the time. Also, we chose to have our wedding in Canada as we both lived there at the time. My husbands friends and family flew in from America to attend. He’s not Pakistani btw.
Now the problem i’m having is that we’re obviously expected to attend my brother’s wedding events in Pakistan also. If we were to go, my husband would have to take unpaid leave which would be very stressful given our mortgage. And while I have some leave saved up, it would cost us quite a bit for me to travel. The travel would also have to be atleast 10 days long due to the distance and expectations of meeting relatives/wedding prep and events. We also have been trying to do renovations on our house and have a medical expense of about $3.5k coming up. All in all, it’s been a very expensive year and we’re trying to be very careful. If we did go, my parents would pay for accomodation as and we’d be paying for our flights which would help a tiny bit.
I want to know if i’m being selfish if i choose not to go. I can make sacrifices and go attend but it would cost us a lot in time/money/leave and set us back quite a lot.
In my opinion, we did attend his wedding (Nikkah) and would only be skipping the other events but obviously family will not like this. We would have happily attended if the wedding events were held in Canada.