Our daughter’s getting married in Florida and we’re heartbroken

My daughter is getting married, which is great. Except that she is getting married in Florida, which is not so great. I’m delighted for her – her fiancé seems like a very nice young man, with good prospects, and he has gone about the whole business so far in the right way, asking my permission before he officially proposed and doing his best to charm my wife.

We don’t mind all that much that he is American – he doesn’t seem to be brash or vulgar, and whatever his politics are, he doesn’t shout about them.

The big problem is that they will be getting married in his home state, Florida, rather than our home “state”, Wiltshire, and that is a source of great distress to my wife and – to a lesser, but still very real, extent – myself.

I can see the sense in it. The newlyweds-to-be met in Florida, while our daughter was working out there. They have been together for more than two years and in that time she has seen a lot of his family and clearly settled into the social scene. She has made a lot of new friends out there and obviously been accepted and welcomed by them all,which is reassuring, if not all that much fun for the friends she has left behind here.

For obvious reasons, it hasn’t been easy to travel back and forth in that time, so our daughter’s fiancé has had very little chance to find out about the UK and meet our daughter’s friends over here. Equally, we have yet to meet his parents, though there have been a couple of slightly awkward group Zoom calls. They look all right. Very tanned.

She wants to marry in his home state because that is where his friends are and, she says, this will also make all the paperwork – Green Card, work permit and so on – easier for her to deal with.

There aren’t any major religious stumbling blocks – his parents seem to be vaguely Christian in pretty much the same way that we are: not Bible-bashing but fairly regular churchgoers. So I’m sure the service will be fine and the reception will be lovely – if only the alligators stay off the lawn ( just kidding, as they say in Miami).

The real trouble is that the lovely couple really should be getting married in the bride’s home village, not the groom’s home city. We have lived in our little community for many years and our neighbours have seen our daughter grow up. It’s heartbreaking to have to explain to them that she won’t be getting married at the ancient little church where she was christened, and that the reception won’t be in our lovely local country-house hotel.

And it’s awkward to have to explain to good friends and really quite close family that they won’t be invited to the wedding. The logistics and – let’s face it – the cost are simply way out of our league.

Instead my daughter wants us to have a little party here for them a couple of months after the wedding, which I suppose is probably the best solution all around but, as my wife tearfully points out every time the topic is raised, it just isn’t the same, and has none of the traditional appeal or emotional power of an old-fashioned village-church wedding.

This isn’t about status, or wishing to show off, or post pretty pictures on social media. It is more about being able to send our daughter off into the next part of her life from her home, rather than having it made cruelly, abundantly clear that she has

already gone.

‘The lovely couple should be getting wed in the bride’s home village not the groom’s home city’