A Wedding on the Terms of an Ultimatum

"My fiancé and I love each other madly. He's a wonderful, modest, kind young man. But our families are on completely different levels of material wealth. My father is an ordinary schoolteacher in Brooklyn; we have a large family and a modest income. My fiancé's parents are major real-estate owners.

When it came to discussing the wedding, his mother issued an ultimatum: either my parents pay exactly half of a lavish celebration in an elite hall and cover the cost of furniture for our future apartment, or "there will be no wedding, because they have no intention of embarrassing themselves in front of their wealthy friends with a modest reception." My father sat in the kitchen all night with his head in his hands—for him that sum meant having to take on colossal debt he'd never pay off in his lifetime. My fiancé tried to argue with his mother, but she declared, "If you go against the family, we'll cut off all support." Our love became a hostage to parental pride and someone else's vanity. It pains me to look at my father, and I don't know whether a marriage that begins with the financial rape of my family has any right to happiness."