When I married, I was living halfway across the country from my kin. I didn't keep it from my parents. But, I did plan my wedding so that they would neither meet my husband beforehand nor be able to attend the wedding. I wasn't keen on my husband meeting them before we were married – frankly, I worried he wouldn't want to marry into my family.

I'd already seen my three younger sisters go through stuff with our parents and their marriages and I wasn't going to invite it into my own life. Besides, every wedding my parents were involved with ended pretty quickly in divorce. They refused to attend one of my sisters' weddings; she was married to the same man until she passed at 49 years old. My mothe planned another sisters first wedding; she helped pay for that sister's second wedding – both ended in divorce (but then, that sister married five times and divorced every time). Mother planned my third sister's wedding too; and, it too soon ended in divorce – she's still married to her second husband.

It just seemed to me that – not only did our parents bring painful drama to the precedings – their participation looked like a curse on the marriage. Better to finagle their non-participation, IME.