Oh, Eskie, I got it! I know a family in which the mom, a German prude, placed her eldest son's gf in a separate bedroom when she visited. But there was no talk of values, it was just attributed to her prudishness.

OK, Comic, if Eskie read you right, then the following is a letter I would send to your parents, cc'ing the husband (I am calling him your husband because that is who he is to you) and signing with both your names.

"Dear parents,

We are writing to inform you of a happiest occasion - we have consummated our relationship and become Husband and Wife in the eyes of God, with God being the sole witness we needed to be there when we promise one another commitment and loyalty.

Please congratulate us!

Don't you worry - all the materialistic attributes of a contemporary wedding ceremony are yet to come. There will be a white dress and there will be a cake and a church full of guests. We know that those things are super important to you, so we will do all of them in order to make you happy. For us, those materialistic attributes diminish and trivialize the importance of our becoming a couple. Sure we can order flowers, engage a photographer, book a hotel, etc., but taking those steps, which can be outsourced to a professional event planner, has absolutely nothing to do with the sacred act of consummating a marriage. When we started thinking of what would be left of our wedding night if we decide to have it after the wedding, tired, inebriated, and frazzled, we unanimously agreed to separate consummation of our marriage from the event planning side of the marriage. After all, we can outsource the event planning part, but we cannot and would not want to outsource consummating our marriage!

So we are now happy newlyweds with the formal festivities to follow in due course.

Cheers,

ABC and XYZ"

and I would not go on to ask that you be placed in one bed when at their house. I would just put it this way and rest your case.

Good luck.



By the way, you said it very well -

Well, the problem is there is a distinct belief disconnect between our respective parents' beliefs and our beliefs. Simply put, we and our parents do not agree what defines 'marriage'. Our parents are convinced that the end-all-be-all is me wearing a froofy white dress and us shoving cakes in each other's face while in a church. However, my fiance and I agree that marriage is actually about the promise of commitment and loyalty between the couple, with God being the only necessary witness. Sure this is not the legal definition of marriage, but the religious definition of marriage was never about taxes, anyway, it was what it symbolizes.