Ditch the Flower Girl with Childfree Housewife Vivian Manganello - Ep 66

Part 3 in the childfree wedding series comes to us in the form of an email from Vivian, a now "retired" childfree housewife. 

Vivian's wedding planning started off as a wild ride navigating family expectations, Catholicism, and even some social shaming, all because she dared to say "I don't want kids." 

Having now been married for over 20 years, her life's been a winning combination of freedom, happiness, and amazing adventures (including a home in paradise), all because Vivian and her husband dared to be different. This isn't just a wedding story; it's a shining example of what life looks like when you choose your own path, have self-confidence in the face of a passive-aggressive in-laws, and design a life that makes you truly happy—a vida más chévere!

Celebrate love, and learn how to avoid flower girl meltdowns on this episode.

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Want to send in your childfree wedding story? Submit your story at pauletteerato.com/childfreewedding

To get the full show notes, and an episode transcript, go to PauletteErato.com/shownotes. This is episode 66.

Transcript

0:43

Buen dia, mi gente, and welcome to La Vida Mas Chevere de Childfree Latinas, the only Spanglish podcast for childfree Latinas y Latines, helping us liberate ourselves from the toxic cultural brainwashing we all grew up with so that we can design our best lives instead. I'm your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato. If you've been reading the newsletter, and if you haven't, why not? The link is always in the show notes. You'll also see it referred to as my Substack. That's just a newsletter with an archive. It's fancy. So anyway, if you've been reading, you know that last week was a disastrous time in my health journey and shit went sideways. So while I'm dealing with that, and if you want more details, you can check out episode 64, where I told you all about how it got started. That's just two back from this one. I'm going to keep it light around here for now, while what I wanted to produce for you is an episode on how Simone Biles took time off from the Olympics to then come back and dominate for her ninth world title earlier this month, what I'm going to show you instead is what happens in between the taking the time off part and the coming back to remind everybody you're the greatest of all time part. This is the in between space, the journey, if you will. The behind the scenes where it can get a little depressing, because right now I cannot give you my best creative effort or my best podcasting effort, but I can convey to you a story from a listener. Since we're officially in summer up here in North America, when many a wedding are taking place, and Bridgerton served us up not just one, but two weddings this season, let's give some air time to a very polarizing topic. The childfree wedding. Last year, I started a series for this where people shared their own childfree wedding experience as the bride. So I'll leave you links to the episode for both Andrea's and Jamie's stories in the show notes, and if you would like to share your story to fit into this series, whether you had a childfree wedding, you attended a childfree wedding, or just have drama and tea to share about a childfree wedding, instructions for doing that are in the show notes. Today's childfree wedding story is from Vivian, who opted to email it to me instead of being interviewed in person, which you can do too. But first, a trigger warning that this story has a lot of religion in it, aight? This is from Vivian's point of view, read directly from her email, and she even gives us a little glimpse of what life is like for her now, over two decades later. So let's jump in. I met my husband at the office I worked at in Silicon Valley, California. We dated for four years and bought a house. We really weren't in a rush to get married, but I was thinking of going back to school full time and I would need to have health insurance. We talked about it, but never set a date when we would get married or I would quit my job. My husband proposed in 1999 and we started planning our wedding. I was raised Catholic, but had since been known as a lapsed Catholic. My husband didn't have any religious affiliation and considers himself atheist. However, I was very close to my Catholic grandparents and it was very important to them to see us get married in the church. My grandmother, who was always like a second mother, didn't ask much of me and I had no problems saying yes to this request. My husband knew how I felt and also had a special bond with my grandparents, so he willingly went to meet the priest with me and also went to the Catholic retreat we were required to attend, as well as the short course in Catholic birth control, for lack of a better word. We already knew we didn't want children. As a side note, when I was first thinking I didn't want to have kids in my early 20s, I was working with a very lovely older woman. She and her husband were childfree and were always going on wonderful trips. I asked to sit down with her to discuss her life and her decision not to have children. She was very sweet and answered all of my questions. I remembered her saying it was the best decision she had ever made. That really stuck with me. So four years later, when we were planning our wedding, I brought it up to my husband that I really didn't think I wanted to have children. He said it was my choice and he would respect that. So we attended the Catholic retreat with that in mind. Of course, we were questioned about having children and I think I said I wasn't going to have them at the time. They didn't really pressure us to say that we would, it was actually a very good retreat. The next time I was hanging out with a good friend, at the time, she was bugging me about the retreat and the fact that I was supposed to have children if we got married in the church. I was really taken aback by her comment. She was almost badgering me and accusing me of lying about it at the retreat. This person was far from religious, so I didn't know what her problem was with me. She had been married the year before, also in a church, and had gone through the same class as we did, but that was about as religious as she was. I let it drop so as not to start a fight. The wedding planning started, and I knew right away I didn't want kids in my wedding. I didn't want any spotlight taken away from me because of cute kids. They also can be so unpredictable. We'd attended my husband's brother's wedding two years before and the flower girl refused to go down the aisle and then had a major tantrum when the little ring bearer tried to grab her hand and walk her down the aisle with him. We ordered the invitations and specifically said, please leave your children at home. I don't exactly remember the wording we used, but it was tasteful and not offensive. The week of the wedding came and I received a call from one of my friends with a little baby. She asked if I could make an exception for her. I told her no. First, I wasn't sure if her child would start crying. And secondly, why would I make an exception for her and none of our friends? She told me then she could only have child care for the church ceremony and she would have to leave and not attend the reception. I was firm. I wasn't sure why she couldn't get a babysitter. Her child was not a newborn. I think it was her husband that stayed home with their daughter. No one else that I invited that had children even asked to make an exception. We had a wonderful, completely childfree day. My sister in law had just found out she was pregnant, but didn't even tell us because she didn't want to take the spotlight away from us with my husband's family. A few years later, my mother in law was questioning my husband about our choice to not have children. I guess we'd never mentioned it to her and she overheard me telling someone at a family event. She was very upset and asked my husband about it. He had wanted children before we got married and she knew this. So she blamed me for him not wanting them. He had a talk with her and she seemed to be okay with it as far as I knew. She didn't bring it up again. A few years later, she saw me post something on Facebook about the situation. I don't know how she was able to see it. I guess it was a public group. In any case, she then told my sister in law about it, saying she'd never said that. Again, she didn't confront me, so I didn't bring it up again. I quit my job a year after we got married to finish up my degree. After graduating, I decided to take my time looking for a job. Somehow, that turned into me being a full time housewife, and I never looked back. When people have questioned me about what I do, I say, I'm a housewife. Of course, they think that means I'm a mom. And when I tell them I have no kids, they ask me what I do all day. And I say, whatever I want. They're usually at a loss for words. Sometimes I say retired now that I'm in my fifties. We've been married for 23 years. There was a brief time in my late thirties where I wavered on my childfree choice. I was seeing friends and family members have kids and I wondered if I'd made the right decision. So I decided to go off birth control for a year and see what happened. Thankfully, I never did get pregnant. It was just a thought, not really a serious notion. I am so happy we never had kids. We've been able to do so many things on a whim and make life decisions that could not be done easily with children. We moved from New York City where we lived for four years because we wanted to be closer to my family and experience life in a big city. Now we live in Maui, which has been our dream since we honeymooned here in 2001. We bought a vacation condo here in 2012 and then a single family home in 2016, where we now reside. That was a lot. So many red flags popped up here. Like the mother in law, who was like, what do you mean you're not having babies? You always wanted them. And then the friend projecting all kinds of weird religious crap about lying and getting married in the church. Oof. Well, I mean, at least the sister in law had the good manners not to announce her pregnancy to the family at the wedding. And good on the mom in law for eventually dropping the subject. Oof. Anyway, I'm sure that Vivian is enjoying her childfree life in Hawaii, doing exactly whatever the hell she wants to do, and gives zero fucks about what anybody else has to say about it. I'm happy for her and her husband. Thanks for sharing, Vivian. Once again, if you want to share the tea on your childfree wedding story, whether it's about your wedding or someone else's, fill out the form linked in the show notes. And that's a burrito. Hey, mira, if this episode made you feel some kind of way, dígame. DM me on Instagram, or send me a text. You can do that right from your phone. If you want to be a guest on the show and put your story out there too, check out the guest form on my website at pauletterato. com slash guest. Yep, just my name, pauletterato. com slash guest. Y no se te olvide que hay más perks when you join the newsletter. Todos estos links están en los show notes. Muchísimas gracias for your support y hasta la próxima vez, cuídate bien.