Edit: I appreciate the comments and I got perspective on the post part and see how that specifically could (and probably was) received. Everyone’s different, for what it’s worth my parents personally didn’t care and based on the comments that’s what this feels like, either you think the legal part is real and super important or it’s not. We feel the latter. From what I’m reading it seems like it’s a difference in “beliefs” in how people see a legal document. In our eyes that’s what August was, a legal document. I personally don’t understand why that would take precedent over when we chose to celebrate that but I’m not here to argue that that’s just how we feel about it and I can’t change peoples minds. I’ll take y’all’s feedback and use that moving forward. (more like are we the a-hole) First time reddit poster so sorry if I make mistakes in this. Tried to keep the title close enough but obviously context is needed. My wife and I got married October 2024. We chose to do the legal marriage certificate part early (August 2024) so we didn’t have to worry about it day of and she could get a head start on changing her name for work as she was about to start a new job. We didn’t tell anyone that we were doing this. The only 2 people who knew were our 2 friends we chose as witnesses to come with us. It was a great day and everything went well, we took some pictures, all had lunch, then went on with our days so it was special but simple. My wife and I never considered this our wedding day, we always had, have, and continue to see our October wedding as our anniversary since that was the day we celebrated with friends and family. Fast forward to a couple days ago. My wife reminds me that we both forgot about our “courthouse anniversary” (cause we never considered it more than what it was) so I thought it would be cute and funny to post a pic from that day on insta as a “Surprise! We did this” and leave it as that. I showed my wife what I had and she thought it was cute and funny so I posted it. Later that night my wife gets a text from her mom and she’s mad that we didn’t tell her we did this, that we actually got married in August, what was the point of doing the wedding in October, and some other things. After a couple texts back and forth we decided to just call her and try to explain. Long story short that didn’t go well, I got angry and raised my voice at MIL (later in the call apologized for getting angry.) We tried to explain that it wasn’t just her that we didn’t tell but that we didn’t tell anyone, it was just to get the legal stuff out the way, etc from what I said about, but it essentially ended with everyone getting more upset and no resolution. So I guess I’m asking if I (we) are the assholes for 1. Not telling her that we did that 2. How I handled the phone call that night? I probably left some stuff out so I’ll do my best to either reply to comments or post an update after reading comments. Thanks everyone!