How do I set boundaries with family over wedding social media without being controlling or ungrateful?

I’m a guy in my mid-20s who recently got engaged, and I’m having my first serious conflict with my family over boundaries surrounding my engagement and future wedding.

I’m looking for outside perspectives because I genuinely don’t want an echo chamber. If I’m being unreasonable or controlling, tell me.

Some context:

I’m a very private person. I don’t post much of my personal life publicly, and I especially don’t want my relationship or future marriage broadcast all over social media.

I’m also not particularly interested in having a huge or lavish wedding. I would honestly be perfectly happy with something simple and inexpensive.

My mom and older sister are very different from me in this regard. They’re much more culturally oriented when it comes to weddings. They love the gifts, decorations, planning, elaborate celebrations, traditional presentation, etc.

Rather than fighting them over everything, I’ve basically let them have fun with it.

If they want to decorate, plan elaborate things, buy gifts, spend money, etc., I haven’t tried to stop them. I’ve repeatedly told them I appreciate what they’re doing even though I personally wouldn’t require any of it. They genuinely enjoy this stuff and are excited that I’m getting married, so I don’t want to take that joy away from them.

There have, however, been a few areas where I’ve held firm because they involve religious or personal boundaries rather than wedding preferences.

For example, I said no to music at my wedding for religious reasons.

There has also been discussion around my fiancée’s wedding attire. Both my fiancée and I care about her observing hijab properly. Some of my family wanted a more culturally conventional “bridal” presentation that would involve showing more than she and I are comfortable with. I held firm that she shouldn’t have to compromise her hijab to look more “bridal.”

So I understand that from my family’s perspective, they may feel like I keep putting restrictions on their idea of what a normal, joyful cultural wedding looks like.

From my perspective, though, I’ve tried to distinguish between preferences and principles.

If it’s decorations, gifts, food, cultural traditions that don’t bother me, or how elaborate they want to make something, I’m largely letting them enjoy themselves even though I would personally choose something much simpler.

If it crosses a religious boundary or something I feel strongly about regarding my marriage, I say no.

That brings me to the current problem: social media and privacy.

Before my engagement, I specifically did not want it publicly announced on social media. I wasn’t planning to tell most of my broader friend circle until several months later.

My sister wanted to post about the engagement. We had some tension over it, but eventually reached what I thought was a compromise: she could post something to her Instagram followers without identifying my fiancée.

I agreed to that.

Later, I discovered that she had also posted TikToks showing the engagement and gifts.

Because TikTok pushes content beyond your followers, people I know apparently started getting the videos recommended to them. People were commenting congratulations to me, which means the engagement was now reaching people I had deliberately chosen not to tell yet.

I asked my sister to delete the TikTok.

She became extremely upset and accused me of being ungrateful and not appreciating everything she has done for me. My mom took her side and thinks my restrictions surrounding the wedding are becoming excessive.

Their perspective, as I understand it, is basically:

This is a happy occasion. Everyone has worked extremely hard. People spent money and put effort into gifts and decorations. My sister is proud and excited. She isn’t posting identifiable pictures of my fiancée and me together, so why am I making such a big deal about showing the celebration and gifts?

I genuinely understand why they feel that way.

But my perspective is:

I never asked for an extravagant wedding or expensive gifts in the first place.

I’m allowing them to do those things because they enjoy them and because I appreciate their excitement for me. I don’t think voluntarily spending a lot of money or effort celebrating my marriage should then create an obligation for me to surrender the relatively small number of boundaries I actually care about.

In other words, I don’t want the dynamic to become:

“We put so much work and money into your wedding, therefore you should let us celebrate/share/present it however we want.”

I’m grateful for what they’re doing. But I also would have been completely happy with a cheap, simple wedding without all of this work.

And privacy is genuinely important to me.

I don’t think my sister had malicious intentions. I think she posted because she’s excited for her younger brother and proud of what everyone did.

But once I specifically say, “I don’t want my engagement publicly circulating on TikTok,” I feel like that should be respected even if she personally thinks the boundary is excessive.

There’s also a bigger concern for me.

I’m about to establish my own household. Today it’s engagement videos. Later it could be wedding photos, information about my wife, our home, pregnancy announcements, children, etc.

I don’t want to establish a precedent where I state a privacy boundary, my family gets extremely upset, and I eventually surrender it because I can’t tolerate the family tension.

At the same time, I really don’t want to become controlling.

My sister is an adult. It’s her social media account. I don’t want to punish her, threaten her, block her, or create a family rift over a TikTok.

I also don’t want to blame any of this on my fiancée. This is my boundary. My fiancée has nothing to do with the disagreement between my family and me, and I don’t want my family developing resentment toward her because they think she came into my life and suddenly started imposing rules.

My current approach is to tell my sister something along the lines of:

“I appreciate everything you’ve done and I know you posted because you’re excited for me. But I don’t want my engagement publicly circulated on TikTok, and I’m asking you to remove it. I’m not going to fight with you or disrespect you over it, but my position on the privacy issue isn’t changing.”

If she refuses, I don’t think repeatedly escalating until she complies is healthy either.

My thought is that the natural consequence would simply be that I become more careful about what wedding photos, private information, and future family information I give her access to. Not as punishment, but because if we have fundamentally different definitions of privacy, I have to assume that something I share privately might eventually be posted.

So my questions are:

Am I being unreasonable?

Is asking her to delete the TikTok a legitimate boundary, or am I trying to exercise control over something that ultimately belongs to her?

Does the fact that my mom and sister are putting huge amounts of time, money and effort into celebrating my wedding give them some reasonable expectation of being able to publicly share it?

For people from very involved or culturally traditional families, how did you make the transition from “the family is putting on our wedding” to “the married couple ultimately determines the boundaries around their own life”?

And if my sister simply refuses to delete it, what is a proportionate response that protects my privacy without turning this into a power struggle?

I genuinely love my mom and sister. I know they love me and are excited for me. I’m not trying to “win” against them.

I’m trying to figure out how to remain firm about things I genuinely believe matter while still being a good son and brother and not turning every disagreement into a battle.