Mother of the bride/groom-Zillas

They don't all have that. Bridal shower (maybe a couple of them thrown by work friends, personal friends) rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself the norm. The people on bridal forums tend to be a set of bridezillas, that is why they are on those forums.

To be fair I live in the USA and haven't seen any MILzilla behavior, in fact I have been to a modest wedding where I felt overdressed as many guests were in jeans and t-shirts!!
On the other hand some occasions are very formal such as my daughter being in her best friends Quinceanera Court when she practiced a dance with all the other 15 yr olds on the Court for weeks before the event and they girls all wore matching dresses while the boys were in suits a la :

Then how many people betting on who would have an affair first

@SummerSiesta was your friend dumped by her fiance or was the fiance dumped by his family?

Thanks @LadyOfTheCanyon It is a work in progress to be honest.

Crap... Were you the bride at the wedding I ran???

@Blackberrybunnet "We have now been married for 46 years, and she is dead."

😂this cracked me up

When I was organising my wedding my DF had the hump because I didn't want to get married in a Catholic church. My parents are Irish Catholic. For a year it took me to organise my Wedding, it wasn't mentioned at my parents home. I was lucky to have amazing friend who I would have dinner with every week and she was excited just as much as me and helped me out with some of the Wedding preparations.
The morning before my Wedding, I had to take the cake to the reception and when I arrived, I was told my uncle had booked in extra guests to the Wedding breakfast and was I ok with this. Not a phone call to me and I was so fed-up at this point that I said, yes. All good. My DF wouldn't let me know if he would like any relatives from Ireland to come to the Wedding. He still had a mood over it. We were paying for our big day, not a penny from my parents which I did not expect but I did expect them to be happy i was getting married and not to have to put up with all the fuss over a church wedding. The day it self was beautiful, registry office was lovely and the reception was brilliant. We decided to have a free bar for everyone. Wanted to have a party with all our family and friends. I look back and it really took the shine of the lead up to my Wedding with the way my DF was but the day its self was perfect and honeymoon.

My MIL had a tantrum at our wedding rehearsal because we weren't doing the wedding the way she wanted. My husband told her off and she stormed off in the huff. FIL came to us and said we should apologise. Husband was having none of it and said she needed to apologise. She also ruined the morning when he was getting ready. Booked me a taxi instead of the wedding car.

A close friend decided to have a wedding abroad for a few reasons, second time around for soon to be DH and fact her DM had been a drama lama for her dsis’ wedding. She didn’t succeed…her parents came alone to a very couples focused wedding destination and were gooseberries for entire stay. DM was completely unaware she had gatecrashed and obviously friend’s DH had family who ended left out cos of the expense. And prior to that DM invited relatives (one had sense to decline) and put huge pressure on friend’s sibling to fly out family, take kids out of school to attend. All very embarrassing….fortunately friend picked a great DH as he just went with the flow…..no idea how I would have managed to stay calm.

 @Marscapone for you. That's brutal. I hope you've been able to work through your feelings with regard to your family since.

My mother decided the night before my wedding was the right time to tell me the 'family secrets' which included serious abuse, incest and other things. Apparently if I was old enough to be getting married (34) i was old enough to know the truth about her side of the family.

My interpretation of this now is that she has always resented me for unspecified reasons and subconsciously she wanted to ruin my happiness for me.

The day was very hard to get through. I'll never forgive her for her timing to be honest about it. There was simply no need for it and it was very deliberate.

I think there's a lot of that, plus weddings were a lot more low key in those days. Small ceremony, mostly family in attendance, small reception (if one at all) - at least that's how most weddings in my family seemed to go from the 70s and further back.

Much as it's gone too far the other way sometimes - what with the hashtags, massive bills and everything being Instagram-ready - there must be an element for some of wishing that they'd been able to have a bigger day or at least one they'd planned themselves. I think the same goes for (grand)children as well, hence why some parents turn into nightmares when their children have grandchildren.

My FIL and his partner (who he had an affair with and left my MIL for) were absolute nightmares.

They refused to stay in the same hotel as her and demanded the OW be sat on the top table otherwise they wouldn’t attend the wedding.

They made a huge fuss about not being anywhere near MIL all day - she made no fuss whatsoever bless her heart.

They really upset me and stressed me out in the run up to my wedding but I did get my revenge in a sly way… I sat them right on the end of the pew at the ceremony where they could barely see anything and excluded them from the group family photo … “But I thought you didn’t want to be anywhere near MIL?!” 😝

Yep. That was how it was when I got married. The invitations came from the parents (with their names printed on). That was normal. I was only minimally involved with the choice of location and meal, but also didn't pay a penny towards it. Of course they asked for the details of friends that we wanted to invite, but that was it.

I bought and chose my own dress, but that's because my SIL and I were walking down a street one day and saw a dress in the window of Laura Ashley. We went in, I tried it on, it was nice so I got it. My mum was really upset that she hadn't had the 'shopping for a dress' experience with me. I was relieved not to have to.
But 40 years later, when I was having a lovely time at my own DD's fittings, I looked back and felt bad.

My parents paid a lot to the wedding and I know it meant a lot to them to help organise the thing, but God, my mum spoiled my blood multiple times. I let her take care of things that didn't matter to me this much, but still... I'm glad that you only get married once (in theory).

Seriously, as parents of the bride and groom, our role is to offer to PAY for stuff, not choose it! I offered to pay for a range of things, and of those my DD chose that I pay for the dress. I gave her a budget, but me deciding which dress she had would have been insane! Same if I'd been paying for the flowers or the meal or anything else. They choose, we pay (within our budget).

It was lovely to be involved in the dress trying on and the venue visits etc. But I saw it as a privilege and not a right.

From talking to my mum and mother-in-law, it sounds like that in their generation (I guess you'd say baby boomers), their wedding was pretty much completely controlled by their parents. Their parents set the guest list, chose the venue, etc. So I guess some mothers think this is their turn to plan a wedding, as they didn't really plan their own? Thankfully ours weren't like that, but I can see why some might.

My MIL offered to buy the flowers. We asked for white or pink roses.

She bought fucking carnations that were dyed orange. They were horrible. I had trouble keeping a straight face when I had to thank her for them. DH and I laughed and laughed once she left the room.

No, I actually think they get away with it far too much, and usually the bride is lumped with the "bridezilla" name.

My MIL behaved horrendously. So selfish, and narcissistic was she, that both my husband and I had to see a therapist after the wedding to come to terms with how badly we had been treated. If we hadn't, we'd have had no option but to cut her from our lives completely. Something I was very tempted to do. Instead, we've now been able to place healthy boundaries and keep her at arms length. Obviously this annoys her immensely but it wouldn't ever enter her mind that this is due to her behaviour. As she once told us after she'd upset us "i don't care, I'm always right and that's that".

I will never ever understand how selfish some people can be. I look at my own children and can't imagine putting my selfish demands ahead of what they want. I just want them to be happy. Unfortunately not all parents think like that!

When mine ( both sexes ) got married, I kept well out of it. I asked no questions except for when and where.
I think they must have seen my eyes glaze over if it was mentioned, so they never really spoke about it.

Oh yes my PIL said they would buy the wedding stationary up to £200 I spend about £145 I’ve still not received the money and it’s our 10th wedding anniversary soon.

My MIL took my flower girls dress back to the shop and picked a different one. (She said she had room to store dresses, thought she was being kind) I told her I was upset, she cried to my FIL and apparently I was the horrible one for making her cry?

Glad to see I’m not alone with the crazy MILs!! We’ve also had tears / tantrums / silent treatment / financial contributions being withheld because she’s not 100% got her way across all aspects of the wedding.

Honestly at this stage, I’ll be extremely relieved when the day is over 😂

I’m having some of this too. I expected it from my “d”m but when it came from my MIL to be, it threw us completely. It’s taking away from my wedding planning no experience.

I’ve been consulting a coach about it who has really helped me overcome some of my feelings and gave me amazing advice to deal with different situations.
I think without her guidance I would have eloped by now with my partner. It seems quite common as she deals with brides full time.

she has talked a lot about boundaries and creating them before the wedding and sticking to them as what happens at the wedding we’ll set precedent to the rest of our lives(children etc) which all makes sense to me.

we cannot please everyone, so we are just pleasing ourselves now.