To think DH shouldn't have dropped off MIL

This. How can it even be possible for two adults to stay up ALL night to clean and decorate for a 3 hr party. And to not even feed your own child. Madness.

This all sounds a bit dramatic OP.

It was a dinner, they happen all the time and I just can't understand

a) Why it took so long to cook it all
b) Why the 2 year old wasn't fed
c) Why some of the clearing up couldn't wait until the next day if you were cross your husband wasn't there?
d) Why the logistics weren't all discussed beforehand, or why you didn't say no to anything you disagreed with?

It's nice your husband was looking after his mum!

I'm not sure if this is the case here, but the immaculate house is a sign of respect to the Lord on a major religious feast, not to impress guests. Certainly a day or more cleaning has been the norm among Orthodox Jewish or Hindu or some non-British Roman Catholic friends in preparing for feasts, for this reason. The repetition of 'crazy' and other dismissive language on this thread is sad and shows cultural loss.

Your DD had not dinner at 10:30? At two years old? That is crazy.
And you were cooking the whole night the day before?
I voted YABU because:

1. It is just normal to want to pick up and drop your mother/ father/ sister/ brother..., particularly if they are 67. They can have a little together time. It is nice.
2. He had helped. He cleaned and got involved.
3. The obvious problem here is what you are cooking and doing. You come across as the opposite of chilled around your ILs. No need to keep the house and food like in a 5 star hotel. Clean is good. You can chill and play with your DD or rest for the two hours it takes him to get there and back. And why would you spend the whole dinner party in the kitchen, instead of with them? You already spent lots of hours in the kitchen. You need to simplify what you are doing, in my opinion.
4. Somebody should have fed your daughter. That is not acceptable! She is there with her grandma, auntie, father and mother. Surely they gave her food? From the dinner? Because she is two, so bar spicy and salty foods, she should be ok to eat the same?

I think what you need to do is cook a roast, steam some veggies, have things semi-ready so you can actually spend time with them.

I’d say if you ever pull that again then dd & I will be staying at my parents and you can magic up some McDonald’s or something instead of expecting 10 hours cooking at short notice from me on top of other plans and looking after dd. That was so inconsiderate of you, I love your mum but I matter too, not to mention dd matters and you never even thought about feeding her while I cooked!! Never ever again. If your sister asks you can say we are only serving shop bought food for Eid this year and you won’t like it. You are welcome to host. Also you are providing dinner tonight. And Monday. I’m cooked out.

OP i get it & totally sympathise with you. It's v hard when families have different approaches to you & it's just how they are.

My family are irish & my dh's are English. Our dc are grown up now but when they were small we had v similar situations around invitations & celebrating holiday events.

We were younger & naive & thought it was a nice thing to invite our families to our home to celebrate with us.

My family were fine & fell in with whatever plan was made & were always delighted to be here & to spend time with us & dc.

Dhs family on the other hand, paid lip service to waiting to mark these occasions but are v chaotic & disorganised & generally turned out to be v hard to host for similar reasons to yours

Firstly he's one of 5 siblings so by the time you add their partners & kids etc thr group was huge!

They'd all accept the invitation & we'd plan accordingly & it's not cheap to cater for 24 / 25 people. And then they'd start dropping out & cancelling. Used to drive me mad as it was all so casual & with no acknowledgement of how much effort we'd made etc

Or we'd make all the arrangements around times that worked for them (also live around an hour away) & they'd still have to change things last minute. My family live much further away & never behaved like them.

I remember one memorable Easter Sunday we'd invited mil & dh's 2 younger sisters who were still teens & living at home & my parents.

We'd gone to a lot of expense to cook Easter Sunday lunch & dd was only about 6 months old.

Mil invited her (awful) 'partner' & they were then over an hour late so I was trying to save the meal, an expensive lamb joint. As soon as we opened the front door mil said oh we we can't stay v long as xxx (her partner) wants to be home in time to watch the match

The lunch was sped through & they'd barely put the dessert spoons down when they were off...

I was so pissed off

I felt v bad for dh who really wanted to be able to host his family for our dc to have good experiences of family occasions as his mum had never bothered with any of it. They barely celebrated Christmas & v little effort was made for celebratory meals etc

When we got out own house & dc came along we wanted them to have all that & always made an effort to put up some decorations at Easter/ Christmas/ Halloween etc

I gave up with his family in the end as they made it v clear they didn't appreciate any of the effort (or expense) of inviting them.

Just lack of communication between the two of you re feeding your daughter. And I wouldn’t have focused on getting the house spotless for their arrival. Most people accept there’s some untidiness when you have children. And I would have just fed your dc a bowl of quickly put together cereal,after he left with his dm, and gone to bed, leaving the tidying up of plates etc til the morning after, when you both could tackle it.

It sounds as though OP was in the kitchen all evening as the Eid meal is very elaborate, she is not used to cooking it as they normally eat western food and her DH didn't help her with it. It sounds like the equivalent of cooking a Christmas dinner. OP expected her DH to feed her DD as she was in the kitchen and OP has said that the food was too spicy for her daughter.

Anyway, I think MIL and SIL should have gone home in a taxi paid for by OP's DH. Possibly if MIL had been on her own and said she felt uncomfortable alone in a taxi OP would have been unreasonable, but as there were two of them, she definitely wasn't.

Two people were guests and her husband's blood relatives, one an elder. The sis in law could have offered to help but by proper manners would not be expected to. What you call running around like a skivvy is treating guests honourably. The problem is absence of an extended family or older children or hired help to pick up tasks.

Eh? Why on earth not - unless there’s something actually wrong with her - a taxi is the obvious solution.

Next time just refuse to cook.!
You have told him no and he ignores and dis respects you .

Honestly I wouldn’t care what celebration it was .
It all Sounds entitled. All three adults eating you stuck in a kitchen (when you said no ) and daughter not fed.
Then dh gets up and leaves and you have Dd to deal with and the mess. More entitlement .

You need to put your foot down op .

Sorry I voted YABU because I think he should have taken her home. MIL and SIL should have helped you with clearing up after dinner though, and you could have left the rest for DH to do in the morning

I'm so sorry OP that you were let down by your in-laws. You definitely have a people-pleasing husband problem. He seems to regard your time and effort as being his to command.

I agree that dropping your MIL home was the last straw. I hope you feel able to have a discussion with him about how this won't happen again next Eid.

For those posters that don't get it - it's like having to prepare a full house including cleaning and all the food from scratch within 48 hours of Christmas day. No popping to M&S for the turkey, ham, all the sides and the desserts. All while still fasting because it is Ramadan and with a fussy toddler in tow. That's a heroic effort for anybody.

I get that it’s Eid and the traditional food is very important.

Did you have similar food for lunch with your family?

If so, next year, I would either try to have DH family and your both family together at lunch, or if your family hosts lunch and ILs can’t come for some reason, maybe ask if they’d make a bit extra food at lunch that you can then take to ILs or have at your house with ILs in the evening.
it seems crazy you having to cook that whole elaborate meal on your own.
Otherwise you maybe just need to cook a pared down version - staying up all night is excessive for cooking or cleaning. You say your MIL is a lovely lady so I’m sure she’d understand if you did a smaller feast that next year.

I think it was right for DH to take them home, that seems a normal part of hosting.

It’s fine for a young child to be out of their routine a bit on a very special celebration day, and if they had eaten well earlier in the day, they probably weren’t hungry anyway.
As far as the toddler is concerned it was 9:30 on their body clock as clocks had only just changed.

I would leave washing up etc for the next day.

How can cleaning and prep be such a chore when your a sahm.
As for the mil, why couldn’t she stay the night and then take public transport the next day.

@gollyimholly sorry but this is all
crazy.
4 days of madness for one meal .
No dinner for a child by 10.30pm!
Why wasn’t child in bed ?
where was the routine ?
Why only leave at 10.30pm and expect or be given a lift.
I think it’s unreasonable to host tbh.
That would be my last , it sounds exhausting .

Just say no more.

I get it @gollyimholly There are many, many women who post on here late December every year with similar stories. How they were run ragged in the run up to Christmas with plans being changed last minute by others and the work falling to them. It’s a tale as old as time.

Add in the end of Ramadan, tiredness, change to routine, an over excited toddler, celebrating with both sides of the family and a DH who doesn’t commit to plans - and you have the perfect recipe for a rubbish day for you.

Take this as a sign to change things moving forward. How do you want to celebrate your Eid with your own child? Start from there and work back on what can be changed to improve your Eid.

Perhaps host every other year. Or agree with DH at the beginning of Ramadan if you are hosting so that you have more time to prepare dishes that you can have in the freezer. And cut down on the pre Eid cleaning.

I used to do a frantic big clean of the house just before Christmas. I stopped doing it a few years ago and no one noticed.

And what's the advice given to them? To not do any of it, same advice OP is getting.

Not sure why people are trying to make this about racism/anti islam when that's nothing to do with it.

Her DH isn't putting himself through anything, the lazy useless sod.

And the proper answer to them is - as the proper answer to the OP is - you host at a level that you can. We hosted my in-laws for Christmas a few years ago and it was very low key. My husband cooked, I'd tidied up and we had Xmas decorations up anyway; we set the table nicely, that was it. It was what we could manage with three children under 5.

I think the key point that you are missing - or rather dismissing as racism (at least implicitly) - is not racist but because the OP has got her knickers in such a twist that she failed to feed a two year-old child. When I see an "Xmas stress" thread where the stress has resulted in a child going unfed until the middle of the night, I'll respond exactly as I have here.

I agree with this but some families v much do have the culture that it's the DIL role

As I said, not in my family, I would never allow my SIL to do this or be treated like this but some Asian families are like this.

Which isn't to say she shouldn't stand up for herself but I am not shocked to hear that that might be her in law's expectations

What do the men do?

genuinely asking, as it feels from the answers on this thread that the woman are running around like servants but no one has mentioned any man helping out.

I feel the ops daughter is going to have to get used to being hungry as she’ll prob be expected to help out in the kitchen as she’ll gets older whereas any sons will be fed.

I don’t think the issue is that the MIL got a lift home, that actually seems the most reasonable part of everything, so your anger about that seems misplaced. Your anger is justified for being angry about having to cook for in laws, not even get to sit with them to eat it, and then being left with all the clean up. That’s extremely unfair - you aren’t their personal chef. Personally, I would have left the dishes after the meal until the next day (or for the husband to do when he got home).
I have no judgement about the toddler not eating but it depends on what she was doing while everyone else was eating. Maybe she was offered something but didn’t want it?

I feel there is a lot of exaggeration going on here OP.

You and your husband stayed up the full night cooking and cleaning? Really?? Yet you then spent the full 3 hours the guests (all 2 of them) were over in the kitchen? Doing what? Cooking again even though you spent the full night before cooking?

And don't get me started on the 2yr old! Not fed until 2230?? How were they not screaming with hunger?