I think my dm is bu about my wedding, what do you think?

[marybrian]

I am not that close to my dm, we are ok, but not besties constantly in each others lives. We live several hours drive apart and see each other maybe half a dozen times a year. I am engaged to be married this Christmas and we are limited by venue size to 150 guests. My fiance and I chose our venue because it is close to our home and so easy to pop back and forth to make arrangements. We have invited most of my parents friends but not all. I chose to invite the ones I know best and am friendly with. My dm is very angry with me that I haven't invited the last couple as they're giving her a hard time about being 'the only ones' in her friendship group without an invite. She says they've threatening to break the friendship over it. I don't want to invite these people as a) I barely know them & b) it's not like my parents are paying for the wedding. My fiance & I are financing the whole thing ourselves. This is our special day & I only want the people present who are close to us. If I invite these people to make my dm happy, it'll be at the expense of losing people close to myself or my fiance. There is space for them to attend later in the evening but they refuse to drive the 3hrs to get here to take part at the end of the day and they're angry not to be included all along. Aibu?

[ladymariner]

You can invite who you like to your wedding. You've done your best to rectify their tantrums, I would leave it now.

However, I would be having words with your mother, she sounds pretty rude herself. Not inviting your mil to your engagement party was just horrible, but why didn't you just take her along with you anyway?

[hippydippybaloney]

What? It's your wedding, not your mum's. It was nice of you to invite ANY of her friends. She has no right to demand you turn YOUR wedding into a social event for her and her pals.

[IceRoadDucker]

feck off should the OP consult her mother

Exactly!

YANBU. Your mum's friends are being ridiculous and your mum is being almost as ridiculous.

[mydietstartsmonday]

I think you have been more than fairto the other couple. You have written a note and explained why and any normal person would accept that in good grace. Stick to your guns. As for your mother she is acting like another very nice snob.

[PotteringAlong]

I think if you're inviting a group of your mum's friends then you invite one or all, but to invite all but one looks pointed.

On a different note - why should your mum and mil buddy up. Your mum lives 3 hours away. I think saying she comes to see you not mil is completely reasonable.

[AllPowerfulLizardPerson]

'check' here surely means finding out how many she'd like invited and in what priority order. If that matches the number of invitations you were expecting to extend, job done. If not, there's an opportunity to sort it out before the invitations go out.

So fewer invitations to mother's friends (to avoid insult to one omitted couple) might have been a better course. But it's difficult to know the ins and outs of someone else's friendship group anyhow, and impossible if you don't talk to them about it.

[WatchingFromTheWings]

Your wedding, your choice. YANBU.

[shovetheholly]

Your wedding, your wallet, your guest list!

The thing is with weddings, unless you invite everyone you have ever met, you will offend someone. Accepting that is key to having the day YOU want.

[nooka]

It's perfectly reasonable for the OP to invite who she wants to her wedding, and not be pressured to include someone she hardly knows. But it's also not unreasonable for her mum to throw a party to celebrate her daughter's engagement with whoever she wants to invite. The mother is under no obligation to be friends with the MIL, and of course she is visiting her daughter not her daughter's MIL. My parents have met my FIL twice I think and we've been together for 25 years!

[ClarkL]

It was really important to my PIL that we invite my FIL family. He only recently had got in touch with them all and was keen to introduce everyone, which resulted in me making small talk on my wedding to people who i'd never met telling them all about what I do for a living etc - it was a bit odd and frankly not the sort of chat I wanted, luckily for us space wasn't an issue and our PIL gave us £1,000 towards the wedding costs, it didn't quite cover the guests they invited but they kept asking if we spent it wisely, not getting that all their guests cost us to invite, still it made them happy and frankly when we are joining family's it's about making each other happy BUT had there not been room then we'd have made it very clear that our wedding day is for us and people we are close to.
YANBU
Tell your Mum to get better non judgemental friends

[AuldYow]

Jeez your parents and their friends sound ridiculously entitled.

Your wedding, you're paying and so you get to decide who's coming.

I think I'd be asking your DM why as she didn't invite your future MIL to your engagement party you should invite all her friends to your wedding. Double standards!

[GeorgeTheThird]

Your MiL to be sounds nice. Nurture that relationship, don't focus too much on your own mum being difficult. It sounds as though MiL will be helpfully involved if children come along, whereas your own mum may make more issues about helping you out. It's lovely for kids to have an involved grandparent.

[blitheringbuzzards1234]

Your mother's friends don't sound very pleasant - fancy breaking a friendship because they've not been invited to their daughter's wedding! In this case she can only explain the perfectly good reasons that you've mentioned. She is better off without them if they're so confrontational about something like this. How would they behave if an real emergency came along? Ridiculous.

[dowhatnow]

She didn't have any qualms about not inviting dmil, despite knowing that upset you, so I wouldn't worry. You've written a nice letter so step back now.

Dm isn't BU not wanting to socialise too much with Dmil though.

[totalrecall1]

Is there any chance your DM is exaggerating the disappointment of her friends to get her own way?

[WaitroseCoffeeCostaCup]

I don't understand this! My MIL wanted to invite friends of hers I HAD NEVER MET and my Husband hadn't seen since he was very small! I ignored. Why on earth would you invite your parents friends to your wedding? That's what their own wedding was for!

[Champagneformyrealfriends]

She's doing exactly what my mil did when we got married-trying to manipulate the situation so she gets her own way.

It's your wedding - you're paying for it with your money and you have invited the people you want there. End of. Tell her that this is not a social get together for her and her friends. Mil treated ours like a bloody family reunion and I still get angry thinking about it.

[sirfredfredgeorge]

So YANBU to not invite them, but some of your comments

She also held an engagement party for us which was lovely but she didn't invite my mil which made my mil very sad. I felt ashamed.

My mil is desperate to make 'best friends' with my mum so they can 'buddy-up' when babies come along etc. But my dm has said 'Your mil has to realise, when I come up to see you, it's you I want to see, not her.'

Show that you're going a bit down the same route of wanting others to facillitate your notion of what's right. Your DM doesn't need to invite people she doesn't want to, she has absolutely no reason to buddy-up with your partners mother if she doesn't want to. Yes you can invite who you want, but leave off the expectations and the judgement on your mother for it.

[ConkersDontScareSpiders]

My dm was a bit like this at my wedding to the extent that on the morning off she rearranged the wedding reception table plan to put her friends nearest the 'top table' and our friends, who we wanted to be able to see at the back. I was pretty cross but they were paying for a lot of it so I kind of had to suck it up.
If they want their friends there at the expense of yours however I would say that they are being v unreasonable. A wedding should be about the people who are getting married primarily.Of course some consideration needs to be given to family preferences, but bride and groom should get the final say I think.

[ladymariner]

I honestly cannot see why your mother couldn't have invited mil to your engagement party, it was so mean. No, she absolutely doesn't have to be 'best friends' with mil or see that much of her but leaving her out of such a nice occasion was a massive snub and given how she is now overreacting, incredibly hypocritical.

[LineyReborn]

Not inviting a widowed MiL-to-be to an engagement party is simply ill-mannered.

[Kpo58]

I'm wondering if your mother is making up the 'hard time' she is having with her friends that you didn't invite.

[microferret]

YANBU. It's YOUR day. My DH's whole extended family were trying to invite themselves to our wedding and were behaving as if we'd already invited them at SIL's wedding, which was a few months before. As it's a slightly dysfunctional extended (massive Catholic) family, we were told by my PIL we had to invite all of them or none of them, so we invited none. I don't regret it for a second - we had a lovely wedding full of people who mattered to us, rather than squabbling relatives who we had nothing in common with.

Don't back down. Weddings are always going to exclude someone. I've been excluded from weddings too, and that's life. Nobody gets to demand an invite and if these people are threatening to "break friends" with your parents over this (high school much?) then they sound manipulative, childish and not at all the sort of people worth bumping your own guests for.

[Kr1stina]

You mother didn't invite your finances widowed mother to her own sons engagement party?

Did she invite any of the rest of his family ?

She sounds really horrible .