Is my mum being ungrateful?

[AtleastItried]

It’s my mums 60th birthday soon. My brother & I booked for us all to go on a weekend citybreak as a surprise and told her at Christmas but she’s upset because her birthday is the Tuesday and we’ve booked the trip for the Thursday-Sunday, so we’re not actually away for her birthday.

She was expecting to go away for a week, and thinks that my brother isn’t willing to take time off work for her (he’s a contractor, and doesn’t get paid when he takes time off, so there is a little bit of truth that he’s reluctant, especially as he won’t have been paid for 2 weeks at Christmas, but he’ll be taking the Thursday and Friday off anyway). Regardless of what we’re doing and how long for, the same amount of effort has been put in by us both to research where to go and where to stay, reading reviews etc to make sure that it’s a nice trip, and of course I planned to do something on her birthday too, but it is not what she was expecting and has caused a big argument.

Was I way off in booking the trip? Admittedly, a long time ago I had talked about trips a bit more exotic, but I thought it would be nice to be all together and to pay for her, and not once did she raise the subject of what we should do.

My mum behaves like this.
She reverts to a 5 year old and will throw tantrums if birthday / Christmas presents / treats aren't of a certain standard.

However she had an entirely shit childhood and was abused severely and never treated well as a child.
Her PTSD takes over as she equates the monetary value of presents as a measure for how you feel about / value her. Not materialistic at all in any other way, it's so weird

I think if she’s generally a reasonable person, then she will be grateful, she was probably caught off guard and was expecting what you’d originally discussed - a longer holiday somewhere more exotic, on a par with what her friends have done and she’s chosen to express her dismay by saying it’s not on her actual birthday.
If she really wanted the long exotic holiday, then she needed to be a part of planning it herself and offering money to make sure you all could go. But then if you and your DB weren’t truthful about what you could afford etc then it’s not really helped.
Hopefully she’ll apologise