I love these stories: some of them are outrageous!! I’ll share this one that thankfully didn’t happen to me (as I’m way too confrontational) but to my DH SIL.
Background: In some traditions, weddings can go into several functions lasting for days, hosted by either the brides or grooms family. At these functions; either the groom or bride are responsible for hosting, which means coughing up the expense. Or alternatively, they split the cost of one function 50/50 if it’s a shared event.
Cut to DH SIL wedding. They had 2 functions: one the bride organised, the other was the grooms. At these functions guests can give gifts of cash to the couple. Guests can amount to hundreds, so it’s not unusual for the cash gifts to amount to over a £1000.00 at least.
After the wedding is over: greedy MIL convinced her son to give her his function money. Which he does. As greed is limitless: this is not enough. MIL asks her son to convince his wife to give her the brides money from her function (which MIL did not contribute a penny to). Son does this and pressurises his new bride to give the money, assuring her that ‘my mum will give you much more than this when you need it’ 🙄 Bride doesn’t want to and objects but ultimately gives greedy MIL her money.
To add insult to the injury MIL graciously ‘lets’ bride have department store vouchers back, so she can buy some make up to ‘scrub herself up and look a bit more decent.’
When the time came for my wedding I made sure MIL never even sniffed my share of the cash gifts.