Mother of the bride/groom-Zillas

[imperialminty]

I'm planning a wedding, and I'm on a lot of bride groups on facebook and read a lot of wedding-related things online, and I've noticed a massive trend that in people having mothers (their own or their partner's) turn into complete narcissists during wedding planning. We've had a few issues with our own being demanding, but I mostly wanted to know if anyone here has BEEN a Mother of the Bride/Groom who has been demanding about your child's wedding?

E.g - my Mum completely put her foot down when we discussed getting married just the two of us. She said it would break her heart etc., and she'd never get over it and would write me out of her will!!! We've had a couple of similar amateur dramatics from both Mum's over very minor things, so it's not just big stuff. That's a common theme in the groups. I'm fascinated by this complete 180 some people (and it is almost always Mum's) seem to do when their children get engaged. In my opinion, if you're not contributing a significant amount of money to the wedding, you don't get an opinion. If you're asked - sure! But even then the couple don't have to take your advice.

So - why? Have you ever behaved like this about a wedding? What was the thought process? (Or what do you think if it happened to you!)

When my ex and I got engaged, MIL-to-be wanted me to get christened into the catholic faith and confirmed so that we could be married in her church.

We are both atheists, and I told her in no uncertain terms that I was having none of it. She went on and bloody on, every time we saw her, and would bend his ear about it over the phone at least weekly.

In the end, we decided we couldn't hack her meddling, fucked off and got married in secret in a register office with just 2 witnesses.

@LakieLady
Nice move - but I would love to know how that went down.

The crazy thing is that presuming you wanted to have a normal wedding, if it hadn't been for her bloody interference you would have went ahead with your own regular plans at home.

I watched a tv programme called say Yes to the Dress about brides shopping for their wedding dress in the US. They seem to take lots of people to the shop with them, mothers, MiLs, bridesmaids, even a couple brought their DPs. When asked the budget the mother said $2,000 not a cent more after all, I have to buy MY dress and shoes and jewellery - cue eye rolling from staff. Girl finds the dress of her dreams. it's $200 over and the mother said No. I told you, I need to by MY dress too and they left the shop. Definitely a MiLzilla.

I saw one recently where a couple had twenty-two bridesmaids!

@LakieLady this is exactly what I'm talking about - so bizarre! I'm so glad you got married your way. Did you MIL ever regret being excluded from your day over something unimportant?

@Crankley I'm on some US bride forums and honestly the wedding culture there is out of control. They all have about 10 different parties in the lead up to the wedding - bridal brunches, bachelorettes, bridal shower, couple shower, rehearsal dinner.... just more room for mad behaviour!

I'm not sure it's unreasonable to set a budget and for that budget to include your outfit for your daughter's wedding 🤷‍♀️. Maybe if the mother's budget was more than her daughter's you'd think she might be flexible but $2000 for a dress is hardly being tight! It's the real world and there isn't a limitless pot of money to treat your children with, and where does it end? Why couldn't the daughter have contributed $200 to her own dress if she wanted one that was more expensive than the budget?

C'mon MOG-zillas / MOB-zillas own up!

What on earth comes over you?

I have an almost identical situation to OP and some other stories to tell.

But what actually happens?

It's like a flip switched in MOG-zilla overnight. Wouldn't mind but she's already planned her eldest daughter's wedding and will have youngest daughter's wedding to plan in the future, so why has my future MIL turned into an absolute fruitloop over our wedding?

We actually started planning 4 years ago, she became that unbearable I refused to do anything in the end. Made up some excuses, bought a house, had a baby and only now do I feel prepared to try again. But she's already at it! Driving me mad! Wishing I'd just eloped and not tried to keep the peace. She said she'd disown us if we eloped, if anything that's a incentive right now 🤣

I am so conscious of being like this when my son grows up, I'd be absolutely mortified if I behaved anything like this. How does it even happen?!

@PutOnABraveFace I just don’t get it!!!! Do they genuinely think it’s their place/right to have so much control?! It’s so weird! I just want to hear from someone who behaved like this why they did it!

I hope your wedding is wonderful, with or without nightmare Mum!

MOG-Zilla is 100% a thing!!

My MIL went batshit in the lead up to our wedding. The demands, questions, huffing, crying.... all because she felt HER day wasn't going to be exactly the way she wanted it to be.

We were both so gobsmacked by her behaviour, and we are not quite over it to be honest. To this day, she genuinely believes her happiness on her sons wedding day should have been the top priority and choices made that went against what she wanted, were us (me!) being selfish and trying to ruin HER day.

I always knew she was attention seeking and immature, but her narcissistic, selfish side had been relatively hidden.. not anymore!! To be honest, I'm glad to have seen her true colours before having children, now we know we need to set boundaries should the time come.

I'd like to add to my post that they were in no way contributing financially. We paid for our wedding ourselves and never asked for a penny (nor was it offered, but we wouldn't have expected it anyway).

Will never understand how she felt she had the right to make demands and claim it was to be HER day when she was contributing literally nothing.

My MIL was fine, my mam had a lot of ideas I had to knock down! It's a similar story with first GC due soon.

My friend though, her MIL came to the wedding in a f'ing wedding dress!!! All be it one that a 50/60 yr old bride would wear (aka not a big fluffy affair) it was without a doubt a wedding dress.

Smile, nod and do what you want for your wedding day!

Behind every stressed bride is a narcissistic MOB or MOG. A switch is flipped and they turn feral I'm telling you.

My husband keeps his mother at arms length now, he's still traumatised from the way she acted in the lead up to our wedding!

I’m planning a wedding too (very early stages).

The money thing is such an odd one to me. My parents have offered to pay for our reception, IMO this should be given as a gift and not come with a whole string of “conditions” but we will wait and see!

Future MIL is the most chill person on earth thankfully and the first thing future FIL said to us was “don’t feel like you have to invite any of my extended family if you don’t want to” so not worried about them!

My mother is the absolute last person you would expect that would lose her shit over a wedding, but she's gotten stroppy over each one (a few of us in the family)

I genuinely don't know what comes over her.

I think that a big part of it with my mother anyway is that she feels it's a big family occasion, and she just can't handle having no say in the planning of it. And there's also the other factor is that she thinks I'm 'artistic' which is translation for me being weird and that means that she thinks my wedding will have all sorts of weird stuff in it. It doesn't. It's a bog-standard wedding.
She was amazed at my hen that my friends were normal nice mumsy women wearing normal clothes and who have normal jobs and not commune-living, lentil weaving- polygamous blue haired fecal artists anarchists.

In my case I knew that accepting a penny towards it would mean that she felt she had bought the rights to it or at least a casting vote in the decisions. So that also frustrates the hell out of her. And then there's my aunt who she idolises. Her need to ensure she's pleased or approves is off the scale. I already know my kind of theme won't appeal to my aunt whatsoever so therefore my mother will be embarassed or annoyed that I didn't impress aunt sufficiently. Anything less than a Kardashian style wedding won't impress anyway so I stuck to what I know like.

This is just unbelievable to me, and here I am hoping against hope that both of my children elope like their father and I did.

The money thing is such an odd one to me. My parents have offered to pay for our reception, IMO this should be given as a gift and not come with a whole string of “conditions” but we will wait and see!

I have never seen it NOT come with strings - so beware!

We asked parents if there were any close family friends who would appreciate an invite to our wedding (we were paying for entirely ourselves). My MIL (divorced from FIL) gave us a few names (more than any other parent but not crazy we're talking we have 3 names from FIL and none from my parents and 5 from MIL). No worries, sent the invites.

Months later (weeks before wedding), she throws a hissy fit that random couple neither of us really know haven't been invited (not on her list!) Because her ex's equivalent couple of friends had been.

Nothing major. Just weird behaviour!

My relationship with my mother has never recovered from the way she behaved, or rather misbehaved, in the run up to my wedding. I am one of three daughters so it wasn't her only opportunity to be involved in wedding planning, though DH is an only child so it was his parents' only wedding they were practically silent.

The thing that made her behaviour so galling is that to this day, over a decade after my own wedding, she still bemoans how her father took over her day and she didn't get to do what she wanted/invite who she wanted. And yet she's now inflicted the same behaviour on me and on my sisters.

Some memorable tants were about the soup at the reception venue - choices were mushroom soup or lobster bisque and I don't like mushrooms. Cue "I won't come if you pick the lobster". I included 8 of her friends on our guest list, which I thought was more than reasonable (our family and her friends made up over 50% of our guests) but she said that she should have more friends than me because "we're hosting" (they were hosting in that they'd offered some money then demanded 4x that in crap so really DH and I were hosting). No dress I tried on was acceptable as they didn't have the "wow factor". Said "wow factor" never being articulated in any way. There were so many other things that I've forgotten but so many "well I won't come then" responses and so many tears from me over her behaviour that it turned what should have been a fun time into one of the worst years of my life.

And like I say she still complains her father took over her big day. The hypocritical monster.

Aquamarine I agree with you, I would genuinely be disappointed if my DS wanted a 'big' wedding although I suppose I would pretend to be thrilled and go along with whatever he and his DP wanted. My DH & I had a very small wedding (register office and five guests to lunch) ... that was enough and my own DM had an equally small wedding so big weddings just aren't a 'thing' in our family.

Dhs mum said she'd disown him if we eloped or got married abroad. We wanted to bloody elope as well. His dad was equally as pissed at the thought we might do what we actually wanted to do. We had a wedding albeit not completely traditional but not at all weird, they left after about an hour. Said they'd see us the next weekend. Didn't and haven't spoken to us since, something clearly pissed them off but who knows what.

Lesson learnt, don't care about what anyone else thinks, not worth it!

My parents on the other hand just went along with it all, happily, and enjoyed it.

My MIL was upset that we didn't invite long distant relatives that we'd never met and sulked when we refused. She wanted a really posh venue, because she wanted to out-shine what other family/friends had done her side, and sulked when we just went with the church hall. She insisted the wedding had to be in the church where she and her own mother married. It wasn't my parish so meant I had to attend church for months to get the banns read. On the day we sent a limo to her house to collect the bridesmaids and she had it make two trips to collect her and her husband too, increasing the bill that my dad was paying! She was barely contributing a penny, but thought she had carte blanche to make all these demands. On the day she turned up in a just-ever-so-off-white dress.

I'm to be MOG next summer and have thoroughly enjoyed reading loads of stuff about appallingly badly behaved MILs-to-be. I'd be absolutely mortified if I interfered or upset anyone over this wedding.
My son's wedding is to be bigger and fancier than our own, but we feel that all we need to do is to show up and enjoy sharing their big day.
I really love my DIL-to-be and have made her a personal gift of money towards anything she chooses for her wedding, no conditions attached.
I do live in fear of trad MOG outfits, not my style at all, but the bride says to wear anything I feel comfy in so it's all good 😁

My friend was pregnant and due to marry her partner during COVID so explained it was small, limited guests, restrictions and no children to maximise guest numbers which was all fine and everyone understood. Apart from the MIL to be who kicked off weeks before the big day as she now wanted her toddler grandchild there and on the top table, gave the groom to be an ultimatum he either got married or lost his family and job. He went to explain his decision to his family, and my friend was dumped, made homeless and left to pay for wedding on her own. She was marrying into a 'Christian' family too, although he wasn't! Lucky escape but poor girl was devastated!

My sister got married in Japan where she lives. My mum spoilt the entire day by crying and tantrumming that she wasn’t the centre of attention and threatening to go back to the UK immediately. She expected to have a role and be next to the bride all day.

I am going to an Irish/American wedding soon where there seem to be loads of different events. The bride’s parents are freaking out and acting weird, so god knows what disasters are going to happen on the big day. They have already pissed everyone in the family off. Have to pay to cover our plates as well which is a bit galling.

@LakieLady That happened to me too. Exact same circumstances. We didn't go off on our own, but arranged a registry office wedding and invited her and FIL. They both declined, as did every single other member of DH's family. MIL refused to ever acknowledge our marriage as being legitimate. We have now been married for 46 years, and she is dead.