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!)

FAK I wrote loads out here and it vanished :(

I used to be a Wedding Manager so have seen loads of shit.

Best (or worst?) was a FOB-zilla and his OW.
He had cheated on MOB 8 months before the wedding and left her for the OW. MOB was incredibly calm whenever I spoke to her and never wanted to cause a drama or upset her daughters day.
FOB had invited OW to the wedding as his date and to meet his family, MOB didn't kick off or protest at all, Bride was trying to keep the peace so let him.
On the day, he went MENTAL that the OW wasn't sitting between him and MOB on the top table. When the guests were going through to be seated he started to boot off and tried to drag the chair and table settings over to the top table. I physically had to take the chair off him and took him out the room to basically tell him to wind his fucking neck in and be a grown up for his daughter. When we went back in, the MOB had swapped seats with the OW and was now sat at a table with his family (so her STBX-in laws) and OW was sat at the top table looking proud as punch.
I could see the MOB was holding it together, but when the Bride and Groom heard about what was going on (this was before they were announced in the room) Bride burst into tears and refused to go to her own wedding breakfast until the OW was moved.
Eventually, with the help of the bridesmaids and the FOBs family, the OW was sat back at her table and MOB was back on the top table, but FOB refused to sit there and moved himself onto the family table with OW and refused to do his speech since Bride and I had made him feel so unimportant.

The rest of the wedding went really well, other speeches were really funny and the FOG stepped in and did a little speech about the Bride.

@SliceOfCakeCupOfTea OMG that is awful!!! What a selfish git!

I'm so glad I got married before weddings becam such a palava! 😂

@Crankley to be fair. £
$200 over budget is an awful lot of money!

I’m a parent to adult kids and could not imagine demanding this or that or wanting it done on a certain way. I just want them happy. I have told them I won’t be making a large contribution so if they want a large wedding, they have to fund it. But otherwise, am quite happy to turn up and do what I’m told😁

I don't like speaking ill of the dead, especially my own mother but my God she was a nightmare. I got married when it was normal for the father of the bride to foot the bill. This translated to my mum deciding I had no say whatsoever. Literally the moment we announced our engagement she'd booked a date without asking and chose the venue and church. I wish I was joking.

It was so difficult as I felt beholden and she kept saying "well we're paying". I was given no input into my cake or my bouquet but when she tried to choose my dress I put my foot down. Our tastes were so vastly different and I wasn't going to wear the giant floofy dress she wanted me to wear and I stood my ground with that.

There is lots more but 30 years later I'm still traumatised (and divorced!). I loved my mum and she was a good, kind person but she turned into an absolute batshit nightmare with a wedding. I wouldn't dream of doing that to my DD, I'd only comment if asked.

Honestly he was a nightmare. I was so pleased when that wedding was over but felt so sorry for the bride having to deal with him.

@SliceOfCakeCupOfTea OMG that is utterly shocking. I can't believe the absolute gall of the pair of them. That poor bride 😕

Not sure how my DM and MIL would have been, we sneaked off to the register office with two witnesses from work and didn't tell anyone. I've never regretted it, these stories are making me shudder! I think there probably was the potential there for MOB/MOG-zilla behaviour, both can be a bit tunnel visioned and possessive so I think we dodged a bullet.

I do think it would have come from a sort of insecurity though, the fear of 'losing' their son/daughter and the finality (from a mother's perspective) of their child being married and their nest being properly empty. Interfering in wedding plans might be a way of trying to gain some control back and fend off having to fully let go, which I can kind of understand/sympathise with. Not everyone is strong enough not to let those feelings make them behave irrationally I suppose.

When I got married my parents paid for everything and I had very little say in anything at all. My two sons had very different weddings a year apart - one with no guests, just her mum and DH and myself and the other had a church wedding with a lovely informal reception. Two daughters got married in 2020 and because of the pandemic everything was pared back. One was married away so she had parents and one sibling/inlaw. He had the same the rest of the congregation was made up of friends. Second wedding was local to us. The 30 guests were family and one friend. Neither had a reception.

Youngest DD is getting married next year. She and her fiance are paying for the reception. We have bought her dress. I have asked her to add one friend to the guest list which she was happy to do. We now have a running joke that for every adult type call she asks me to make (phone the vicar, make enquiries about cars etc) I get to add a name to the guest list. She has also decided that she would like small children to be her attendants after all but it was her sister that convinced her of that, not me.

I believe we have an understanding that if I am a MOBzilla she will tell me so and I have not attempted to persuade her to do or change anything.

I paid for most of the wedding; about £18,000. I had no input into the guest list, the food or anything else. They chose what they wanted, who they wanted and when they wanted. I covered the cost of the bride, bridesmaids and family staying overnight before and after the wedding. They invited the relatives and friends they wanted to invite and I had no knowledge of who was on the guest list.

I didn’t expect to make any decisions and I wasn’t asked for my opinion.

All these stories are why when we planned our wedding everything before we told people the date of our wedding. Deposits paid etc so no way could we change anything No one came with me to pick my wedding dress, showed my best friend once it was picked that was all. One bridesmaid one best man, their outfits all bought online. Venue could only fit set amount of people so limits to invites etc. Myself and my partner only went to the wedding tasting - don't know why anyone else needs to be at it ? Don't tell people too many things, then they don't get to have an opinion on it. The only people who care and need to know anything about your wedding is yourself and your future husband. It doesn't need to be so stressful. I couldn't be dealing with all that drama

Have to pay to cover our plates as well which is a bit galling.

I hate this! Either ask people or don't, but if you're providing hospitality, don't expect to 'make it back'.

My exMIL (divorced) was so strange re the wedding. Again don't want to speak ill of the dead, she was nice normally, but she went a bit mad too.

We booked a christmas wedding and she campaigned and campaigned to get us to move it as she was worried about snow. ExH gave in and we had it in August, I hate heat and sun. It was 30 degrees on the day and I melted.

On the wedding day she brought big tupperware boxes to take the leftover buffet and cake home. We paid 4k, my parents paid 1.5k. They paid nothing. SIL took home all the unopened wine too.

She dominated every conversation for the 6 months before, with whether she should buy this baby blue handbag - that was £25 - to go with her dress. They were millionaires with acres of land.

She got a selection of veils and tiaras of her friends and insisted I take them - didn't use them as I wouldn't be seen dead in a veil or tiara.

I bought a £60 monsoon dress and a £50 cape for my wedding outfit - she disapprovingly said I'd splashed out!

She stood up and read a poem about her son at the reception. Just about how wonderful he was (he really wasn't) no mention of the marriage. At the end everyone just sat there shell shocked.

So random, I had forgotten most of it but now I think about it, it was such strange behaviour.

See, my father us a total bloody nightmare. Everything is done to increase his social standing, make him look good. We had already started booking our wedding when he visited and insisted on paying for the reception. I feared the worst but was really surprised. He paid. He passed on food preferences, mum did the invitations - all exactly as I sent them. They didn't step out of line once.

This is the couple who made my childhood a lonely place, giving away my possessions when they deemed I had had them long enough being the most explainable.

This carried on with the wedding present. I came home to find my stereo had been replaced. My mix and match separates had been replaced with one of the new fangled midi hifi stacks. All my 1960s 70s amps, decks and irreplaceable speakers, gone, given away to various family members. Took me bloody years to rebuild that system?

My mother in law said she wouldn't come to our wedding because her other son refused to let her dictate his travelling plans to the wedding. He had to leave a day early to help us set up but she insisted he wait for her to go to the credit union at an unreasonable time that suited her (she just wanted to control him and could have easily gotten a lift from other relatives who were travelling to the wedding the following day). He refused as he had commitments to fulfil and she said she wasn't coming.

The wedding was a hastily re-arranged, stressful Covid job, and it was 3 months after DH had lost his father (her ex - split was acrimonious) so she would have left him with no parents on his wedding day.

We strongly supported BIL in not giving in (prior to this he always gave in to her nonsense) and a day before the wedding she realised the game was up and she'd look very bad if she didn't show up so she attended.

Last month we told her I was pregnant and she completely ignored the news and blanked me. So she's still a bitch!

My mum had a tiny wedding because she already had me, and it was a source of shame to her Catholic mum.

she made sure that I had a lovely big wedding. The night we paid for the reception she said “now darling, I know your not married yet, and people will say you can still change your mind. Well, you can’t. I’ve bloody paid for this”. I couldn’t stop laughing.

MIL was an absolute sweetheart. She and FIL were much wealthier than my mum. She sent my mum a letter offering money towards the wedding. She only had a small list of people she wanted to invite, so my mum told her to invite some more friends. And the week before the wedding she pressed some money into my hand telling me to use it on whatever stuff I needed for the wedding. She died a couple of months ago, and I miss her so much

Got married a few years ago. All paid for by me and my husband with a few smaller gifts paid for by family members which was very much appreciated but not expected and certainly came either no strings attached. Which is just how w wanted it ( both been married before.)

My Mum is normally a very laid back person who l love to death, but she became utterly, utterly fixated with what she was going to wear, to the exclusion of everything else. It dominated every conversation we had for about 6 months.

Given that I'm a size 18 and had real trouble finding a dress I felt happy wearing ( found one in the end which I loved so all good) and she's a size 10 with (you'd imagine) the entire high street and beyond at her disposal, you'd think it would be a relatively simple exercise.

Not so, dear reader! I can't tell you how many times I either went out shopping with her while she rejected dress after dress after dress or listened to her on the phone while she just moaned and moaned on and on and fucking on about it. It was the wrong colour. It was too long. It was too short. It was too revealing. It wasn't revealing enough. She didn't have a handbag/shoes/jewellery that would go with it. I should add they've got plenty of money had she wanted to go Designer, or even just have something altered, and that she buys clothes recreationally all the time.

And what did she choose in the end? Grey trousers and a white top like you'd wear to the office. She looked perfectly smart and I was so far beyond caring I was just glad she turned up at all, given the constant muttering about how awful she felt and that she looked awful and so on. It was just the strangest focus pulling! She disappeared half way through the reception and changed into black trousers and a t-shirt!

What was the aftermath?!

In my case in was my mum who went utterly mental. There's only me and her, so she was doing the Father of the Bride stuff as well - walking me down the aisle, giving a speech, etc.

DH and I decided on a location for our wedding which was reasonably convenient for everyone invited - majority of the guests coming from London and Newcastle. Mum lives in Devon. No one else did, and it's not a place which holds any significance to me or DH - she moved there when I was at uni, so it had never been "home" to me.

She threw an absolute screaming temper tantrum when we told her. Said it was "unforgivable", that the bride should be married from her parents' home as it was "tradition" (she'd never bothered marrying herself so why she was so suddenly hung up on tradition I don't know!) and that if we didn't get married near her she "wouldn't get to do anything!" I pointed out that was doing both MOB and FOB roles, to which she replied "yes and that's all I'll get to do!" I asked her how much more she expected to do, and if she actually realised it was me getting married and not her.

This went on for a while, till I eventually told her that if she didn't stop behaving like that, we'd elope and no one would get to "do" anything, and hung up on her. I then refused to take her increasingly abusive and angry calls for a couple of weeks, till she seemed to calm down and apologised.

A few months before our wedding, the venue we'd booked cancelled on us. They said they had to have some building work done over that period - which was very odd, why would a wedding venue chose July to close down for building work. This was a bit of a disaster as we'd booked and paid for quite a lot of stuff by then, and the MOH and BM had booked their flights from different continents to be there on that date.

I rang mum in tears, and she said not to worry, there was a beautiful venue ten minutes down the road from her that had availability ten minutes down the road from her...

It actually was a beautiful venue, and we needed somewhere, so we went ahead with the wedding there, and it was a wonderful day. But over ten years later I still wonder how mum pulled that off - and also what made her behave that way in the first place.

My daughter has recently married and hopefully I wasn't any sort of zilla. The budget for flowers was shocking and I did urge caution but wasn't listened to. The last total I heard discussed for the flowers was 8k with hanging installations, arches, garlands etc etc and I still find that shocking.

My Mum told me that I couldn't have the the venue I wanted because it wasn't good enough and she'd be embarrassed by a wedding there.

It was a moot point though because FMIL decided to tell fiancé that she wasn't coming to the wedding at all, and she'd also cut him off from his whole family if he married me. I knew she didn't like me before the engagement but not that much. Fiancé capitulated to her threats.

I remarried 6 weeks ago. No in-law input except mil wanting husband's brother invited "he won't come but he'd like invite" that will be a a no then!!

My daughter is getting married next may. She's doing it all her mil already thinks they are rushing into it! Together 4 years before engagement and year to wedding.! I'm thrilled with it all having just done my own wedding I just want to turn up to hers and enjoy it!

I love that show!!
Always amazed by the entourage! I took my mate who has a good eye for clothes - brutally honest and that was what l needed!

Wow!!! What an absolute bellend. And the OW - l wouldn't have the nerve!!