To ask you to share CF in law stories from your weddings?

[Sconesandgravy]

Please share your CF in law stories from your weddings. I need to know it's not just me that has one.

I got married on Saturday. We had a micro wedding for multiple reasons. Our daughter, our closest friend each and their partner, and our parents or in my case parental. No siblings or other family.

My Mother in Law is weirdly emeshed with DH's two older siblings and can't cope if they aren't included in everything.

As we were cutting the cake, and having our moment, She shouts out "Make sure you save a piece for BIL, SIL and grandad!" After we'd served everyone she hacked off a huge messy chunk for them, rather than take the finger slices we'd been cutting rendering the rest of the top tier unusable.

It sounds childish but out of all the "petty" moments of the day this one stuck out the most. I think it's because she "stole" my moment.

I'm sure I'll laugh about it in years to come, but it's been four days and amongst the nastier things she did I am beyond angry. So I'm using MN as a form of catharsis, in the hopes that other people have nightmare in laws 😁

Cake related here too. GMIL (who is batshit at the best of times) got wind of the fact that we weren't having a wedding cake and instead was having a cake of cheese.

Because both of our families are a bit full on we'd deliberately said we'd pay for everything and also organise it all. We'd barely mentioned any details beyond venue/time/big stuff so no opportunities for faffing.

But somehow she found out. It became a thing. She talked to everyone about it. Began sending now DH links to cakes. Rang me at work about it. Told us if we were too poor to buy a cake she'd pay for it as a wedding present (we declined - we just don't like cake plus the dessert of the meal was basically three kinds of cake anyway!). We were polite but firm. We could afford a cake. We didn't want one. Thank you anyway. Ever time. For about three months.

In the end she told MIL that she was bringing a cake to the wedding and would 'sneak it' into the reception and put it on the table next to the cake of cheese before we could see it. Thankfully MIL knew DH would lose his shit and told him beforehand.

He (proving why I knew he was the man for me) met her in the car park and told her if she stepped one foot into the venue with the cake he would escort her from the building and not allow her into the wedding.

She left it in the car.

Apparently they were eating fruit cake for a month. And DH is the one of his siblings who has least drama / stress / lunacy from his older family members.

My SIL changed for our evening do... Into a long white dress that she had borrowed from a friend for this very occasion. She's a total wanker.

Strange hill to die on, really 🤷🏻‍♀️ Threatening to ban your granny because she brought cake.

Where to start… sigh. For a start the pil turned up at the church after me. The vicar was spitting feathers. Dh was panicking. They were late… just because.

During the signing of the register fil came straight up to me and started on angrily that the lane up to the church was bumpy.

Afterwards Mil only ordered wedding photos of herself . When I mentioned our wedding a few weeks later, mil breezed that she couldn’t remember a thing about it 🙁. Needless to say they contributed nowt and our present turned out to be the same one they’d bought for bil’s wedding five years before which had not taken place.

The cake itself isn’t the point, surely. The point is that, despite several firm “No”s, the madwoman actually tried to sneak one in!

There are a lot of comments on this thread to the tune of: 'I would be very hurt if my child did X, or failed to invite Y ...'

It's not an attitude I share. I've had my wedding. DH and I organized it in the way we wanted it, and couldn't have been happier with what we had. Why would I want to deny my child the same experience, even if this did end up being without my involvement?

I'm all for people doing whatever makes them happy. Better this than trying to make others feel duty-bound to do anything.

I'd rather my DC didn't invite unwanted guests than feel like an unwanted guest at their own wedding, as so many PPs have reported here.

Weddings really do bring out some abysmal behaviour in people.

Here in Ireland it's standard to put money in a card. Nearly all your gifts would be cards. For context its tradition to 'cover your plate' so most cards would contain upwards of 150 euros - usually almost double that from a family member.

A chunk of cards from all my ILs went missing. These are the loveliest, most generous and mannerly people you've ever met. There is no way they would turn up without a card. They would have handed them over to someone at the wedding as they usually do. We think they were stolen by a family member of mine.

DH has a large family so it was potentially at least €1000. And there's no way to ask "did you give us a card and if so, how much was in it?" without causing distress to them and coming across as incredibly rude.

I actually don't see a problem with that.

My son got married on my birthday and he organised the DJ to play Happy Birthday (I didn't dance!)

As we were cutting the cake, and having our moment, She shouts out "Make sure you save a piece for BIL, SIL and grandad!" After we'd served everyone she hacked off a huge messy chunk for them, rather than take the finger slices we'd been cutting rendering the rest of the top tier unusable.

This made me* *😂Your MIL sounds like Ma Boswell from Bread!

My now ex MIL....

• Offered to buy all of the drinks as her contribution to the reception, and flights to Barbados for our honeymoon as her present to us.

• On this we went ahead and spent all of our money and quite a lot that my family gave to us on everything else

• At her request we went to Costco with her to buy them, she did her whole weekly shop, but no drinks for the wedding and then she dumped us at a bus stop

• SIL bought all of the drinks to make up for this

• On the day MIL turned up so late to the wedding her sister had to stand in, and just managed to scrap into the last of the photos before we had to leave for the receptio

• At the reception MILs BF tried to refuse to allow anyone to get the drinks out of his van and got very aggressive with my Dad when he insisted. It was all warm, and the ice (which she insisted on arranging) didn't turn up

• He also stole all of the rum GIL had brought form Barbados especially for the wedding

• So my two family friends who were mixologists whohad kindly offered their services for free then had to go and buy rum and ice to make the planned drinks for after the dinner

• MILs BF also got aggressive with my Mum and then with my at the top table about my Mum

• Then MILs mates turned up who were all rude and dismissive of me and my family

• And she gave us £50 voucher to M&S so no honeymoon

I just know that if my children get married, I won’t be making their special day all about me.

Mine just beamed all day and said it was the best day of their life. Which, knowing the nightmare that is DH’s ex, it probably was.

*sorry don't know why the formatting did that!

@ReadersD1gest To be honest @WomanStanleyWoman2 has it.

I think with a lot of the things people are raising in this thread it often comes down to it being a symptom of a wider toxic person / dynamic in the family so you end up coming at it from a different perspective.

We talked more about cake in that three months than I had in my entire life up to then. GMIL's stance was borne of snobbery and also a need to have control that seeps through a lot of other parts of their family life in lots of ways.

We were polite and calm at every point but it was a boundary for us. Maybe not a hill to die on, but at least one to plant a flag on.

Ironically after all this talk I now really fancy a slice of cake!

One more MIL one from me:

MIL went around my family asking what they’d contributed to the wedding and then spent ages tutting and sighing if they said they didn’t pay for anything.

MIL didn’t contribute a single penny to the wedding! We paid for it all ourselves.

She just wanted people to assume she’d paid for it all.

It's the OP's thread.

She's posted what she thinks is relevant at the time and added more if asked.

Not a drip feed at all.

And why are you so bothered?

I forgot, MIL also sent a picture of the dress she was going to wear to the wedding. Full length white dress. DH told her it probably wasn’t appropriate and she lost her shit. Screamed down the phone at him that he was a selfish c*nt. She did change the dress though.

Also, she had a tantrum the week before that she didn’t know the time or where it was. Crying, shouting and screaming down the phone at DH that we were trying to exclude her. It was on the invite we had sent her. And she had definitely had it as she had sent us the rsvp card that was inside it back.

Thank god we don’t see her anymore.

You sound lovely OP and it's hardly your fault that you and your DH come from dysfunctional families. Please ignore the trolls and harpies on here. They just like to nit pick on everything.

@sparkles82
neither would most people

Personally, I think that there is nothing wrong with such tiny, intimate weddings as you originally wanted, but that weddings like that need to done without anyone else knowing in advance, and with no 'fuss', such as follow-up photos on social media etc..

The moment you tell close family and friends that you are getting married but they are not invited, it is perfectly understandable that they are going to be upset.

If you want intimate, do it, but don't rub other people's noses in it by telling them about it and showing them what they were excluded from (photos etc. on social media). That risks being just crass and insensitive.

My mil invited a random far out distant cousin from New Zealand to our wedding here as she was travelling here at the time. Couldn't believe that we were annoyed and gave her one of the family plus ones.
Couldn't understand why I wouldn't have my sil as a bridesmaid. I rarely speak to her, we just don't like each other.
Asked what we would like as a gift then ignored it and bought something that wasn't something we could add to... think dinner sets!
Wouldn't take part in the ceremony as is tradition here, as in the mother's do a certain thing during the ceremony. Not massive but she refused.
Wouldn't settle until she barged in on my make up appointment before the wedding. Just to see.
I showed her my dress and bm dresses so she would be included in things. Threw it back at my husband that she wasn't inc and didn't even know what colour my bm dresses were until the church.
She sat with a face like thunder for the meal and evening then as the attention wasn't on her.

Surprisingly we are LC as her behaviour escalated after the wedding to the point I almost divorced dh.

Same thing happened to me - although I looked up and she was stood there in the room looking at me with all my airs and graces on show 🙈

And finger slices was the wrong term. I meant we'd cut the cake into rectangular slices as we could get more out of it for everyone. We'd already said we'd give some to siblings. She could have just waited

I think the mention of finger slices set the tone for the replies about your family not being at the wedding because it makes you come across as being mean/tight and some posters have decided your mean full stop.

OFFS

Have you read the reasons why?

And how none of them minded?

Oops sorry quoted wrong reply 😂 was in reply to MIL whilst in labour 🙈