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 😁

Ours was the other way round, my mother invited a long lost uncle and his partner to the wedding and didn't tell anyone....ended up having to try and discretely fit them on to the table plan.. They realised they hadn't been included but were very nice about it.

My FIL pulled DH to one side on the wedding day and told him he was lucky to have knocked me up before he proposed cos there was no way "a girl like her would choose to be with a boy like you". Repeatedly told him on the day that he was "punching" and had no idea why I ever went near him.

DH went completely in his own head for a chunk of the day and couldn't enjoy it. I found out after about all of this, I had assumed he was having doubts about us!

Also dh asked his cousin to video the event and he “forgot” to turn the camera on all day !!! And my bil spent the wedding glaring and didn’t come to the reception!!! I didn’t feel that welcome in the family to be honest

Isn't it normal to save the top tier (not hack a chunk out of it) - the MIL should have stayed quiet in that moment, and definitely not taken a chunk of the cake!! Finger slices would have sufficed.

The big tussle on weddings I hear about seems to involve the cake-what cake, whether home made, whether fruit or sponge etc etc. plenty of mils willing to do untold damage before the wedding takes place.Ffs, what is it to do with them? (And I'm speaking as someone who is about to become a mil).

Not my in-laws but my own Dad - he invited some distant Australian cousins without telling me, let alone asking me! Then seemed annoyed when I tried to explain about numbers etc

MIL’s behaviour was inappropriate.

however, I do think it was a bit off not to have siblings. I had a tiny wedding - parents and siblings so I do understand the small wedding. But excluding siblings (unless you have ten of them or something) is off.

It also meant I felt obliged to ask some other Australian cousins who would have been very miffed to be excluded if the first lot came.... both had been very kind to me in my gap year when I had travelled round Australia so it would have been awful to have one without the other

We had a small wedding 40 people at the registry office and I think 60 at the reception. There’s a 16 year age gap between DH and his little brother. MIL decided BIL should be involved in every aspect of the wedding, he was 11 at the time.

She tried when I was walking down the aisle to shove BIL out of his seat so he could stand next to DH and his best man. Thankfully BIL had the good sense to stay sitting and brush her off. But when we had the photos of us signing the registry with the best man and the one bridesmaid, she forced him to go stand at the end of the table, same with all the cake cutting photos. TBH I didn’t even notice until I saw the pictures, poor kid looks mortified and really uncomfortable.

I have no idea what she was thinking, they were in all of the otherphotos and we had all sorts of special things (games, meals, drinks, snacks etc) arranged just for him. I’m still salty about it 20 years later!

Thought this would be about CF lawyers ;)

Yes, we had the surprise guests. About 3 minutes before I arrived at the church, DH's aunty rushes over to tell him she's got a fabulous surprise.... and pulls forward an old family friend he hasn't seen or spoken to since he was 14!!! She had even travelled specially to "surprise" us.

Poor DH... I think he was more worried about what he was going to say to me than anything else!

Luckily, catering wasn't a problem because one of his old friends had contacted him that morning to say that he and his wife wouldn't be coming to the wedding. The reason? He couldn't afford the air ticket to fly from his city to where we were marrying. A 100% valid excuse, but to this day I've not been able to work out why this only came up as an issue ON THE DAY after they'd formally RSVPed that they would be attending.

I stayed the night before our wedding at a place which was right next to both the church and the venue so didn’t need a wedding car to get there. We therefore arranged for a vintage car to take us away from the venue to our wedding night hotel, which was elsewhere.

PIL offered to pay for the car as their contribution. Then they told us that they wanted to arrive at the church in it.

DH told them no but the thing that in fact dissuaded them was realising they’d have to pay for the car to be there for the whole day and they were too tight to do this.

This was the culmination of a lengthy period of MIL on the one hand repeatedly saying “the bigger the wedding the sooner the divorce” (thanks) and on the other hand trying to live vicariously through said big wedding (wanting to wear a white dress, trying to control the menu etc - she was defeated on all of these). On the day she looked miserable as sin on every photo.

@passiveaggressivechoppedcarrot PLEASE tell me you didn't just stand aside and allow it? Please say that you strictly sent them on their way 🙏

@EggInANest sounds like the bride’s family didn’t consider the groom’s family at all in what sounds like it was a multi cultural wedding, and catered only to their own likes/dislikes. I would have 100% gone for the hot food especially if it was something spicy and flavoursome, over poached salmon 🤢. From what you have said the groom’s family and culture were overlooked somewhat.

@Sconesandgravy You refused to invite his Grandpa? Oh that's just awful. You should be ashamed of that. I bet your Grandparents & sibling were welcomed!

I don't have any embarrassing in law stories. Mine are great.

I asked my mum if I could borrow a piece of my grants jewellery to wear on my wedding day. She was in a home by the time I got married and wasn't able to attend. My auntie was keeping the jewellery in her house "for safekeeping". I'm not sure exactly what she and my mum said to each other about my request but apparently it was too complicated.

My auntie then bought me a really dreadful, tacky ring and sort of insisted that I wear it on my wedding day. I turned it to face my palm so it just looked like a plain silver band.

I then learned that my auntie had been wearing half the contents of my grans jewellery box at the wedding, so that a part of her would be with us in the church.

Too complicated to get any of it on the actual bride though.

😤

She still has all the jewellery in her house and I doubt any of us will ever see it again.

Not my wedding but my aunt married later in life into a family who clearly thought they were a social cut above us and made that belief clear at every opportunity.

At the wedding my grandmother (aunt's mother), mother (aunt's sister), myself and all other close family were seated not at the top table with the groom's family but way down with the less close friends.

Granted the groom's family were paying for most of the shindig but each side paid in proportion to what they could and it was the groom's fmaily, not my aunt, who wanted the big fancy wedding.

Their excuse was that some members on our side of the family did not speak English very well so wouldn't have much to talk about with the groom's family.

Our wedding had loads of things go wrong but luckily everyone was really decent about it all.

Worst was MIL's room got double booked with some of my distant relatives who had travelled 400 miles. Both sides tried to insist on the other taking it rather than getting difficult.

My MIL organised an evening reception without our knowledge. We left just before the end of the afternoon reception. Her evening reception was at the same venue but with different guests and her side of the family also stayed. Live music, food, the works. Our guests walked out past the new guests walking in wondering why they hadn't been invited to the whole event.

She also went into the dining room before the main meal and reorganised the seats. It involved creating extra places at one table. It didn't match with the seating plan on the door. The event organiser was furious and the meal was delayed while things were put back.

That was only the tip of the iceberg.

Absolutely. But we asked the brothers to gently
ask people to take their children out if they were noisy, but they didn’t bother.

Not my in-laws (as they are lovely) but my (paternal) Aunt. We got married abroad and had a small evening reception a few weeks later. DH was extremely nervous about making a short speech to thank everyone for coming etc.
He was half was through his (very quick) speech and my Aunt decided to start heckling him for no reason. Unfortunately this completely threw him and he forgot elements that he wanted to say so he just cut it even shorter.

This was the same Aunt who caused issues in the run up to our wedding. Her demands and behaviour helped us to make the decision to go abroad, as we knew she wouldn't come.

My MIL spent the run up to our wedding trying to invite randoms (think people she goes to the gym with but have never met DH).

She tried to book the room next door to the honeymoon suite with her husband (DH step dad) as they thought it would be "funny" for us to know they were listening to us consummating our marriage (wtaf!!) And we're genuinely pissed off when I informed them that the bridesmaids were in the same wing as us and they were in a different section.

On the day followed our photographer around taking our wedding photos but from a different (less flattering) angle and had shared these with anyone with an email address by the time we got back from honeymoon, rather than wait for us to share actual wedding photos.

Wouldn't take direction from our photographer so in a photo which is meant to have our entire wedding attendees behind us with DH and I at the front, she kept edging forwards so most of the photos look like it's the three of us standing together and everyone else behind us.

Tried to get her husband to go up and sing and use the bands equipment when they took a brief break during the evening buffet. And then went about telling people vomiting/ drunk stories about DH when he was a teenager, and how she didn't think I'd be getting "any action" tonight!!

That was the tip of the iceberg.. afterwards said I was a mess on my wedding day, my dress was old fashioned and that I was too fat for it (I was a size 10!) to other family members and basically slated me and made lies up about my family. 6 months later, I stopped speaking with her as I'd had enough.

We are both NC now after years more abuse, and something truly horrific she did to DH.

So many to choose from...I think the key ones were:

• when my (now ex) partner couldn't be arsed finding out his relatives' address (which he never saw but insisted we invite because his father wanted them there), so I emailed the list to his dad and asked if he could please let me know their addresses for the wedding invitations. He returned it with another 20 of his mates he added. Queue big argument with partner when I said we weren't inviting yet more people neither of us knew just because his dad wanted a party (he wasn't contributing anything to the wedding, BTW)

• random relative of partner's blackmailing partner by saying she would refuse to come unless another random relative's teenage daughter could come because she'd never been to London or a wedding and fancied a day out. Had another huge argument, this one I gave in on, which I regret doing to this day. She totally ruined the wedding. She arrived dressed like a prostitute and, what a surprise, had no interest in making conversation with anyone who was 20 years or more older than her and I had at least a dozen people come up to me at regular intervals asking if she was alright because she looked so unhappy, and shouldn't I do something about it!

My MIL has been included in numbers for hair and make-up and decided the others could come to.
The lady doing our hair (another family member) did their hair to try and keep the peace but the make-up lady took a reeeeeeally long time on my makeup so we unfortunately ran out of time and couldn't fit anyone else in😂

You'd think it would be the parents' responsibility, @MartinFowler, but it sounds as if the parents were ignoring the racket their children were making, in which case it would not have been unreasonable to expect the ushers to ask them to keep the children quiet or take them outside.