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 😁

What are you on about, what heroine of the hour?

So SIL turns up to all family events in flip flops, what”s the big deal? As eccentricities go, it’s very minor.

What’s weird is OP and her family are still talking about it years later.

And it’s even weirder that you’re saying, what, that the OP is the heroine? Give me a break 🤣

Exactly!

No, @mainsfed you've spectacularly misunderstood again 🤷🏻‍♀️
Never mind, nobody's got the time it would evidently take to explain it to you.

More like nobody cares except you. Not sure why you’ve got a bee in yoir bonnet about flip flops.

Even you can’t explain yourself 🤣

I think it depends on the flip flops, and on how formal the wedding is. The plastic ones are more beachwear than formalwear, in my opinion, while the pretty, beaded ones you can get are more appropriate for a wedding, unless it is a really formal one. For a beach wedding, flip flops would be far more appropriate than sky high stilettos.

I think that, if you know you are going to be dressed a lot more informally than the majority of people at a wedding, you should consider whether you might need to rethink your choice of clothing or footwear.

It’s like turning up at a wedding in a fancy venue dressed in scruffy jeans, a t-shirt and dirty trainers - it shows disrespect towards the people who have invited you and are paying for your food etc. It isn’t unreasonable to expect wedding guests to try to fit in with the dress code, if they can.

I get what you’re saying STDG, but as the poster didn’t criticise SIL’s clothes/hair/make up etc, it sounds like she didn’t turn up scruffy.

If she wore nice shoes to every wedding but turned up at the poster’s wedding in flip flops then I could understand the irritation. But sounds like she turns up to everyone’s event in flip flops and people still invite her.

In her shoes (), I’d buy a pair of posh flip flops or sandals. I am definitely in the flat shoe brigade, and there is no way I’d wear heels to a wedding - I’d break my neck before I was out of the car park - but I do try to make my shoes reasonably appropriate.

Hmm - there should be a wink in those brackets - not sure where that went!

And now it has appeared. I give up.

I can see the wink ☺️

I have an Aussie friend who wears cute flip flops (or thongs as she calls them) practically year round, so I guess I’m used to them!

Thank you

My sister didn't speak to me at all at my wedding. Turned on her heel and walked away if I tried to start a conversation. Still, at least she came, unlike her husband who has known me since I was seven.

I was raised in a family who believed that the women within the family would be there in the background doing the crappy things that have to be done. So all the new mum and dad had to do was simply look after their baby and each other.

Crikey

I’m not against the idea of flip flops at a wedding but the thought of her flip flopping up the aisle in a quiet, echoey church to do her reading has absolutely cracked me up

and then flip flopping back to her seat 😂

reminds me of my friend’s wedding when one of her friends was doing a reading, for some reason she sat right at the back despite having a place saved for her at the front. She then had to walk very fast not to keep everyone waiting and all you could hear was this frantic clip clop of her heels as she rushed up.

Five whole pages - how would you manage?

Angelcakebananabrain - yes exactly like that! Apologies if I didn't paint the whole picture - didn't realise flip flops are such dividing footwear :0

So for those who are still intrigued:

Yes, it was a formal wedding. (Suits, dresses, the lot)
Yes, in a really old church (and upper market wedding venue after) - flip flopping up the isle in the quiet, then flip flopping back her seat 🤷‍♀️.
No, I am not raging about it still, but we mention it on the odd occasion when it fits the joke/comment we are making that time.
And yes, as I mentioned in a follow-up, she was in white, summer linen type trousers and a grey Tshirt - like popping to the shop, not to her brother's wedding.
It was most certainly not a beach wedding and the flip flops were dead simple £5 Tesco ones - not the pretty, exquisite kind. No, she is not struggling for money.
No, I have nothing against flat footwear either.

Like I say: felt like deliberately no effort taken.

And many formal occasions later I realised that is just her "style" so I stopped taking it personally. She is a nice enough person, she loves us and is supportive of our union. At the time of the wedding it felt CF-ish. And that is what the original post asked for so I obliged :)

Sounds to me as though the flip flops are a personal idiosyncrasy of style. It's not as though she singles out one person's wedding if she wears these to them all.

A dear friend of mine wears suits with trainers (we are both wedded to DMs) and has half her head shaved. She's unconventional in look and personality, and I love her for it.

If she turned up at my wedding in that attire I'd be nothing other than thrilled to see her.

But I'm also amazed at how divisive flip flops have turned out to be! The only shoe you wouldn't find me wearing at any price is the stiletto. Not only are the passe these days but they mutilate your feet. Give me flip flops any time over those.

Have you discussed all this with them and are they all in agreement?

I am sorry for your terrible losses @Biscuitmonster2318. Were I your child, or in-law, I'd make allowances on account of this; likely a lot of them.

That's not to say I'd not be concerned about some of the attitudes you convey. Not least of these is your point that 'there are a lot of controlling DiLs posting on this thread', or words to that effect.

What about their husbands? Children have two parents with parental responsibility both making parenting decisions for them. To want to raise their family in the way they see fit is not in the least 'controlling'. And if a son makes a decision to that end, he's responsible for that just as much as his wife. It's a cliched trope on this site that whatever goes wrong between a son and his FOO is automatically the fault of a 'controlling' wife.

Your family's ethos that picking up this slack is the job of women is also not something I would entertain. My husband is every bit as much a hands-on parent as I am and I'd neither want nor accept things any other way.

That child-raising is the preserve of the women is perhaps why you see DiLs only as controlling, rather than the sons who after all bear the most responsibility toward their families of origin.

You say 'that's just who I am'. This is frequently a protestation used to justify certain conflicting attitudes in families, particularly as a ruse to make one of the two parties back down. They might justifiably respond: 'Well this is also who I am. And I won't accept that'. If you want to maintain harmonious relations this is something worth thinking about.

Haha are you my SIL??

I was bridesmaid for my brother's wife, and they asked my then boyfriend to be groomsman. I begged my brother to not ask him beforehand because I'd been planning to break up with him, but they went ahead with it regardless.
Then all I got was "Oh Turf, you can't break up with him before the wedding, he's a groomsman!" So I had to postpone the break up for about 6 months.

SIL mentions it from time to time that she's got this stranger in her photos and I felt bad for so long about it but then I realised that I didn't bloody well invite him so there's no reason for me to feel shit about it!

I'd have gone for the hot food too especially if it was spicy.

But you presumably wouldn’t have known that said food wasn’t actually supposed to be there, but had been sprung on the bride and groom?

I just remembered sitting through the Father of the Bride’s speech wherein he spoke for one hour and twenty three minutes (we timed him) about how proud he was of his SON’s PhD. He did a passing nod at the end to the bride - his daughter, but then started to head back to his favourite subject when someone “unplugged” the microphone. Misogynistic prick was a teetoalling godbotherer so we couldn’t even blame the alcohol. (Fortunately we were close to the edge and the staff were surreptitiously passing our table refills.)

How would the guests have known? And why would they care?! It was there.
The food was served, people liked it so ate it 🤷🏻‍♀️

That's just bloody weird.