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 😁

These stories make me so thankful that I get on really well with my mil to be 🙈

She was as mad as a box of frogs and other than the excruciating embarrassment of being asked about my sex life in front of teenage sons I didn't let her bother me too much. My husband finally lost it with her when she decided to call me "It." For years she got my name wrong, just one of those things she found hard to remember but it was odd that she always got my mother/sister/aunt's names right when she obviously saw more of me. I think she got fed up of me not reacting so decided to up her game. DH went ballistic and I was collapsed on the sofa laughing as it was so ridiculous.

I think you might be right about the sitcom, some of the stuff she did is hard to believe.

Nonono my mum didn't die!
She's just... Somehow even more dysfunctional than my MIL and basically has never been a particularly present mother, and also has an INTENSE hatred of MIL. She was happy when we were going down the no family route, but said she didn't want to come to the wedding because she wasn't happy we'd decided not to elope so I rescinded the invite and took a break. When I offered an olive branch to see if she wanted to come, because I knew she initially didn't want to... she tried to gaslight me into believing that she always wanted to come, even though we have messages saying otherwise. Yes. Me and DH both come from crazy. But no my mother isn't dead 😂

Hang on, so she babysat your kids for you on the wedding night too.

Some of my ILs decided they didn’t fancy any of the main options (nothing too out there and all dietary required adjusted for) so asked that we instruct the catering staff to make them their own special dish. They have no dietary requirements beyond eating the same junk food all the time.

My husband’s cousin and his wife asked if his son’s friend (never met them) could come to “keep him company.” The cost per head was shocking, as is the case in many weddings of course. But this cousin and his wife clearly didn’t consider this and thought it’d be totally fine for a random kid to come.

This. I would be very upset if one if my DC’s invited their friends and not their sibling.
Are older siblings married? If so did you go to their weddings?

My MIL wore black

I'm lost now- but basically you and your husband don't like anyone in either of your families. Is tht correct OP? Def not you guys though def all of them. O.K.

Oh, I luffs a good CF thread!

but it would on the groom to request that the catering incorporated food from his culture. Would you go to for example an Indian wedding and expect to be served things like poached salmon? For the relatives to bring stuff uninvited and unplanned is incredibly rude. I'd be livid about that for years.

I wouldn't expect to be served poached salmon at an Indian wedding (i.e. B&G both from Indian cultural background), but if only one side of the family were from one different culture, I would expect both cultures to be represented.

When there's a clear distinction between the cultures of the two sides, I think it's incredibly rude to just pick your own and automatically ignore the other side's culture. The whole point of a wedding is that you're merging people from two different families/backgrounds.

They could have gone hybrid, and had both options - but (as PP), I'm guessing a lot of people would have 'jumped ship' and wanted the 'other' culture's delicious hot spicy food!

Not my MIL, but step mother. We had a smallish wedding with reception in a pub's small back room. Buffet meal and no seating plan. A couple of days before the wedding she invited four of their friends and a neighbour to come. Parents were paying back then, so cost wasn't the issue, but space was. We greeted guests at the entrance to the room, and by the time we were ready to sit down, there was nowhere left for me and DH to sit, so we ended up squeezed on the corners of a table. It was all a bit of a shambles really.

Evening dos were not common in those days, so they decided to throw a party at home for guests & family, inviting people a couple of days before or on the day itself. We already had other evening plans, so didn't find out till a couple of days later that they didn't invite DH's parents, because "they didn't seem like they would enjoy it" but did ask DH's aunt along because she looked like she would! My poor lovely in-laws were quite bewildered and hurt, as they didn't know about the party till aunt told them next day. I was both mortified and angry.

That was 43 years ago today.

I'm not drip feeding. I'm just saying she is absolutely bat shit and not a nice person in general. If you read comments you'll see I've replied to people explaining why she's weirdly emeshed.

And if you all want irrelevant details as to background on why I feel she's emeshed, surely this counts? She took her anger on the situation out on our child, hours after the wedding

I honestly wonder if some people on MN actually like or even have any friends, based on the disdain shown towards friendships in wedding threads. Some posters seem determined to insist that friendships do not last, while family is forever. Of course some friendships don’t last, but the OP isn’t a schoolgirl who has a different best friend every week - she’s a grown woman. I also think some family relationships last longer than friendships precisely because other family relationships “prop them up”; e.g. cousins you wouldn’t necessarily see that often if it wasn’t for your uncle and aunt.

It seems to me that the OP and her husband had a very simple basis for their guest list - parents or nearest equivalent, plus one friend each. Not how everyone would do it, but certainly not unfair.

And if you all want irrelevant details as to background on why I feel she's emeshed, surely this counts? She took her anger on the situation out on our child, hours after the wedding
Counts as what? Evidence of being weirdly enmeshed with her older children? I'm lost 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes and threatened to make her sleep in her own vomit so hardly babysitting. More terrorising?

She offered, My aunty and uncle also offered as did my best friend. But MIL insisted, because whoever babysat for the apartment as it had 3 beds. And she wanted the apartment.

We had a very small low key registry office do, just parents grandparents and siblings. MIL then also invited aunty who I'd never met, cousin from Australia who I'd never met because he happened to be in the country, plus his girlfriend and her mate who was traveling with them. The three extras just rocked up on the day, good job my mum who had organised an after wedding picnic had made plenty.

@ReadersD1gest are you the MIL of @MaryPoppinsHat by any chance cos you both sound like wedding nightmares 😂

My paternal grandma behaved appallingly at my parents’ wedding. Beforehand she wrote a really vitriolic letter to my other grandma, calling my mum a slut and saying she’d trapped my dad by purposely getting herself pregnant (she wasn’t).

On the day she turned up in a funeral outfit, entirely black with a veiled hat, and wailed so loudly throughout the ceremony that the vows could barely be heard. She refused to speak to my mum’s family and all the wedding photos have her staring at the camera in a murderous rage!

After my sister and I were born a few years later she morphed into the sweetest grandma and was always giggling and so much fun. But she was very unhappily married and I think ‘losing’ my dad, her youngest, caused a surge of grief and menopausal madness that made her act the way she did. She never quite apologised to my mum, but she definitely tried to make up for it in later years.

Ex-MIL say in the garden and refused to speak to anyone. I should have taken this as a omen and ran. She was an evil cow who was only happy making other people unhappy.

She didn't ask OP to save some cake, she started hacking into it as OP & her DH were cutting it.

OP has had plenty of people on the thread on 'her side', me included so I'm not sure why you feel she's not getting the reaction she was hoping for. Just some people like yourself are like a dog with a bone.

My MIL from my first wedding.....
She had had an affair. Decree absolute granted the week of our wedding. Wanted new partner to come and be in the photos as if he was father of the groom.
He was a Lieutenant colonel ( of his school cadet core). She wanted him to wear full dress uniform. No one else was wearing uniform.
She was told no because actual FIL and his children from first marriage ( was widower when he married MIL and adopted her baby son, my husband) had said they wouldn't come if new man was there.
She came to the rehearsal and sat at the back saying loudly " no, no I'll just sit here out in the way." Repeatedly and loudly.
Refused to see the wedding photos afterwards.
Only photo of me in her house was a cropped picture of my large bouquet and a bit of cream dress. Large picture on the mantlepiece of my husband and his sister (our bridesmaid). Picture of my bouquet put in a corner.
Turned up on the day in brand new car to rub exhusbands face in how much better she was doing without him. It was a hire car and we walked from the church to the reception so it stayed in the church carpark and no-one saw it.

Surely it’s much ruder for the family to simply decide their culture is going to be represented, without any input from the bride and groom, by producing extra food as a fait accompli?

And again because I've seen people making incorrect assumptions. My parental figures were in place of my actual parents. Not as well as.
My mum and dad weren't there. They're not dead or anything. They just weren't there.

You are of course right and catering collaboration from the start would have been best.

But the refusal of Groom's family to pay for any aspect or have any mutual discussions probably didn't help. Massive distrust on both sides.

The food was indeed delicious....but the ambush caused a stir. Battle of the Wedding Breakfast.

OP stop explaining yourself to this idiots who can't grasp toxic families. You'll always be wrong in their ignorant eyes.

I get those feelings. My mum didn't come to my wedding x