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 😁

@Eggseggseverywhere I can’t be the only one wondering how she kyboshed the honeymoon.

if you can bear to tell the story , I am all ears.

As long as you apply that same 'logic' to the grooms in-laws, the wedding has nothing to do with them either by your reckoning but I would bet good money that the bride wouldn't accept that!

No. They weren't. No siblings or grandparents on either side

My MIL never liked me because I'm English and DH's family are Scottish. At our wedding she told DH that he wasn't her son any more. We had minimal contact after that. Both PIL now passed away.

OP - I think people are being very harsh!

I agree that your MIL helping herself to your wedding cake is outrageous. You get a finger piece of a special cake, not a huge hunk - it's not meant to be a meal substitute, just a symbolic sharing of the celebration. Who doesn't understand that??

And, as a guest, you get what you're given and like it or lump it - you don't barge in and grab what YOU want. Yuk - what a vulgar, ill-mannered woman.

And you can invite and not invite whoever you like, there are no rules!

My son sometimes tells me our family is dysfunctional, I tell him everyone's family is dysfunctional, dysfunctional is normal. I will use this thread as evidence.

Everyone coming at the OP for her guest choices needs to have a word with themselves.

It's great that you have a great relationship with your immediate family, or that you have great family dynamics, or even that you were happy to put your feelings aside to invite people who you don't get on with to your wedding for the sake of their feelings over yours (or what's deemed 'acceptable)

Not everyone does - please just respect that.
An acquaintances dad was upset he wasn't invited to her wedding and would tell anyone who's listen about it. She was in contact with him, he just wasn't invited - she'd look heartless to you.
She spent her entire childhood watching him beat her mother senseless. She was only in contact because of her elderly grandfather.

For the love of God, is it that hard to imagine that some people don't want to put up with horrible family dynamics on what's meant to be a happy day??

I think all the people hung up on the fact you didn't invite siblings are missing the fact that every family is different. Not everyone is close to their blood relatives. Some of us are very close to some and completely NC with others. Some of us have friends who are so loyal and dependable that we consider them family. I invited only 2 of my 4 siblings to my wedding and only 1 of my parents. I invited both of my best friends. On my wedding day I wanted to be with the people I love the most, not the people who felt the most entitled.

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?

I suppose we don't know what dynamics had led to that, although I still don't think it's unreasonable for them to expect their culture to be included as well.

Did they refuse to discuss it or help with the organising at all? Did they just think that they'd be no trouble and 'sort themselves out' whilst the other side had the fancy formal provision that they wanted?

There are too many variables for those of us who weren't involved to know the full story, I guess.

So 15 years on since our wedding day and this still irks me!
So MIL’s Birthday is the day after our wedding, and it’s midnight at our reception and suddenly the music stops and the DJ makes an announcement that it’s the Mother of the Groom’s Birthday.
Birthday music starts up and everyone starts singing to her. I don’t have a clue who has organised it, but fine.
Then…MIL and FIL who have had extensive dancing lessons then take to the dance floor and perform this Strictly Come Dancing quick step with all of our guests gathered around the floor and clapping them.
I just stand there probably looking like a pissed off bitch!

But this woman was so enraged that her other children weren't invited that she took it out on our autistic child.

When she was staying with them on the wedding night, she had a meltdown due to the change in routine. MIL screamed at her to shut up and when she wretched due to crying MIL threatened to make her sleep in her vomit.

So this supposedly happened yet you started a thread complaining about cake cutting, her stealing your moment & how you’re still angry about said cake incident 4 days later? Really?

Mines not my MIL but my own parents

They can be notoriously difficult. Complained about everything from location 'we aren't carting all the way out there' (30 mins drive) to food, mum had to have her own special dish (because she didn't like the soup, chicken, beef, tiramisu or trifle options offered) insisted on getting herself flowers to carry even though I said not to, MOB doesn't carry flowers, and then left early because the music was too loud and they didn't like it.

For context my husbands family flew out from Ireland, spent a fortune staying for a week and had a great time. Not a complaint out of them!

You are being deliberately obtuse. The pp is perfectly clear

My mil wore an ivory suit and I honestly can’t see a problem with ivory or white for any guest as long as the outfit doesn’t look like a wedding dress.
I wore a short white and grey dress to dn’s wedding, I was 55 and certainly wouldn’t be mistaken for a bride!

@KILM and @Tootsweets84 The OP talks about her husband wanting to celebrate his birthday with his brother and sister though. Unless there's been a massive fall out since said birthday, it sounds like they get on fine.

We too had a micro-wedding, our kids and the MIL. She brought with her a bag for life containing some food saver containers that she hadn’t returned to me previously. Luckily I saw the funny side but confirmed why I had really just wanted to keep it to us and our kids.

Agree. Also sometimes some friends are like family. There’s nothing wrong with that.

SIL’s husband is a racist who hates me simply because I’m not white. We have no relationship with him at all, but DH still has a good relationship with his sister and her and I have a friendly relationship.

MIL understandably hates that there’s a split in the family, even though it’s all caused by SIL’s husband.

We had a very small wedding and invited DH’s aunts and uncle. In the lead up, MIL kept telling DH to invite SIL’s husband to keep the peace and obviously he refused.

We gave our invites for DH’s aunts and uncle to MIL. She never gave DH’s uncle his invite, which means he thinks he was never invited to our wedding, so that there would be a space for SIL’s husband.

I found this out after the wedding and DH’s response was “but my mum would never lie…”. That hurt more than the drama around the invites, that rather than accepting what I found out, he thought I was the one who was lying.

What ho Scones. Wasn't sure if your birth parents were around or not, only that there was a reason for their absence & that you have lost many family members.

Dysfunctional is sometimes worse than dead. Apologies for the brutality of that statement, but I think many PP are aghast at the "sibling protocol" because they - & I'm glad for them - have no experience of the impact & generational fallout of seriously dysfunctional family dynamics.

No, that's not the case at all.

We originally planned to get married with just our daughter, our two best friends and their partners present as witnesses. We just wanted something incredibly small as that's who we are.

MIL kicked off so after weeks of her being hysterical we felt guilty and worm down and invited her and FIL.
My Aunty and Uncle came in place of my parents.

DH has two older siblings, I have two older siblings and one younger siblings.
I have two grandparents, he has one grandparent. None were invited. It's nothing to do with like or dislike for anyone. We wanted a small wedding, grandparents wouldn't have been able to attend regardless due to health a siblings we chose not to invite. I have a decent relationship with mine and they were okay with it.

WOW!

1. We don't know if the OP's DH is close or even speaks with his siblings so a close, long term friend might be preferable to a sibling giving you the cold shoulder.
2. I know of no one who says "Save the Cake", bride or relative. It's not up to the guests to hack away at a cake. If they wanted another slice they should have asked for it or there would have been a plate with extra slices pre-cut on it.
3. Usually for guests that can't make the wedding, they would get a slice of cake in a cake box designed for this purpose. I'm not sure I understand that you mean by planning cake for family - are you suggesting a whole tier of a cake or do you mean holding back a portion that can be sent out in slices?
4. If the OP felt a moment was ruined, the OP felt a moment was ruined. Not a thing you could do/say that would change that. As for saying that the OP is oversensitive, that's just unnecessary and verging on being rude.

OP - I don't have any CF in-law wedding day stories.

I do hope that in time, you'll be able to laugh at this. Perhaps for your MiL's next birthday you could get what is called a smash cake where she gets to destroy a cake and it can become her 'thing'.

Wow, are you actually this unpleasant in real life too @ReadersD1gest ?

Disagree slightly with those a little outraged by a partner’s culture not being represented. One of my best friends who grew up here (though his parents are immigrants) and is very much British got repeatedly quite offended by ignorant people going “Ooh I bet you’re going to have all the traditional food and colours because you’re from there! What are you wearing? Will there be outfit changes?” His reply was always, “Nah, I’m from Bristol actually.”

I’m also in a mixed marriage and we had two separate celebrations as meaningfully incorporating aspects of both in one day is actually very difficult. Sure we had little touches in each one but catering is a tough one to pull off well and you’d very likely need two sets of different caterers and their teams if you want really good certain food. And that is what my FIL argued when we wondered if we could.

My BIL refused to acknowledge my DH and I being engaged (because his own girlfriend kept nagging him to her married and he didn't want to - whole other story).

We were always going to have a tiny wedding anyway, us, two kids and each of our parents. No siblings, no friends, then spend the rest of the budget on the honeymoon.

On the wedding morning BIL messaged DH saying 'I'm sorry I won't get to see if today is everything you think it will be... I hope one day when this is all over we can be friends again.'

DH hasn't spoken to him since...

They were delighted to support a highly trad 'Bride's family pay for their Dd's wedding' approach and make no constructive contributions or suggestions at all.

AND were not consulted on catering arrangements or menu choices (which of course they should have been) . And didn't engage in any discussion. They did deliberately stage the hot food as an unannounced ambush to sabotage the salmon, strawberries and asparagus. Which it did. The brides family definitely cast them as CFers.

The guests were happy though - most people had everything, in the end.

And look at the response above to the guest (was it the groom's mother?) who tinkled her glass to signal 'KISS!' and was treated to the humiliation of having a waiter tell her to shut up. It IS an American wedding tradition. People do it on and off throughout the wedding. The groom sounds American. My sister's American ILs did it at my DSis and BIL's English wedding - and everyone joined in. It takes about a second. But all the responses I have seen here have dismissed the guests introduction of a different cultural aspect to an international wedding.

Weddings, like Christmas and Funerals and Money, seem to bring out the worst in some people.