So, it's not like I often turn down kind offers from loved ones, especially if it saves us time and money and is essentially a kind offer.
Since we started planning our wedding, MIL has been keen to do our flowers and cake, but I'm increasingly thinking we may have to risk deeply offending her by employing a professional. Here's why:
MIL makes lots of wonderful plans that amount to nothing (such as her art exhibition in India, which we changed our wedding date to accommodate, which amounted to nothing) and has already let us down with an offer to do flowers for a christening.
She has a very forceful personality, I would get NO say in the flower/cake production process and she will most likely fall out with various members of the church/village as she takes liberties and treads on toes.
She is a determined attention seeker, the wedding, for her, would be about nothing more than the cake and the flowers (she made a cake for DD's christening and had a photo of the cake rather than my daughter framed for me as a gift!)
MIL likes to delegate less glamourous tasks- she has already offered my mother the opportunity to make the buttonholes and 'other boring things'
Oh, and she drives me mad if we spend more than ten minutes together, she doesn't contribute to our family life in any positive way and I hate the way she treats DD and DP as people to be 'shown off' to her friends, rather than to have a relationship with (okay, so this might be about more than flowers and cakes...).
As you may gather, I don't have a great relationship with her, but she's not really noticed! But I don't want to hurt her feelings. On the other hand, I would actually like some flowers at my wedding and to stay sane in the process. Also if she let me down, I don't see how I'd get over the fury.
Any way forward on this, or do I just (get DP to) bite the bullet and say we are making other arrangements?
Thanks for reading my rant