Wedding/dealing with mother

tea_lover · 1 March 2017 at 1:15PM

silvercar wrote: »

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

You are paying, your wedding, end of. Facebook message the cousins, tell them you only had one address, don't know why they didn;'t receive the invite but there is no room. Going forward either build a relationship with them directly or forget them. You certainly don't need a relationship that is only through your mum.

If Mum wants to pay then tell her you need the money within 24 hours or its not happening, but personally I wouldn't go down this road. Really you don't want her using her paying towards the wedding as a weapon in the future.

And tell your OH that he needs this to be a lesson!

congratulations on your wedding.

She's already paid £5k, 1/3 of the cost.

Kirklees1992 · 1 March 2017 at 1:17PM

The OP said in her first post that she had 5k handed over, I assume that's been from parents.
And commented that other people got 20k. I do think it's a bit odd saying in the one breath that you got 5 grand given to you for your wedding and then saying that your mum owes you 500 pounds from a few years back.
If you only just afforded it without getting into debt you could have had a wedding cheaper than 15 grand.

This really isn't a mess. You tell her no or you tell her to pay for your cousins.

Your biggest problem is with your OH, he was the one who insisted you run this table plan past your mum, if he hadn't none of this would have happened.

As for her wearing a dress from the high street sabotaging your wedding, I don't know what to say about that except it seems that you have issues with how much she spent on your sisters weddings and what she wore to your sister's weddings, does that really matter?

Its about you and your OH, not about her. He's caused this drama, Id be asking him to sort it.

-taff · 1 March 2017 at 2:03PM

I wouldn't worry too much about the dress, I knew someone who wore white to her sons weddings, the same white as the bride.....Awkward much....Yes, she did it on purpose....

Your wedding, your rules. The cousins can't come unless they want to stand in the bar, sorry and all that.....

Gingernutty · 1 March 2017 at 2:16PM

Sorry OP, you've got an OH problem.

He ran it by your Mum even though you told him not to and he'll let her walk over him now.

He had no right to involve her over something you'd already bought and paid for and him mouthing off about her and then allowing himself to be a pushover when he gets face to face or text to text is just not on.

You've got to put on a united front against your mum and now the cousins. If he doesn't you're just going to have to ask him where he's going to find the extra money from.

You're going to have to bite the bullet and uninvite the cousins. Tell them your Mum made a mistake and mistook the evening 'do' guest list for the dining guest list and they should have been invited to the evening 'do'.

Let rip at your OH and tell him not to stick his oar into your family politics again.

lika_86 · 1 March 2017 at 2:25PM

Gingernutty wrote: »

You're going to have to bite the bullet and uninvite the cousins. Tell them your Mum made a mistake and mistook the evening 'do' guest list for the dining guest list and they should have been invited to the evening 'do'.

It's no good doing that if, as the OP suspects, the invitations did arrive but were never replied to! Better to say that numbers have been finalised now for the day but they can come for the evening.

GlasweJen · 1 March 2017 at 2:31PM

My sisters had the budget so had massive weddings where mum could invite as many people as she liked and could demand extravagant things like designer invitations and £3K wedding dresses. She doesn't understand (or doesn't want to understand) that because our budget is much smaller she can't have that.

We were comfortable spending £15K. That's was £5K from either side plus £5K that we saved. When our invitations came back we budgeted for that number of people to eat and that influenced our choice of food for the breakfast and the buffet.

I had many meal options veto'd by mum as not being nice enough for a wedding. she's basically pressuring us to put on the same sort of wedding my sisters had and we simply don't want it and can't really afford it. Of course to the family she's implying that they've contributed the same as to my sisters weddings and we are just being nasty by not giving her 100% of her say and we're not using the money for the wedding but for other things.

TBagpuss · 1 March 2017 at 2:35PM

How frustrating.

I think the biggest issue is. To avoid stress on the day, I'd suggest that you contact them directly now, either phone or e-mail.

Say somthing like

"Mum just told me that she had invited you to my wedding on [date] unfortuantely, as we had a hard deadline of [date] to finalise the arrangments with the venue and caterers , we can't now add any guests at all. I'm afraid that this means it won't be possible to fit you in.

If you would like to join us fo the evening reception [give details] you would be more than welcome, it would be lovely to see you, but we will of course undestand f you're not able to make it. I wanted to let you know as soon as possible."

If you are emailing rather than speaking directly I would add "If you have any questions please contact me, not mum, as Fiance and I are doing allthe arrangements ourselves, and well of couse we're talking to mum about a lot of it, she doesn't have all the details or al lthe information about the limits on numbers etc"

depending on how far you think your mum may go, consider making a quick call to your venue and mention that your mum doesn't have authority to change numbers / arrangments and that any request for any change MUST be referred to you. I would expect them to do that anyway but if you think she might try to tell the venue to add extras herself, it's worth reminding them that they can't accept instructions from anyone other than you and your fiance.

I hope that despite these issues, you have a wonderful day. Remeber, the main thing is that you and your fiance get to get married, and to be together. If your mum makes a scene or grumbles then 99% of people are going to think less of her, for making a scene at your wedding, not of you.

Kirklees1992 · 1 March 2017 at 2:49PM

Again, your OH is the person who has caused this issue.

Personally, if my relationship with my mum was so bad, I wouldn't have taken the 5k from her.

Or caved and had the wedding she wanted you to have.

Kirklees1992 · 1 March 2017 at 2:55PM

She's doing everything she can to sabotage my day from wearing a high street dress (her outfits for my sisters weddings were all north of £1K), wearing my bridesmaid colours for her accessories and complaining that the hotel charges for breakfast with the room rate she booked.

I cant quote sorry, but that isn't sabotage. I think you need to take a step back.

thorsoak · 1 March 2017 at 3:20PM

Kirklees1992 wrote: »

She's doing everything she can to sabotage my day from wearing a high street dress (her outfits for my sisters weddings were all north of £1K), wearing my bridesmaid colours for her accessories and complaining that the hotel charges for breakfast with the room rate she booked.

I cant quote sorry, but that isn't sabotage. I think you need to take a step back.

It's GlasweJen's wedding, for heaven's sake! Her mum is being a complete wind-up merchant and sadly, the pressure is getting to GlasweJen.

Jen - for what it's worth, if I were in your shoes, I would send a message to your cousins, to say that sadly for H & S reasons, the venue can only take X number of people for the wedding and as your mother had not let you know that they were able to attend the numbers have been filled.

Or better still - get your MIL on board, and get her to talk to the cousins - and deal with your mother. Confide in MIL - who obviously wants the wedding to be done in "the right way" and get her to do the deed!

it's so sad when what should be a happy day turns into a nightmare x

Wedding/dealing with mother

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