Wedding Vent, NBR and very long
llybeck
member
SO has been awesome about giving me his input and really caring about planning our wedding. We are just getting things figured out and we finally decided where we were going to have the ceremony and reception, we had it narrowed down to 2 resorts about 3.5 hours from where we live. We both love the area, SO went to college in the area and I have been going there since I was a kid at least once a year, it's also where we have always went for vacations and where we first said we loved each other. Needless to say there is a lot of meaning there, I didn't even want anything to do with wedding planning until we talked about this. Since this is so special to us I actually started to get really excited about it and my stress about the planning was fading away.
SO's family is huge and my family is incredibly small, meaning he will be inviting probably 150 people and I will maybe have 20. After inviting friends we will probably have 200 guests. We know there is a chance that not all of those people will come because it would be 3.5 hours away but we know the people who we really care about being there will come. So we talked to SO's mom tonight to see if she could help us with their family guest list and try to help us figure out who would likely come so we could get a better idea and compare pricing between the two resorts we were looking at. SO's parents had very generously offered to help us pay for our wedding as well as covering the flowers and decorations since SO's mom owns a flower shop. His mom has been hounding us about planning this so I thought she would be excited that we made progress. Unfortunately, the first thing she said was, "it looks like a beautiful place but I'm going to tell you everything that's wrong with it." This was after she has been telling me that it was our wedding and we could do whatever we chose to do.
She is dead set that we need to have it in our home town so that we aren't inconveniencing anyone. She said that it was going to be a pain in the ass for her to bring flowers up there and she was annoyed that it wouldn't be easier for her. We told her we didn't care what flowers she chose so she could do whatever would look nice and last longer and she got upset and said that I would care. She told me I would care about having a lot of people there and I would want a lot of people around me, I told her I didn't want that at all and she wouldn't listen. She kept trying to make us feel bad saying which people wouldn't go because it was too far (they were all people SO didn't even know or hasn't seen since he was a child) and then she would flip the other way and say that we shouldn't try to have a small wedding and run away because everyone in his family would still go, they would just be very inconvenienced. She kept going on and on about how everyone would ask why the hell we were doing this and kept saying she wished I would have gone to some of their other family weddings so that I would "get it" and understand why this was such a big deal. She was acting like I was a leper because I was inviting so few people and couldn't understand why I didn't have more people to ask to come. She even said she knew my parents couldn't afford to help us pay for this so they would end up having to pay for everything. I couldn't believe how upset and disappointed she was, she kept saying we could do what we want but then she'd keep going with how awful it was and bring up money again.
She acted like everything that I cared about was ridiculous just because it was different from what everyone else in the family does. I feel like a piece of shit, I didn't stand up for myself like I should have. SO was not there for most of this conversation (neither of us thought it would turn into this) so I had to tell him what happened. He felt horrible that his mom made me feel that way, I've been crying about it all night. I don't want them giving us any money at all anymore. We were going to pay for a good amount of this but we knew they were going to give us some money and we would need that to have a wedding like the one we want. I can't do it though, I can't take their money knowing she is totally against all of it. I asked SO if we could just legally get married (courthouse) and then have the ceremony we want once we have the money for it or we could just do something really small where we want to and let people be upset about not being invited. SO said he would be happy doing anything, he just wanted to be married and for me to have the wedding I care about. I was actually really excited to have this for us and now I don't want to even think about weddings ever again, I feel miserable that I lost all enthusiasm about this and I feel stupid for letting it get to me so bad.
Thank you if you read through all that, I just needed to get that out.
Re: Wedding Vent, NBR and very long
I would do it all over again. People didn't feel inconvenienced by the travel they wanted to be there. It's a wedding not a subpoena. Your MIL seems like mine.
My ILs kind of threw a fit about not having a wedding in my H's hometown so they insisted on a reception there. I told them they could do whatever they wanted but I wouldn't be able to help with the planning process (since we didn't even want it anyway).
It gave my MIL something to do (and control of something I didn't really care about) and she was out of my hair.
PS the reception she threw was incredibly tacky and awful but my wedding was stress free.
Please don't stress about your in laws. They will have their own opinion and will feel entitled to it as long as they are giving you money. Don't give them that power. You should either come up with an alternative wedding that you can afford or wait to have your dream wedding when it is financially possible. Trust me when I tell you that it doesn't matter what your wedding is like you are always going to look fondly on it.
Toby, my furry baby
@happybride 276, thank you, I need to stop caring what she thinks because I don't want it to end up in a fight. I actually really like her so this whole thing was just gross to me. And you're exactly right, regardless of how choose to have the wedding we're going to be happy with it in the end.