It is my deeply held belief that one day, when we start funding science again or whatever, researchers will discover a deadly brain-eating amoeba that lies dormant in the grey matter of every mother until it is activated, like a sleeper cell, the moment her child announces he or she is planning a wedding.
Because judging by social media at least, wedding planning immediately turns all moms into audaciously unhinged lunatics, or monsters, or sometimes both. Case in point, a bride on Reddit, whose mom has a lot of opinions about her wedding, all of them utterly insane.
Has anyone tried telling moms of engaged people that they already had their wedding, and this one is not theirs? IDK seems like a lot of them are confused. Perhaps we need a national campaign of public service announcements or something?
Take my friend Melissa, for instance, whose mother spent the entire planning process saying, “Melis? Why don’t you do _____, instead?” It got to such a point that on the day of the wedding, one of our friends simply couldn’t take it anymore and said, in the exact same sing-song voice as Melissa’s mom, “Melis? Why don’t you call off the wedding and marry someone else?” Uproarious laughter from all assembled ensued.
This bride’s mom, however? She’s all that on steroids. The 27-year-old bride wrote in her since-deleted post that she’s now a full year into the wedding planning process, and her mom “has had a problem with every single decision I have made.”
But none of them ran afoul of mom’s exacting standards as much as her choice of venue, which has become an all-out war that her mom has roped other family members into. All over a wedding her mom isn’t even paying for!
: Mother Of The Groom Says She ‘Deserves’ Her Own Grand Entrance At Son’s Wedding
Her mom’s first problem was her wedding dress, which she said was “not traditional enough.” Then she pitched a fit over the distant cousins and friends they haven’t spoken to in years who didn’t make the cut for the guest list.
“But the final straw came last week,” the bride wrote, when she and her beau booked a beautiful garden estate for the venue. “It’s peaceful, elegant, and very us,” she said. Which, of course, meant her mother hated it.
Reddit | Canva Pro
“‘You’re seriously going to make people sit outside like they’re in a field? That’s so low-class. I’m embarrassed for you,” her mother said. When she reminded her that it’s her wedding, and that THEY ARE PAYING FOR IT THEMSELVES, her mother was undeterred.
“‘Then I won’t come,'” she said. “And neither will anyone from our family. In fact, if you don’t change it, I think you should just cancel the whole wedding. It’s already a mess.'” And to help ensure she gets her way, she’s been calling relatives, telling them the bride has been “disrespecting her as my mother,” and it’s working on quite a few of them.
: Mom Says Daughter’s Nontraditional Wedding Plans Are Breaking Her Heart — ‘I’m Not Sure I Want To Be There’
I understand that’s harsh and unrealistic and a thing virtually nobody is willing to do, but that doesn’t make it not the solution! Because the bottom line is: This is abuse. It is not only manipulation, but triangulation. That’s where you lie to others and turn them against the other party to up the ante on your manipulation.
I am not a fan of the way everyone on the internet calls every bad thing someone does “narcissism,” but it really IS interesting how every mother-of-the-bride story online involves textbook narcissistic tactics. This one is no different. Triangulation is one of the narcissist’s all-time abusive classics.
The hard truth is that oftentimes, people treat us the way we allow them to treat us. That’s not to victim-blame, but rather to be blunt. This mom’s behavior is egregious and inappropriate, and she is not going to change who she is in time for the wedding. The only thing that is going to shut her selfish, entitled behind up is a taste of her own medicine.
“Knock it the [redacted] off or you’re off the guestlist,” worded in one of the kinder, more respectable ways altogether foreign to someone with as many Scorpio placements as I have, is the only thing that is going to stop this mom from ruining this wedding. Excluding her from further planning unless or until she can conduct herself with at least the decorum and respect of a 12-year-old is a good idea, too.
In the end, the bride realized that her wedding was not “about making her happy and that’s okay.” Hear, hear, and if mom won’t pipe down and learn her place, stand your ground because nobody owes it to anyone to put up with this kind of cruelty — not even their mother.
: Groom Refuses To Allow Bride’s Parents At Their Wedding After She Forgives Them For Disowning Her
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
