Help, falling out with my mother!

Staceyncurtis

I have had a rocky relationship with my mother since I was young.  She was emotionally and verbally abusive as well as terribly narcissistic.  On (too) many occasions, I have been the bigger person and forgave her.  I was on non-speaking terms with her after her behavior when my father was gravely ill (they are divorced but she is meddling).  My dad recovered thankfully and she was horrible to me and sent my father a long letter telling him we would all be better if he had died.  My father is a kind and generous man whom I love tremendously!  I didn’t speak to her for over a year!  Once my fiance and I started getting more serious she started to push her way back into my life.  I had a very direct and serious conversation with her letting her know this was her LAST chance and if she went to counseling for her issues (as she said she was already doing) and did not go back to her bad behaviors, I would let her back into my life.

At first, things were ok.  We got engaged and began trying to plan a wedding we would be paying for.  She then offered to contibute a very respectable amount of money towards the wedding.  I was hoping it was for trying to make good for her past behavior but quickly realized it was so she could show off what she was doing to all her friends (keeping up with the Jones’) Things began to deteriorate from there.  Long story short, we had a bad falling out in December and have not spoken since.  Her negative behavior towards me was witnessed not only by my fiance, but also by my 6yo soon to be step-daughter and my FMIL.  My fiance even tried to talk to her but she doesn’t seem to care and tried to spin it all around.  

She has only contributed 1/3 of what she promised and we are trying to make this happen as too much money has been invested already and invitations for both the wedding and the bridal shower are already sent out.  We will be able to make the wedding happen but it will max out our credit cards.  My mother has sent a fairly nasty text to my MOH trying to trash me and said since she “made the commitment to do the desserts for the shower”, she “will make good on it.’ Oh and verbally attacked her for putting our registry with the invitation calling it tacky…WTF??? 

I am not calm enough to speak with her and any written correspondence will be shared with everyone she knows.  My fiance may talk to her, but our largest concern is losing at large chunk of our guest list because she will talk badly about me and try to convince everyone she knows not to go! Not to mention the significant amount of cost we will now have to take on. I was wondering if we should send a note to the guests that are friends with my mother (that I've know most of my life) and let them know that we hope they come despite the falling out between my mother and I.

Thoughts?......

hmonkey

1) you cannot control whether your guests come or not

2) you cannot control what your mother does

3) you can control what you do or say to your mother

4) you can control how you react to your mother's shenanigans

5) you can control the costs of your own wedding

btw, if fewer people attend your wedding, you will pay less and will not have to max out credit cards to pay for a one day party.

MNNEBride

If some of your guests have been long-time friends with your mother, they already know what kind of person she is.  If they blindly believe what she says, do you really want them at your wedding?

MesmrEwe

You control the costs of your wedding and DO NOT have to max out your credit cards.  You CAN change details with your vendors and in some cases cancel them at this point.  You do not have to send out all of the invitations if you cannot afford that high number of guests anymore.  It is unrealistic to have a wedding that you cannot afford.  Either change the meal option to something you can realistically afford without going into massive debt (I hear spaghetti is cheap!).  Talk with your vendors and rework your budgets.  "Hi Awesome cake decorator!!  We put down our $100 deposit on our $2500 cake, well, it turns out our finances have changed because of some family dynamic issues, can we still do a cake for 200 guests, but closer to an $800 budget instead???  Of course I'm willing to adjust the design to accommodate the lower budget!!!" ... or Florist "I know I ordered $5000 in flowers and put my deposit down, can we adjust the order to only use the $1000 deposit - Great!  When is a good time to meet???"

As for the Mom relationship - yea, you're going to need to address that, premarital counseling is good for this!!!  In this state it gets you a discount on the cost of the marriage license so it works in your favor there too so that's something to check on.  Also some personal counseling because this likely has some far reaching deeper issues and things you really need to address and plan out ahead of time!!!  Something tells me this is only the start of the drama to come from her!!!!