I'm having an extremely difficult time with my fmil. To be honest, I'm hugely intimidated by her, as she openly chides and embarasses me whenever she disagrees with something. I feel like out of respect for fh, I can't say or do much back.
It's time for our wedding invitations to go out, as many of them are going to far-away countries. We have been engaged since December 2011 and are getting married this May. We have given both sets of parents MORE than enough time to compile guest lists. My parents had everything done in time, and helped us make our wedding invitations.
His parents barely helped at all- other than his mom coming a couple times to help with some gluing. So it's been me and my parents slaving away, doing the best that we could with the time that we had. At first, his mom said she only needed 20 invitations, since she wouldn't be inviting her family at all. When fh said that it was rude not to invite her family (she didn't want to because according to her, they were "cheap" people, and since they probably couldn't come, there's no reason to "Waste" an invitation asking").
Finally, she came to when I repeatedly told her that it's their decision whether or not to come, but not even asking people (or telling them about the wedding- she wanted to keep it a secret!) is not ok. I don't want to start our married life together offending half of his family.
Anyways, time to send out invitations, after spending countless weeks making them, and NOW she decides to keep adding to the list! She doesn't even email me to say "Hey, is it ok if we also add...", she just sends me addresses! All I get is an email saying "Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, 52 Whatever Street, Blah blah". On top of wanting to invite people literally at the last second, she doesn't even want to provide addresses for half of these guests, saying that she can get some friends to pass on the invitations (as in, mail 10 invitations to a friend, who then has to drive around the city distributing these to the other people they know). ANd that if we aren't ok with that, she's just going to EMAIL them the details.
She has also told us that she won't be asking people who have not RSVP'd for their responses, as it's "awkward", and she will be letting her guests with children choose the adult menu if they don't want the kids menu.
I am about to go nuts- she literally will not comply with any etiquette rules or guidelines that we want to stick to. When we tell her that that's how it needs to be done, she literally just laughs in our face, then still won't do it.
I don't want to be rude, but I'm at my wits end. We're planning a very elegant wedding, and she's just ruining the vibe by emailing people details for invitations, not sticking to etiquette rules, etc. Fh needs to talk to her, but what to say?!