Hi all!!
It's been a week and a half since my taller half got down on one knee and proposed, and we're already neck-deep in a planning/budget nightmare.
My mother thinks that this is her second wedding, even though she happily married my father 31 years ago. She has an exact idea (location, budget, ambience, etc) of how OUR day is supposed to be for MY family. The problem is, surprise surprise, this in no way matches FI's and my idea for the wedding. The two of us are incredibly in sync about what we'd like, and he wants to be very involved in the wedding planning (exciting! yay!).
My parents are in town for Thanksgiving, and FI left to be with his family yesterday. On Sunday we sat down and had a preliminary discussion about what we'd like- we're thinking Boston (which is long distance for us but both of our families are in the area up there), and fell in love with a place that to us, with those in his family and the both of us contributing, would be WELL within means. My mother didn't say much aside from "well, I don't think the older members of the family are going to make it to Boston (which is 45 minutes from their homes). Well, yestserday was a different story. I swear the minute FI's plane flew overhead my mother ripped into me. She called me a selfish brat beacuse I had ideas about what I'd like to do for OUR wedding, and that she and my father couldn't afford and mostly didn't want to do at all. I told her that FI and I, along with his parents would like to contribute and even told them what they'd pitch in for (rehearsal dinner, bar tab, etc), and my mother FLAT OUT REFUSED to have any monetary help for this day, because in her words "this is MY event to plan, i am going to do it MY way". she also said some unpleasant things about FI's family (regarding the money situation) and called me a selfish b**ch more than once.
so now we're stuck. i hate that my mother is leaving FI (and me, it seems) out of the planning when she has no clue what planning a wedding is like 31 years after the fact. she's made me feel worthless as a bride because i haven't just nodded and smiled with her ideas of what she wants for her big day for us, and every time i tried to explain that we would like to plan and contribute she started crying because i was hurting her feelings. we don't want to get married in my homestate because it's not a place that means that much to either of us (especially not FI), and she says she can't afford any kind of lavish wedding but won't accept any financial help from anyone else. are there any options out there aside from binding and gagging her and sending her to therapy, or eloping/having a wedding without her?
