Today was pretty busy at work, and when I finally sat down to check my email for the first time today there were EIGHT separate emails from my parents - six from my mom and two from my dad.
No one was sick, hurt, or in danger. The "crisis" that deserved eight urgent emails was that one of my bridesmaids has narrowed her choices down to three lovely dresses, and -- gasp -- one of them is in CRINKLE CHIFFON, not regular chiffon! Really, a valid cause for declaring a family emergency!
I don't know why my parents, particularly my mom, care so much about what the bridesmaids wear. We've had problems before over these dresses and I am just happy that everyone has found options that look good on them and that are black and floor length. As far as I'm concerned, I've spent enough hours deliberating and shopping for these dresses to have this qualify as a part time job. I ended up in tears after one argument where my mother just wouldn't give up pushing me to "expect" my bridal party to wear a certain thing, and in particular to pressure my sister to shop more.
The problem is, my parents so want this day to be "perfect" that they are trying to exert control in ways that make the experience stressful for me. My FI and I spent a lot of time looking at invitations until we found something we loved, but my parents vetoed it as not formal enough and not representing them. And with these darn dresses, my mom keeps coming up with all these "rules" that go against my intention to have this be easygoing and allow for the bridal party's personal choice, such as "all the dresses have to be chiffon" when I said it would be fine for them to just all be black and floor length, and "if the bridesmaids aren't going to all wear the same dress, they must all wear different dresses". Again, I never specified this, and in fact my two best friends want to wear the same dress, and I'm not telling them they can't.
She also decided that my store-bought thank you cards weren't nice enough, so she pressured me into ordering custom ones with our names printed on them. And she isn't happy with how little we have on our registry and wants me to pick out more, when I'm half convinced we're not going to have anywhere to put what we already asked for!
I feel guilty for getting upset. My parents are paying for almost everything and really sparing no expense. I want them to be happy with the wedding and I don't want to be ungrateful. They made my sister's wedding a few years ago and want to give me something just as nice, and I feel uncomfortable declining their offers when they're being so generous. They're not ones to lord the money over me, as in, "We're paying, so you need to do what we want" but they are just mind-numbingly persistent. Hence the eight emails in one day.
I guess this is more of a vent than anything else, since I've pretty much figured that I'm going to say yes to them on some issues and stand my ground on others, like the BM dresses. After all if this is a preview of how they're going to interact with us after we're married - well, I don't want to be fighting these battles when I'm pregnant and parenting!
