Good afternoon, and happy 4th!
You ladies are always so excellent with wording, and I could use a little help. My new MIL sent out a "smilebox" (it basically plays music over a montage of pictures with captions) to everyone in her family, along with H and I. In the captions there was a lot of "The new Jen and John Smith!" "Mrs. John Smith during her father-daughter dance". MIL knows that I am Ms. Jen Jones-Smith.
This has been discussed beforehand, and we had some minor adjustments during the ceremony and reception, like avoiding monograms and having the DJ introduce us as just John & Jen so that our friends and family wouldn't get the impression that I was Jen Smith. We knew we would get it from a few people and have mostly looked the other way or politely told people I'm actually Ms. Jen Jones-Smith.
I wrote MIL what I thought was a polite email thanking her for the lovely smilebox and all the effort she must have gone through to put it together, and then mentioned that "Just so we're clear, I'll be going as Ms. Jennifer Jones-Smith, so please don't refer to me as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. John Smith. People will take their cue from you as to what to call me, so I would appreciate it if you would please respect my decision and refer to me by my proper name".
I just got an email back criticizing me for emailing instead of calling (I get flustered easily and prefer to be able to carefully deliberate my words) and saying that basically my refusing to be called Mrs. John Smith was disrespectful to her and her son as that is her family name and I should be glad to have it and basically people call married people by their husband's name so I should get over it. She made a half-assed apology about how she "must be ignorant, because she always thought married couples were referred to as Mr. & Mrs Hislastname in social situations, regardless of her legal name (????)" and said she would try to remember to refer to me as Ms. Jen Jones-Smith in the future.
This has all left a bad taste in my mouth. I know she's probably sensitive about her only child marrying and her own recent retirement, so I'm trying to cut her some slack and not start World War 3 over this. She's been acting a little wierd since the wedding (making plans with H to go to his friend's metal concert she heard about on facebook with him, buying us multiple household items that we neither want nor need) so I think she's doing some adjusting.
I want to write something along the lines of "I'm not trying to make a big deal over this, or be disrespectful of you. John and I have discussed this decision and are comfortable with it, and I hope that you can be too." I'm not positive, but it's starting to feel like some sort of power play, and quite frankly I'm not interested in getting involved in that. I haven't brought H into this as of yet. When I got him involved because she was being a little crazy over the seating chart she got upset with me for "tattling" and getting her son annoyed with her, so I'm trying to avoid that if possible.
I'm sure other people have dealt with similar situations, what would be a good way to handle this?