Hey fellow brides to be!!
I was engaged in the end of May and the last 5 months have been absolutely nuts!! I had no idea what kind of beasts would be born as a result of our engagement. This engagement has brought out the worst out of my mom! I'm not sure how to handle it. From the moment we got engaged, she has been planning this wedding and most of which has happened without me or my fiance! First- my mom insisted on throwing an engagement party. I asked her to hold off on any plans until we discussed with my fiance's family (most of which aren't local and would have to travel). Then she starts with the messages. Messages ALL hours of the night (12am, 3am, ect..) "do you like this?", "what do you think about that?" ect...She purchased gifts for my bridesmaids....before I even determined who they were! I explained to her multiple times the importance of my fiance and I planning this together and that she is excluding him and me from the process when she starts planning things without us. I explained that while her ideas are much appreciated, we really need her to focus on compiling a guest list with addresses, phone numbers, and emails. She agreed to help with the guest list and later told me she wasn't able to open excel and so she couldn't help with the guest list, but that she'd start contacting wedding planners. Call me short tempered, but this all caused me to snap and tell her that she already had her wedding, this isn't her wedding and my fiance and I will be handling the plans from here on out (which is what we wanted in the first place). She stopped contact with me for weeks. During this time we started planning the engagement party. Booked the location, picked a caterer, started looking at decor and whatnot and after a couple days of compiling addresses and contact info of our friends and families, we sent out the evite. Just a couple days later she sends me pictures of decorations she's bought- I asked her to return them because they don't match what we have in mind. Then she goes on and on about renting linens and dishes. I explained to her that we are on a budget and were planning on keeping things simple with nice disposable table cloths and dishes. My fiance's aunt had some great ideas for centerpieces that we decided to go with. Once my mom heard about that, the next day she decided to go pick up her own stuff for centerpieces. Fiance's aunt also volunteered to do the cupcake stand/table. So my mom went out and bought stuff for a cupcake stand and other decor for the cupcake table. I warned her that we already had all of that figured out and that Fiance's aunt was buying all this for the party. The day of the engagement party my mom starts setting up her cupcake stand and moments later my fiance's aunt walks through the door with all this stuff for the cupcake stand. She was obviously offended (and rightfully so) and asks me "I thought I was doing the cupcake stand". I was completely mortified. From then on out, his aunt was all upset and started to really take it out on my mom. Normally, I would step in, however, I thought it was a fair lesson for her to learn...
Anyways, I'm really concerned about how she will behave with the wedding planning. Thank goodness we are planning a destination wedding, somewhere she has never been and with a wedding planner! However, I'm still not convinced she will just step back and let the wedding planner plan our wedding how we would like it to be planned. Also concerned with her taking over other pre-wedding events. Not only because we have different taste, but because she doesn't have a job and it really causes problems between her and my dad when she spends money she shouldn't spend! Ugh.
Any tips on how to tame the zilla out of my mom???