Okay, I'm really sorry about how long this is. Part of this is a general rant, but also I'm in desperate need of advice because my FMIL is driving me bonkers! I'm sure some of you brides can relate!!
Okay, so things have honestly been great between me and my fiance but I swear I can't stand his mom and it's driving me to the point of anxiety...something I NEVER suffer with (I'm a very upbeat person)! We've been living together and engaged for a year and a half now. We originally set the date to October 25th, 2015. Instead, we recently made the decision to move the wedding back to January 15th, 2015 because neither of us have any patience and we decided (since I'll be graduating in December) that that date would be perfect. So it made for my parents to suddenly get overly excited and talk about our wedding nonstop and his parents to completely become indifferent to everything, or downright angry about it.
To start off with, I've never cared for his mother. I've adored his other family members, but when it comes to his mother I literally cannot stand her. I never have, and I'm extremely afraid I never will. It has been this way since he and I were dating. As of last July we had to move in with them 1) so I could be closer to a new school I transferred over to and 2) (main reason) he had a seizure and wrecked his car and lost his license. Thus killing his job he commuted to and thus killing our ability to pay rent. Neither of us wanted to move in, but we are living here free of rent, which is honestly great.
However, his mother is impossible to live with. For a while, she was pulling insane hours and never had time to do anything. She would work from 7-8AM and come home well after 10PM. So we helped out as much we could with things like clothes, dishes, etc. However, those things weren't good enough and it became clear even when her hours became normal. If she didn't have a specific outfit, she would freak out. If her clothes were not washed for a day, she would act like the holocaust was reoccurring. It was tiny things that could set her off. She even went as far as to kick us out one night, because of one tantrum. There have been times where she has literally talked crap about me to my fiance' when I was ten feet away. Loud enough to where I can hear, but not "directed to me" basically telling my fiance' "good luck washing you and Sam's clothes because you're the only one that does them." There have been times where she said I should have been raised better. She has gotten angry that me and my fiance' went to go visit my parents. This past mother's day, she was angry that I went to see my mom for mother's day. I recall many times, where to get on her good side I have cleaned the ENTIRE house while her and her husband were gone. Like fold up her clothes (which she never does the clothes, other people do them for her), mop the entire house, dust, etc. Basically having everything look spotless. A few days later I would get called lazy, despite at one point working fulltime and going to school fulltime. It began to be so entirely frustrating that I stopped helping out as much because it was one of those "Damned if I do, damned if I don't"
It was nuts.
So fast forward to me and my fiance changing the dates on the wedding: Like I said, his parents are indifferent. If we asked them if they were helping at all they would become angry, accuse us of using them, etc. However, other members of his family quickly said they were, my mother started naming off things she would be helping us with, etc. It was really disheartening to be getting the backlack from his parents, when so many people were acting excited. If we mentioned wedding ideas, they would be like "Oh" or just nod their head without giving any eye contact. Reactions from other family members of any other side were the typical types, "Oh, that's so cute!" "Oh, I can't wait!" "Oh that's great!"
It's not like his parents don't have excitable personalities, either. Especially his mom, who has been really excitable about other issues.
So we blew it off, and they eventually changed their attitude and we moved on from their initial indifference. They struck us a deal, that if we give them the 500 dollars that we normally they would hold it off on the side for the wedding. However, I was not asking for my fiance's mother to do anything in the wedding. Like I would schedule floral consultations, and she actually complained to my fiance' that SHE wanted to be a part of some of the decorating stuff. She was jealous that we did some crafty gift boxes for my bridal party and she wasn't asked to help. So my fiance' talked to me about this and I told him that I would invite her to do some stuff with the wedding. Not even a day later she started some nonsensical argument (see one of the above paragraphs for a general idea) and I told my fiance' that I can't do it. I told him that it was too stressful. Now, that was out of some mild anger and I do have the rebound rate of a child, so I didn't hold onto that statement for long.
In a couple of days we will be having an engagement party at his parents' house. We gave them the 500 dollars we normally would give them to pay for insurance and car notes and they're using that money towards decorations, table cloths, some food, etc. However, when we didn't have a final headcount yet all hell broke loose and his mother started fussing about how "we need to get our **** together if we want to have this wedding planned" and they spent 300 dollars on table cloths and napkins and paper plates and a few decorations alone and we don't even have our end of the job. She then began to complain that we didn't invite all of the family for the engagement party, when she never communicated who she wanted to be a part of it so every bit of information I got was from my fiance'...who is a VERY flighty, forgetful person so wedding planning is definitely not his strongpoint...haha. I communicated to her several times to send ME the addresses and she chose to send it to her son. So I sent my mom (who was hand designing the RSVP and address labels and paying for everything regarding the shipping of invites to the engagement party) whatever information I had. No, this wasn't good enough.
Nothing is good enough. I didn't take off the day before the engagement party to help clean, even though the shift I am working will provide plenty of opportunity for me to come home and get some good cleaning done. I hear that I am lazy, and that I am not helping at all for this wedding and engagement party. Which is laughable because I am the one who booked the wedding and reception hall, I am the one who has been doing vendor research, etc. I want a live band that actually is incidentally a family friend? No, she insists that a DJ would be better and brings it up a lot. I wanted to do a home catering thing, which my family was more than happy to help cook, she insisted that catering would be ten times better. She wants me and my fiance' to say yes to this lady who does cheap and not so cute looking wedding cakes only because it would be about three hundred dollars less. There are countless things, but the meddling has me so stressed, and the overall rudeness has me stressed that planning this wedding has become a chore. So much so that me and my fiance have discussed eloping and are trying to get a completely outside opinion on whether eloping would be a better choice.
Both of us are getting stressed with this wedding and are wondering if waiting until January would be the best option, because both of us know that once the wedding is near she'll be complaining how we haven't done anything for the wedding and basically everything under the sun. We can't take the stress much anymore, especially if things are going to continue with how they're going. We have discussed eloping and both of us want to do it, but I don't want to do anything out of a hasty decision. So I'm wondering if anyone had any similar stories and how they handled it? ANY advice would be great.
Just a heads up, though, we both have tried having talks with her and they fall on deaf ears. THAT or things get better for a few days and it's back to the swing of things.