Very quick back story- me and FH have been engaged since 2019 and tried planning wedding since Jan 2020 but covid hit and we put it on the back burner. FMIL is hot and cold, nice one day then shaming me for not going to church with them the next day. She has pushed this wedding since day one of engagement (probably because of her religion)
Since the day we told my fiancés parents that we were planning our wedding they were supportive and even told us to get back to them as soon as possible on what part they can contribute to. My fiancé mentioned that the grooms parents are supposed to pay for the honeymoon, so we budgeted everything out and made a list for them in case they said yes to contributing the funds for it. All of that initial planning went great, as well as our conversation with them asking for the funds. They even said “oh that’s it?” when we told them the price for our honeymoon. So we were all on the same page, they were paying for the honeymoon and my dad would help pay for the wedding.
Less than a month later my FMIL calls me saying ‘so the grooms parents are supposed to pay for the rehearsal dinner too, do you know what you’d like to do for that or have you thought about it?’
I hadn’t thought about it and I made that clear. I’m planning my entire wedding myself and have received very minimal help from my MoH or bridesmaid (MoH is from a different culture so didn’t realize she maybe should have helped more, no big deal at all though- I love planning) anyway, so I told my FMIL to let me think and get back to her. She gives me all of one day. Calls me with same question next day, I tell her I don’t really need to have some big rehearsal dinner since we are having a small wedding (40 guests) and our wedding party consists of 6 people total. I told her that I’m more concerned with the rehearsal part, and after that we may just grab a quick bite to eat together so I can be ready for the big day. She wasn’t having that though. Even insulted me for needing time to prepare, stating that all of that stress is my own fault for planning it without her help. And she made that clear when her tone changed from nice and helpful to snarky and passive aggressive.
From that day on my wedding planning went from fun and light hearted to a headache, all because of her. She called everyday for two weeks or more asking us both what we wanted, I even stopped planning the wedding for over a month because I was mentally drained and just shut down. We told her over and over again that if she insisted we would do something small with the parents included and the few out of town guests. That wasn’t the answer she wanted though. Exhausted, we gave up when she said she would look around some more and let us know what she finds.
She tells us eventually that she wants to have it at this local restaurant we all like. Great, sounds good to me. She asked about the rehearsal part, I told her we would just have it at a park afterwards. She didn’t like that. ‘So you’re going to have to leave early because you have something planned? It’s supposed to be before the dinner!’ I told her I didn’t know that but I’m going to be very busy that day picking up and organizing all of my decorations that are being rented from a company 45 mins from here. She said ‘whatever, do what you want then!’ And hung up on me.
Then things get worse, she tells me she’s made invitations and she’s invited more people and she has changed the time we agreed upon already. Now over half of our wedding is going to this ‘rehearsal’ dinner and she wants to know if she can invite more people! My FH & FFIL don’t get involved when she acts this way (it’s a regular occurrence) But this time I get FH to say something about the time at the very least- so she moves it back an hour to the time I told her will work for my schedule and the guests that have demanding jobs and were already told a time by me. She throws a fit, says ‘fine I guess I’ll scratch it out on my invitation and it will just have to look like that’ and doesn’t talk to me for a couple weeks. Good, this is when I start planning the actual wedding again!
Last night we went over to the in laws for dinner, but we didn’t know it was only for us to talk about the rehearsal dinner. Wasn’t much of a talk as she informed us she would be picking the entire menu for everyone and if they didn’t like it they could ‘just stay home!’ She didn’t even allow us to have any input.
And to top all of this up and bring it full circle- this honeymoon fund we had spoken of, still has not be given to us even as we are now exactly one week from the wedding. FH has asked about it and been told they would give it to us this week, which is now about over, and we have no hotels or anything booked!! 🫠