Help! Help! My sister is turning into a bridezilla!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

I never thought of myself as having been a bridezilla, but this thread has made me worry a bit.

In 1990, my then boyfriend and I decided to get married. We weren’t young, so we were paying for everything ourselves. To avoid the children issue (not a big deal, as we knew very few people with children anyway), we decided on an evening wedding in a church (but performed by my boyfriend’s friend and former landlord, who happened to be a mayor of a small city). I bought the first dress I ever tried on, for $300, although later, really for fun, I went to a major bridal outlet and tried on about twenty different dresses, none of which were as good as the one I’d already bought. We chose a catering venue which did three hours open bar and a dessert buffet for about $20/head. They had sound equipment, so my boyfriend was going to make some party CDs. We asked a dear friend of my husband’s who was a hobbyist photographer to take pictures as his wedding gift to us (and he gleefully bought a bunch of new camera equipment with this excuse).

My mom wasn’t really into all this bridal stuff, but she offered, and I accepted her offer, to take the train off the dress and replace the lace on the new hem. I found and bought a pretty dress for her (it was on super sale, so I snapped it up), which I think pleased her very much (she hates to shop). Two of my three bridesmaids (I needed three because my boyfriend had three close friends he wanted in the wedding) lived locally, so the three of us, after consulting with our third, who we all knew but had moved to Pittsburgh fairly recently, went to a shop and mutually picked out their dresses. They seemed to like them. We were all sufficiently financially solvent that no one seemed to find this a hardship (I think they ran around $80-100 each - it’s a long time ago, so I’m not sure). I did ask them to wear heels, simply because I was wearing flats because my husband was the shortest guy in the ceremony and I wanted to look like the shortest woman. (Actually, they were about the same height as me).

Then, about eight weeks before the wedding, I got sent to Japan on business for what turned out to be six weeks. I spent some international phone time dealing with flowers and such. My boyfriend chose and bought the rings and the cake, and the two bridesmaids who lived locally ended up addressing the invitations, which my fiance and I had ordered before I got sent off. As a technical writer, he knew a lot about fonts, and he definitely wanted in on the choice of invitations.

I was rather disappointed that my fiance decided to wear white tie himself and have his guys wear black tie. Miss Manners (whom I’ve always loved) said that that was a no-no (the groom is the man marrying the bride - no further distinction in dress is required), so I bitched a bit, but Bob insisted. I don’t think anybody else cared. I absolutely loved the rings he chose - exactly what I would have chosen myself.

I got my bridesmaids some pretty lapis and silver jewelry and long white gloves to wear with their dresses as my gifts to them. My fiance got some Sharper Image type thermal cups as his gift to his guys.

Everything was pretty calm. We spent the day itself doing standard girl stuff - I got my hair done (I had a little hat that had to be worked in there), and I think we got manicures. We’d each had a little single-sex celebration sometime in the preceding week (we women went to a bar for a couple of drinks, and I don’t remember what the guys did, but I don’t think it involved hookers), and a fairly brief rehearsal the night before the wedding, followed by a nice wedding participants dinner.

The wedding was just plain fun. The place we had the reception put out a wonderful buffet of desserts (of which I was never able to take a single bite because I was busy running around being hostess, and then later dancing). They hated my fiance’s CDs, and voluntarily DJed the party, which led to a bunch of people dancing to old sixties rock and roll. A number of people commented on just how much fun they’d had. It all broke up by midnight, and that was that. Total cost was about $2000 all told, with about 75 people attending.

But I did end up leaning on my bridesmaids a lot because of the trip to Japan. They had to write the invitations, and I think one of them helped my fiance choose the cake, and my poor mom spent a lot of hours removing that stupid train. Was I a bridezilla? We’ve all lost touch since, so I can’t ask them.

82

I don’t think that that would qualify for bridezilla status. You really didn’t want to leave all that stuff to others, you just had to. And it’s not like you had to have everything just so, you were happy with what happened.

83

Thanks. In reading this thread, it suddenly occurred to me that my former bridemaids might well be out there moaning about having had to put up with me. :eek:

84

ugly ripe tomato, you know exactly how I’m feeling! I enjoy sewing, I really do… but going from two to six was making my head hurt. Not only that, but throw in the whole “It doesn’t look good on me!” and “I want another colour!” and “I don’t like the material” is prone to make anyone stabby.

I don’t think you were a bridezilla, Oy! It’s one thing to ask your friends to do you favours, but another to be a complete control freak about it. I mean, if you ask someone to do something for you, you give them the instructions once and then let it go! It’s in their hands now!!! Not the case with my sister. If she had said from the beginning that she wants a big party, then I would have geared myself up for helping out with that. This is just not at all what I expected. But I know, I know, as Cat Whisperer said, that’s changed already so no point in dwelling on it.

At any rate, I WAS going to tell my sister my decision yesterday but it didn’t happen. I called my sister’s house, BIL-to-be answered and I talked to him a bit about how the planning was going between them, and he just let a crazy rant from his side unleash too. His family is paying for the whole thing except for the dresses, and his mother really doesn’t want to spend $500 on the cake my sister is thinking about. So he got into an argument with her about how if they’re going to let his parents pay for it, then his mother should have at least some say. I told him to just let the subject drop for now, and I’ll talk to her and see what she really feels about it, and why it has to be a $500 cake. In my head, I’m thinking “$500?!?! I can get 50 cakes from Safeway for that price!!!” Of course, I can’t just straight up agree with him without talking to my sister first. There has to be some diplomatic way for that issue to be resolved.

Phone finally got passed to my sister and I asked her why she is so insistent on the cake. And yes, she did say that her MIL-to-be thinks she’s a great baker, but in reality, it’s only good for pot lucks and informal events. She wouldn’t even trust her MIL-to-be to make a decent birthday cake. Okay, fair enough. So I suggested that maybe it doesn’t have to be a $500 cake, she could find a decent bakery that makes picture perfect cakes for less. Her main concern is that it has to look good for photographs, not for the taste anyway. So I somehow managed to convince her to research the price of cakes some more and don’t bring it up with BIL-to-be until she is absolutely sure she can’t get a photogenic cake for less than $500.

Needless to say, after talking her through the cake drama, I wasn’t about to unleash the dress drama onto her. She did ask me how the sewing was going, though, and I just said I was adding more poof for her. I didn’t dare mention the bridesmaid dresses.

I really do want to help my sister out with all this; I know it’s stressful, but it isn’t even my freakin’ wedding. Why do I have to be as stressed as her about it?!?!

85

Ah, the question for the ages. :slight_smile:

86

It’s not the opposite view. I was responding to a post that said the bride has to reasonably accommodate the guests and I was wonder what that meant. If I throw a party and I know certain people I care about will be there , I’ll try to have things they’ll enjoy, but I won’t go out of my way to accommodate them. They can come or not.

Other than that I agree with you , that in a wedding it’s best to not ask friends and family for favors and to foot part of the bill. If they offer fine, but then don’t drive them crazy by making them jump through hoops. Accept their offer or don’t.

My family is generally accommodating but also pretty up front with each other. If someone says “no thanks” or “This is all I’ll do” that’s usually the end of it.

The whole family drama, obligation, bitch about it thing leaves me cold.

87

I follow you. That makes sense.

88

Or that they should all have authentic Titanic-era outfits. (Not that that actually happened. But it’s hilarious.)

89

Ugh. You are a good sister! But the dress drama does need to be resolved as quickly as possible so they can find other seamstresses or whatever.

Can she just get a very small picture perfect cake (or iced cardboard) for pics and then slab cakes from Safeway (or other kind of dessert, no one will care or they may even prefer non-cake dessert) for everyone else? My sister-in-law did this (I had individual mousses, no cake at all) and it was a big hit.

Or can she pay for the cake herself? I found that for some reason my family was very sensitive to who was paying for what. I mean, we tried to point out to them on multiple occasions that it was all going in the same pot anyway, but for some reason it made them much happier when they knew that my husband was paying for his OWN tuxedo rental and not using THEIR money or MY money to do it… weird, right? Families and weddings… gah.

90

Can’t MIL-to-be give her budget for the cake? “$300 for a cake is what I can afford. If you want a nicer cake than that, you’ll need to pay for the rest.”

My in-laws wanted to contribute and asked to pay for the flowers. They could afford $100 worth of flowers, and we wound up with $125, so we paid the rest.
I don’t think $500 for a wedding cake is unreasonable, actually. I used to work for a classy bakery and 15 years ago, $500 would get you a medium sized, simple and elegant cake, nothing too fancy. (I went the “tiny cake with extra backup” route and got $400 worth for $100 as a wedding present. It was the smallest, simplest 3-tier cake they made, plus enough sheet cake to feed 150 total.)

91

I think you may have missed the part where the sister has already shot down most (all?) of his suggestions. In most cases, it’s the bride which cares more about the tiny details. I’ve been to many restaurants / hotels, and you can see the coordinator talking with the couple, and the groom is just sitting there while the bride is all excited about choosing the patterns for the china. While I completely agree that it would be better if it could be shared, which is how my wife and I planned our low-key event, I think it generally doesn’t work out.

I think the most successful cases on how to handle decision making when families are paying is for the family to make a decision on a total budget, and then simply give that without strings.

So, if the in-laws decide they can $5,000, $15,000 or whatever, they simply give that, and let the bride and groom decide how to use the money.

Otherwise, like this case, every decision can be open to negotiations, questioning judgments and hurt feelings.

Wise choice on how to handle the dresses, especially after being treated as you were. Stick to your guns on that one.

92

Assuming you’re trying to be funny. :rolleyes:

93

re married on the beach in Aruba -

My friend Tinita got married at some resort in Jamaica, and all of us were fine with not being invited to the wedding - they wanted a small one, very few people so they wouldn’t have to deal with sorting out relatives and friends and huge wedding costs. I think it would be better if more people just eloped off to a tropical resort or Vegas for a small wedding.

94

Thanks, raspberry hunter! I think my family isn’t going to be quick to say that after I tell them, though. Before I tell them, I’m researching what other options there are besides me sucking it up and sewing the dresses. I mean, I can say “Not doing it. Your problem to figure out now! SUCKAS!” But honestly, I’d rather not make my sister completely melt down over this. So I’m looking at cheap online options… which may not be feasible because she likes looking at things and touching things before making her decision. And what I think is suitable may not necessarily be what my sister thinks is suitable, especially given the way things are going lately. I’ve also sent some emails out to my crafting friends to see if anyone is willing to pick up the slack. No bites so far, but I only sent the email out last night.

And thanks for the suggestion, dangermom. I’ll run it by my sister and BIL-to-be and see how they feel about it. The issue of who’s paying for what has gotten kind of interesting (to me, anyway). My sister and I grew up very westernized, and my parents have let a lot of traditional things slide, but BIL-to-be and his family are a little more traditional Chinese. So his family insisted on paying for the whole shebang. So on one hand, there’s my sister who is very “It’s my wedding and I get to do it the way I want to do it” and on the other hand BIL-to-be’s parents saying “Well, traditionally, the bride doesn’t even get to participate! There’s the marrying ceremony and then the bride goes and wait in the chamber while the groom handles the celebratory dinner.” And then put in a foot from my parents, saying “It’s the 21st century! Get with the times! My daughter has every right to have a say.” That’s another mess of things all together, so I’m staying out of the financial negotiations!

It sort of dawned on me last night that it’s not so much about the wedding anymore. It’s more about who has the control and whoever “wins” the power from this will set the score for future “matches”. :smack:

95

Yeah, a lot of time negotiating wedding arrangements turns into exactly that. Especially when there are real or perceived parent/power issues. And super-especially when someone couches their suggestions in terms of what would make their parents happy rather than what would make them happy. It can breed a lot of discord on a lot of levels when that happens.

“It would be really meaningful if to me if we did x.”

“Oh, I thought we would do y; Mom would really like that.”

“Your mother already had a wedding.”

“Well, but Granny mostly took that over.”

“Tough titty. Your mother’s lack of spine is no reason for what she wants to trump what I want.”

“Yeah, but I would like y also.”

“Well, that would have been the argument to lead with, wouldn’t it? Dumbass.”

96

I think you’re right.

Is there some reason your sister can’t get bridesmaids dresses at a store, like most other people do?

97

Are you saying in a traditional marriage the bride gets married and waits in the bedroom until the groom gets done partying?

98

You are even nicer than I thought when I made the last post :slight_smile: Surely there must be someone (yellow pages, seamstress?) who would do it for pay? Usually bridesmaids pay for their own dresses, anyway, in my experience. Hey, new idea! Maybe if the bridesmaids have to pay an exorbitant amount for their dresses, they’ll back out of the whole gig and she can go back down to two!

(I also agree with Cat Whisperer – why can’t your sister and her bridesmaids just all go to David’s Bridal one day and pick out dresses in the appropriate color?)

YES. It is indeed all about power and control and not about the wedding. If it makes you feel any better, though, my parents and fiance and I had huge amounts of power struggles during the wedding planning, and double for my sister’s wedding (culminating in, I kid you not, an epic fight in which my mom utterly refused to go to my sister’s rehearsal luncheon), and they calmed down a lot once the weddings were over. There’s something about the wedding itself, I think, where people get these visions of how it ought to be, and when there’s more than one person with the vision it gets into this whole power trip.

99

We paid for our wedding ourselves, and it was worth it to not have any power struggles with anyone (it was a very small wedding, which was our preference anyway).

100

Jeezy Pete, that sounds like another “cousin” of mine (not blood relatives but very old family friends) She herself was NOT a bridezilla, but her father turned into a total FOB-zilla who kept telling her she HAD to have all these traditional Slovak wedding traditions that no one else in our family had even heard of.

She put up with some of it, but at did at one point utter the immortal line:

“Dad, you are NOT carrying a TREE to my WEDDING!”