Listen up people, I'm tired of your crap:Wedding Hell (long vent)

Some background information. My husband’s best friend is getting married. He wanted my husband to be the best man, and I got asked to be a Bride’s maid.

The bride is childish, petty, inconsiderate and EXTREMELY selfish/spoiled/spoon fed/sheltered by her whole family. She’s also socially inept, in that she can’t read social cues if they bit her on the ass.

She also doen’t seem to care about anyone other than herself, and must be the center of attention at all times. She’ll even lie so she can “be one too” and thus upstage a person. Example: Last night she claimed to have Cherokee heritage, because 3 people out of the 6 in the room claimed it. By the startled look her fiance gave her, I’d say she lied.

I put up with her because I’m her future husband’s friend and although I know he could do much better for a lifemate, I respect that he chose her. By all that’s sacred it’s a monumental task though. Take the fact that she’s asked her close friend, to be her maid of honor… My husband is willing to participate in the ceremony because it’s his friend’s big day.

Problem is, this is my husband’s ex-girlfriend. The one who would punch him in the face, kick him in the crotch, call him worthless, and constantly point out that he could be replaced in a heartbeat. She made HIM cook her meals when he was visiting her at her house, but never returned the favor when she visited his.

The same one who, immediately after SHE broke up with him, told the whole town that he threatened to harm her, and her mother. His whole family heard the breakup, it was loud. His younger brother, who is my husband’s INTENSE rival/cheif hater even said that he made no such threats.

This person seduced all of my husband’s friends she could, and rubbed it in his face. She also actively tried to break up all his friendships and generally ruin his life. I witnessed this, she was still doing it when we began dating, and her recent ex-boyfriend confirmed that she was slandering him, and doing her best to ruin the friendship. Grrrrrrr… (Yes, I do feel protective of him in this instance, and rightly so.) (They were both virgins, and we won’t even go into what she wanted him to do their first time. She was 14. She has no real concept of how relationships should be, I pity her for that.)

As recently as this December, she literally left McDonald’s and finished her meal out in the cold, rather than sit on the other side of the restaurant from us. She does this kind of thing with her other exes too. There are 2 others in our regular crowd.

Then she began to oh-so-subtly put out hints that she had been deeply hurt to the point of lasting trauma by my husband to me. Hinting that he was the one being petty and unwilling to let the past go. Playing the suffering one. Saying sadly “I wish I could still be friends with all my boyfriends” with a mournful sigh, while looking at him. Daring to slander him by her attitude of traumatized mourning to me. I don’t know what she was hoping to accomplish. Me lecturing my husband to “kiss and make up”? The breakup of our marriage? I don’t know, but I seethed, took a deep breath and called her on it.

I sternly confronted her with her past behaivior,(without cussing I’ll add) and bluntly asked her if she had a problem with my husband. She backpedaled, and denied she had any problem. (Though it was obvious she does, and is only participating for the bride’s sake.)

Now for the blast…

ARE YOU FUCKING BLIND?!!! WHAT THE FUCK are you thinking when you expect her to walk down the aisle with my husband? Do you REALLY expect that there won’t be negative vibes from her? Do you really think this will make them “kiss and make up”? WHY THE FUCK can’t you respect my husband, and just leave it that he no longer cares one way or the other about her? Why can’t you see that she is still playing the martyred victim, and doesn’t want to stop? Why is this such a hard thing to grasp?

Why can’t you at least have the Groom’s men and Bride’s maids process down the aisle side by side, and not arm in arm? Why can’t you let the married couple walk down the aisle arm in arm, and take the positions appropriate at the alter? (Maid of honor and secondary groomsman first, MOH takes position by Bride, SG a step away. Best Man, and Secondary Maid go down the aisle, SM takes postion by MOH, BM takes position by Groom.)

Don’t you get it, you pathetic whiny baby? If you want a peaceful wedding day, don’t try to force people to be together when one of them has said she couldn’t even stand the thought of giving the other a ride in her car to you just last week,with me as a witness! What is so hard about this concept for your poor, disjointed, weak mind to grasp?

While we’re at it… Just because you are pregnant, and it’s your first time, and you are only 17/almost 18, it doesn’t give you the right to wake your fiance up at all hours of the night “Because you’re lonely, and want to talk.” By the Goddess, that’s ignorant. You know he has to wake up at 4 am to go to work, you know you kept him up until 10pm to be with you. LET THE POOR MAN SLEEP,YOU’RE GONNA KILL HIM!!!

Note: She is very stubborn, and won’t listen to anyone. She lost the services of the first minister yesterday because she refused to say the “Obey” vow. (No problem with this, I see her point. She could have done as her fiance’s mom did though, and said “Love and Honor.” and no more. She could have also turned the word “Obey” into a code word as my husband and I did. It was understood that “Obey” meant Heed/give equal weight to his thoughts and feelings, and that although he did not say it out loud, he vowed it too.) They are pagan, and the minister was christian.

My husband and I asked a big favor of a friend of ours who happens to be an ordained minister, in both the pagan and christian religions. He will perform the kind of ceremony they want. (Disguised pagan, so the christian relations won’t be offended.) She even wanted to go ask him on her own. She had never met him. She did not understand that this was the wrong approach, all she cared about was that he should “pass her inspection.” Never mind that he was our friend, and if he did the favor it would be on our behalf.

Talking to her about your veiwpoint does no good. Our hope is that somehow her fiance can wheedle her into a compromise, or that the minister can convince her a different approach would prevent bad vibes. Fingers crossed…

[Insert your similar/commiserating rants here]

Jesus Christ.

That’s fucked up. I’m very sorry, and I hope (though it might be asking too much) that this…thing can put aside whatever the hell her problem is for one day for everyone else’s sake. Your husband is a brave, good man for putting up with all of this and still being willing to go through with the wedding.

It probably isn’t saying much about today’s young ladies that 90% of my friends of roughly the same age as this girl (17-20) do the same thing constantly.

Holy cow this is some fucked-up shit.

This girl is not even 18, pregnant, has never had a healthy relationship with a man (or anyone for that matter) and can’t be honest with her family (“disguised pagan”?). There is no way she will be able to pull off being a wife and a mother without making everyone’s life hell. I can’t see a person like this being responsible about anything, not even a budgie, without six or seven bitch-slapping wake-up calls from life. The worst part is what the innocent kid is going to live through.

Hold your breath, grit your teeth, and figure out the very least amount of time you have to stay at the reception to satisfy politeness. Then go home, relax, and take a nice hot shower.

I do have one small comment, though. I really don’t think that the bride wanting to talk to the minister who will be performing her wedding, before she decides to use his services, is out of line. In similar circumstances, I think I’d want to check him out first.

** thirdwarning **, the point is, she wanted to be told where he lived, to go ask him out of the blue to do the wedding for her because she knew us. Not that she wanted to meet him, of course she wanted to meet him. Just for her to meet him to first, and invoke our name for her gain when she doesn’t know him? He is not a full time minister, and had never met her before last night. It was a BIG favor to ask him to do the ceremony at the very last minute like that, and one that he is doing because WE asked him to, not her. It’s very bad etiquette on her part to expect that he would do this thing because she’s invoking our name, without him hearing from us (the friends first). She doesn’t even understand how to go about that correctly.

We will have to end up staying for the whole length of the reception, and likely the groom’s family will mistake the ex-girlfriend for my husband’s spouse at first. Etiquette/tradition/job description requires the Best man and Bride’s maids to stay until the reception is over to help with the cleanup afterwards.

Um, make that last statement read, Groom’s men and Bride’s maids are expected to stay and help clean up after the reception,not just the Best man and Bride’s maids. And please forgive all the typos above, I took some decongestant and am sleepy.

Wow. How messed up!

I want to address one point–Nobody will think that your husband and Exbitch are a couple. It is SOP for people to walk down the aisle arranged in the order of the wedding, not in the order of their personal relationships. Nobody will think anything of it.

Of course, a proper MOH and Best Man cooperate with each other to make things as easy as possible for the bride and groom. That’s their job. It sounds as if such cooperation isn’t too likely. That stinks. Too bad the bride is a bonehead.

If your husband just does the best he can to be a good best man and doesn’t allow Exbitch to draw him into a “situation,” he will come out smelling like a wedding bouquet. You, as his wife, should try to assist him, and don’t let yourself be drawn in either. You can vent here all you want. :slight_smile:

But I just have to know–what did Exbitch want done to her when she was 14?

Let’s say they were…very kinky, twisted things involvoing entire hands, that you probably would not want to have done to you at any time. (She thought sex was like the pornos, and believed she should want those kind of things, with a one-upmanship twist thrown in.)

I ended up asking him what his previous relationship had been like on more than one occaision, because of habits he had when we were making love. He was doing some things that made my eyebrows raise, and doing them as old hat. (She was his first, then came me.)

He would also cringe, and debase himself if I were in a bad mood and just feeling grouchy at the world. He’d do something mildly annoying, and I’d grump at him, and he’d prostrate himself.

I’m telling you these things so you understand he’s been a gentleman, he did not tell me these things as a finger pointing thing, they came out as events unfolded so to speak.

Gah. My sympathies to all involved, even your friend. I mean, shit, she doesn’t even sound old enough or mature enough to manage a Barbie’s Dream House, let alone a husband and child.

JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!

As much as I sympathize with the problems your husband has had with this…person, I have to disagree with you on the whole processional thing. It’s traditional for the MOH and the BM to process together, followed by the secondary attendants and so on. Frustrating as it is, your preferences have no place in their wedding.

On the bright side, though, he has to walk next to her for about forty-five seconds, and that’s all the contact either of you really has to have with her. If you’re both civil to her (no more, no less) and she starts with her old tricks, she’ll be the one looking like an asshat, not you.

You and your husband are extremely classy to participate in/attend the wedding. She sounds like an attention-seeking bitch to the max, and those people push my buttons like no other.

As for what to do, my old favorite is to wait until the minister asks “If anyone here objects to this marriage, speak now” and then burst into laughter. When everyone looks at you, go “What? Like you didn’t want to laugh, too.”

:wink:

No, no, no. You have an uncontrollable fit of coughing, then look terribly embarrassed and apologetic. You still get your point across, but no one can actually take offense. I mean, you can’t help having to cough, can you?

C’mon, Zabali, let’s see your embarrassed and apologetic face.

I wonder though, how old you and your husband are.

This whole thing reeks of high school. Especially the part where " I don’t want to tell you what she wanted but it involves a hand". I mean really, what does it have to do with the issue at hand? I realize that you are understandably upset and need to vent, but by tossing in as many catty remarks as you can, makes me wonder how much is an exageration and how much isn’t.

I’m not saying that she’s not pyscho- she sure sounds like it. I’m just saying that it sounds like gas might have been added to the flames by your side, is all.

my advice is simple.

move as far away as you can from these people as soon as you can.

People like this will always find a way to make your life toxic.

Regarding the wedding. It does sound bad, but comfort yourself with the thought that it will all be over in a day.

And, not that it matters, but am I reading that right? Your husband’s brother is his INTENSE rival?

You’re right, Bad News Baboon I’m being more catty here than I would in RL, getting it out so it doesn’t fester. It’s just another example of how the Bride has somehow attached puppet strings to the Groom’s friends. We have to march to her tune, because we love him and he lets her dictate every aspect of “their” life. I wish I could do something like that, ** CrazyCatLady **, QueerGeekGirl some days at least. I won’t though, because I love and respect the Groom. He chose her, and he’s like a little brother to me.

I’m venting all the negative crap into the pit so I can smile and move gracefully at the wedding. Almost all that you are seeing is the negative side in fact. I’m going to vent more here today in this post. It’s about all I can do.

I’m not suprised that people would wonder if I was exaggerating. I wish I was. For whatever reason, sometimes people think I must be exaggerating when I tell the literal truth. Maybe because I give small detail, which makes it seem improbable. I notice small things, and forget others don’t.

I am 11 years older than my husband, he’s almost 20. We’ve been married a year. (He’s known me/wanted to date me since he was 17, he went for it at 18. He and the MOH had been over for a year when we first met. We met through the Groom to be. He’d come along with his best friend’s crowd, which I became a part of at times.)

I have been told alternately that I am a very mature person who has her stuff together, and that I can’t be older than 20. I have been carded in the liquor store because the clerk thought I looked 18. I also remember the importance of play. I can be quiet and graceful when the situation calls for. I am, however well known for my wicked sense of humor.

I have several friends in this town are in their 20’s, but just as many over 30. (My friends in my hometown are my age.) I’m youthful, but not socially inept. I can’t say I’m the emotional age I would have been had I not been involved in 2 abusive relationships myself. One of them lasted 9 years. I have “issues” but I’m still mature in most ways. Yes, I go to counseling.

My husband is the oldest of 3 brothers. The middle one has hated my husband all his life. Hated him, but idolized and tried to emulate him. Love/hate thing. He’s done things like stab Mr. Clawbane’s new water bed mattress at about 5 years of age. He was insanely jealous because the old one sprung a leak and HAD to be replaced. He’s stolen $100 from their dad, and got caught with the money trying to sneak into Mr. Clawbane’s room to frame him. (FIL told me about it.) He was still stealing everything he could from Mr. Clawbane, until we put a deadbolt lock on his, now our door. He does still slander him every chance he gets. People have come to him and told him about it.

We cannot move, yet. When we do, we will still be exposed to the bride though. She’s going to be the wife of me and my husband’s brother/friend.

The reason the ex pisses me off, is that she had the nerve to try to slander my husband to my face. She took the subtle approach with me, what’s she doing with others? I brought up “the hand” issue to show just how deeply warped a personality the MOH has.

I could care not care less if she walks arm in arm with my husband, PROVIDING the ex does not get a kinky thrill out of the “anguish” of having to let him touch her again. She’s playing the martyr to the hilt, and getting a perverse thrill out of the “pain”. She’s using him to do this, again.

This chaps my ass because it’s so close to what she did when they were dating. Also because, dammit he got away from her, why can’t the bride see what her MOH is doing, and that it will harm the BM? Why can’t she try to at least lessen this? She considers Mr. Clawbane her “big bubby” after all.

It also pisses me off because the Bride has done this kind of thing before. She has literally corrected me, and told me my opinion and assessment of a BAD situation must be wrong, because SHE liked this person, so I’m wrong. It’s much too horrible a thing, it can’t be the truth. The person in question strangeled a puppy half to death in front of me because it chewed through a mouse cord. He’d left the mouse on the coffee table where the pup could get it with ease. This was the first time I’d met him. Thing is, my husband was there too, and confirmed what I told her. She still blew it off.

In my mind, anyone comfortable enough with violence to do something like that in front of someone they had just met…is BAD news. My husband and I aren’t friends with him. I tried to warn the bride about him because she and her MOH were hanging out with him. He’s been in jail since. He also dated the MOH, and was abusive.

The bride actually did come to me, and admit she was wrong, and that she should have never encouraged the two to date. This is has given me a grain of hope. She actually showed a moment of growth. Maybe, she will continue this trend. It will take years though. I hope with all my heart the Groom has the strength to hold out until then.

An addition for those of you who wonder. No, I did not have any clue my husband had fallen for me, nor did I try to “catch his eye”. He waited until he turned 18, then began to court me in increasing incriments. I found myself falling for him, and we then had some very soul searching talks. He knows fully what he “got himself into”. Just as I am fully aware of things.

Puppy strangling? Assault of an innocent waterbed? A 30 year old woman with a teenage husband?

This is quite a story!

If you don’t mind my asking a question: What kind of reactions did you and your husband get when your friends and family found out you were engaged?

The reason the rivalry between brothers was brought up, is because Bad News Baboon asked about it. I had mentioned that the MOH had lied and accused my spouse of making threats against her and her mom when she broke up with him. Even his brother, who hates him spoke up and said she was lying.

The friends supported us dating, but didn’t know about the engagement. We kept it secret because we wanted a private ceremony, so we eloped. We will hold a formal ceremony to renew our vows. Really it’s an excuse to throw a party for our family and friends. His family likes me, and supports the marriage. Even his middle brother, in his own perverse way. My family loves him, and supports the marriage. At first the bride to be was against our marriage, because of the age difference, but now she has admitted it’s a good thing.

He really wants to be best man for his friend, but it really sucks the cost he has to pay to do it. She was his abuser, and yet she’s acting as though he hurt her so badly she’ll never recover. It bothers him that she’s using him to get a perverse thrill. He’s going to stand by his friend anyway. It bothers me, because my husband will be pained. He’s been hurt by her enough, I had hoped that maybe the bride would relent and go with her fiance’s idea. He wanted to have 2 best men, and 2 maids of honor, so the problem would not come up. She’s willfully oblivious to everyone else 99.9 percent of the time. She either refuses to see/pretends it isn’t so, or is so stuck on herself she really doesn’t see. Either way, she does things as though her fantasies were true.

They are a non-traditional couple anyway, the wedding ceremony is going to be a cross between Native American paganism, Celtic paganism, and Christianity. (It’s an outdoor wedding.) At some point they will have a Celtic handfasting done out of veiw of the couple’s extended family too. They have no problem with Native American prayers along with Chrisitan ones, but will not tolerate a handfasting. Go figure. They are writing their own vows too.

The point is, the 2 best men, 2 maids of honor thing would work beautifully, but she won’t do it. Thus the OP.

I asked mainly because I wasn’t sure it was a typo.

I know you stated that moving is not possible right now, But I highly recommend you move when you can. You may still have contact, but it won’t be on a daily basis.

I don’t know know anything about you personally, so I speak generally. Caustic behavior as this may take a serious toll on your marriage.

I hope all works out well.

/Self-hijack

Nod I hope so too. We don’t have the money to move right now. I’m on disability, and he’s going to school. He’ll eventually go to trade school and get fully certified as a welder. He wants to improve his mind, then get a career. We’re both starting out in the world. It’s just my second start, his first.

I finally got sick and tired of my apartment manager who gave me crap because my spouse is 11 years younger than me. It’s Gov’t subsidised. I tried to report her to her superiors, didn’t work. She also didn’t like the fact that I’m pagan, and made more than one “Well, I don’t do that because good Christians don’t do that” comment about my computer game hobby. I ended up moving into his parent’s house. I pay them the same rent I paid there.

Self-hijack/