*SIGH* . . . Mothers.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

No, I don’t mean like Shaft (who is a Baaaad Mutha-shut-cho-mouth), I mean those glorious women who spew us forth from their loins (or ones who go to adoption agencies and swear that they’re sane enough to take one (or more) of us away with them, or recruit other women to give birth to us, then snatch us and squirrel us home–the possibilities are endless) . . .

. . . just so that they can spend the rest of their lives torturing us.

So as many of you know, SkipMagic and I ran off to Vegas and got hitched about two and a half weeks ago.

Lovely time.

And, I think, a marryin’ method via which Skip thought we’d avoid of of the whirly-twirly ribbon-ensconced social obligations that often come with a wedding.

Heh. He didn’t know my mother.

We had discussed having a party at some point after the actual affair to celebrate our marriage, but the reality is that it may never happen, because at this point there are more important things to worry about, such as the fact that I’ve got a job to land (in his locale), movin’ to do, and a house to sell. So we may not end up having a reception at all (which, really, is OK with both of us), especially since we may never have the money to do it up the way I want–lots of really good food, pleny of booze, and scads of Stevie Wonder. But I digress.

Point is, my mom is getting antsy because she has all of these friends/relatives who are asking where we’re registered, and how to spell Skip’s last name so that they can send us checks. So since she’s unable to give them any information about when and IF there’s going to be a reception, she wants to have a small shower of her own, just for “her folks” (although I do have permission to invite a couple of MY friends, which is nice, because everybody else there is going to be over the age of 70).

Not a problem, right, I mean how could a small party in our honor be a bad thing?

Well, correction: a small party in MY honor, because now that Skip is all ready to mix and mingle (especially now that he knows there’s shrimp on the menu), she has decided that he shouldn’t come, because that way she won’t have to invite anybody’s husband. If Skip comes, she says, then she has to invite husbands, which will ultimately mean fewer gifts, because we can only accommodate so many people, and couples will of course go in together on gifts.

(Oh, yes. She said it.)

Oh, but it gets better: I get to cater the damn thing.

Yeah, I know, I should be happy about this (creative control of the food and all), but for some reason, it’s not as much fun when I’M not the one who gets to decide that I’m making the food. Besides, for a party celebrating MY marriage, I always figured I’d just decide what I wanted and HIRE a caterer, NOT do the cooking myself!!!

But oh well, I thought, it’ll only be about 20 people or so, and I do enjoy cooking, so mainly this is a Pissed Off On Principle situation. So OK, so what if I’m now catering a party in my honor that wasn’t even my idea, for people who aren’t even my friends? I’ll just make sure there’s plenty of champagne, and I’ll be fine.

But the hits keep coming!

Not only am I in charge of making food for this affair, I am now also in charge of MAKING THE INVITATIONS, because my mother wants something cute and creative (“You’re good at that, I’m not”) but also cheap.

Plus we’re already arguing about the menu: I want finger food, she wants a sit-down dinner.

Preferably chicken of some sort.

She has suggested having both and looking into a caterer to make the FOOD food (the finger food will still be my job) . . .

. . . but guess whose job THAT would be?

I am never getting married again. :stuck_out_tongue:

2

Of the subject here, but I’m new to these boards, and I have noticed a trend of SDMBer’s hooking up in real life. Is this a common thing, and how exactly does it happen?

Not to ignore your problem, but mothers are like that. Thank god I’m male, because I really didn’t care about our wedding. It went like this:

  1. My wife wanted to include me in the wedding plans, until…
  2. She finds out that all of my ideas are stupid.
  3. She gets pissed off that I don’t like her ideas as much as my own.
  4. Her mother takes over within the power vacuum, with the checkbook.
  5. Next thing I know, I’m married.

Mothers do that. Right now, my mother is going bonkers over my sister-in-law’s baby. I mean BONKERS! She has lost her mind.

As for your situation, offer to pay for the damn caterer yourself. Include chicken for you mother. Get cheap invitations (Kinko’s), and make sure half of them are your and your husband’s guests. And, yes, your husband will be attending.

3

I’d offer you some constructive advice but I ended up stepping back and letting mum take over our wedding. Think I had a more relaxing day in the end because I wasn’t sweating the details, just wanted to get hitched, eat some food and get laid :slight_smile:

4

I assume you mean Stevies Wonder, meaning many Stevie impersonators. Otherwise scads of Stevie Wonder suggests you intend to chop up the Stevie and have scads of little Stevie Parts scattered about.

Either way, though, is probably preferable to the scat of Stevie Wonder. I hear it’s rather tough to get those stains out of fabric.

5

Oh, just be gratefull you don’t have kids yet. Then it will get MUCH worse.

Besides, you not only have your own mother to contend with now, how will Skip’s mother feel if her and her friends/family didn’t get to attend/contribute?

6

I eloped, and we didn’t have a party till our 6th anniversary when we did a reaffirmation of vows for the family in church. My friends and I tossed some food together and we held the party at my in-laws’ house. It was small and fun and the last time we made a to-do about an anniversary. And my mother was just a guest, so that helped. :slight_smile:

7

eek. Is all. I can say. I can hear Skip now:
“For the love of freakin’ god, isn’t this why we ran away?”
This is your time. Don’t let mom run all over you. I know, I know, you’re staying with her. But still…

8

Huh? Maureen, if by staying you mean living with my mother, I’m not. I have my own house (thank God), although Skip and I have discussed the possibility of putting it on the market now, instead of waiting until I find a job in Skip’s area, in which case I would be staying with her.

Which, right now, would be my nightmare. :wink:

As for Skip’s mother, miamouse, she actually wanted to throw us a reception but (for reasons I won’t bother listing here, though they’re not of an extremely sensitive nature, or anything) we said “Thanks, but no thanks.”

In the event that we rescind our “No thanks” and end up letting her give us the reception (like, if she gets really pushy about it), my mother has already decided that she alone will attend, but that my other (extended) family members and family friends will not be on the list of invites. In fact, she’s made it clear that she’d be happy as a clam to stay at home herself in such an event, so I guess she figures that makes it OK to exclude Skip’s family from this party (which, technically, is not a reception anyway–it’s a shower, though I don’t know what difference that makes).

Homebrew, I was actually thinking more in terms of scattering a smattering of Stevie’s scat.

Oh, wait, he did that himself with all that bullshit he was writing and singing in the 80s. :stuck_out_tongue:

And Chicago Faucet, I’m not really sure how it happens . . . One day, you’re at your GYN saying no, I’m not sexually active right now, but sure, I’ll go on the pill just in case, if you think I should . . .

. . . two weeks later, some freak from the SDMB starts emailing you, and less than a year after that, you’re hitched.

That’s all I can say.

9

Ah, I see. For some reason, I thought you were staying with mom til your house sold. But since you are not, “Dammit, this is about ME for once!” would probably be my selfish, undiplomatic response.

10

If your mom wants a sit-down chicken dinner, she needs to get some KFC (or as my hubby calls it, Kentucky F’ing Chicken) and just be happy with it. This is supposed to be for you! But it looks like Mom has other ideas. :stuck_out_tongue:

And since you’re being all POOPy (pissed off on purpose), then you need to bring Skip, dammit. You two are now officially attached-at-the-hip. He’s there if you want him there.

And just how “cute” does she want the invitations? Ya know, you can really have a field day with those!

11

Auntie Em, please allow me to offer you and Skip my best wishes. Do we have to call him Uncle Skip now?

I get the general idea from the OP that you don’t really like what is happening and Skip doesn’t either. Now is a good time to take control and decide for yourselves what you want. You can still register somewhere without having to spend mega bucks for a celebration party. What do you want?

Who can relieve you of your self-imposed sense of obligation?

12

If SHE wants to throw the party, let HER throw it. Don’t cook or anything. You are the guest of honor, right? It was all HER idea, right? Let her do the legwork! I don’t mean to be rude about it, but I gather this was her idea in the first place, so why is she putting you to work?

And if she does want to put you in charge of the food at the party that was her idea that she wants to throw in your honor, then hire a caterer.

If you can phrase all of this diplomatically, maybe she’ll back off a bit?

13

My mom did all the stuff for our wedding. We were in Denver at the time… HIS parents committed him to rehab ostensibly because of his head injury but really to split us up. ( Didnt work…the rehab and insurance company had me come over to “learn how to adapt to his changing circumstances”)

I showed up said “I do” and handed the liscense to his Mom…

ummm this didnt mean to be a hijack…but whiterabbit said everything better than I could…

14

Oh, trust me, darlin’, every woman has some wedding issue that she and her mother pick at pretty much constantly. With me and Mom, it was the damn bridesmaids. “But,” you say, “you didn’t have any bridesmaids.” Exactly. That was the issue. She felt very strongly that I needed to at least have my female close friends hold a rose or something, and I felt that the brideslave issue was a can of worms I very much didn’t want to open. This discussion went on at intervals from the time I told them we were engaged, until the day of the wedding.

Oh, wait, there’s one exception to the above rule. My friend Allison went through this with her dad instead of her mom, over playing the music from Titanic before the ceremony and during the reception.

All you can really do is find the kindest, gentlest, most loving way to tell them to sit the hell down and shut the fuck up. Yeah, I know, easier said than done. Oh, and in this case I’d point out that Unkie Skip is a part of your family now, and that means that she’s going to have to at least be sociable with his family about this whole thing once in a while.

Oh, and there’s another side to whole Dopers hooking up thing. One day you ask your boyfriend, “Why are you still on the frigging computer? What could possibly be so interesting?” Then you notice a thread titled “Auntie Em’s Big Vagina”…and you’re a Doper.

15

And, don’t forget, she wants you to make the invitations. Sorry, but when is the last time you heard the honoree of a party doing the cooking and all for her own party?

Auntie Your mom is having you have the party for you. That isn’t right. Of course, it could be worse, she could hate you and your wonderful brand new husband and make your life a living hell, but she’s chosen this path, to drive you nuts.

Moms, feh.
[intangent]

Your mom is clearly excited for you and wants to share her wonderful news with everyone, but your mom is not exactly prepared, so, in a way, she is trying to punish you for eloping instead of a Nice Big Fat Frilly Wedding. It is purely on the subconscious level of punishment, but she wants you to pay for robbing her of the chance to really run runshod over your Big Fat Frilly Wedding. Naturally, these generalizations could not apply to you at all, but my pyschic powers know these things.

[/intangent]

Tell her that you have things that are more important right now and that you will talk again about this party in six months or after Christmas. ( Or, better yet, say that the party will be between Xmas and New Year’s.) and you will be better prepared by then. (Ahem, and probably get good gifts or more mula too since it is the Frenzy time of year.)
BTW, I must have missed the original memo, but **Congrats to you both! May you remember the good times and learn from the hard times! **

16

Zoe, good point about all of this being self-imposed. I can’t argue with that. I think all I really want, though, is just a glimmer of pretense that this is about me in some way. Sure, I (and Skip) will be raking in the loot from this shindig, but that still doesn’t make it about me. Basically my mother feels like she’s shelled out enough money on gifts for the graduations, marriages, new babies, etc. of her friends’ kids, and this is her chance for a little reciprocation! (I must say, however, that I did rake it in for my HS and college graduations, and my sister cleaned up royally when she got married and had kids, if for no other reason than the fact that she didn’t have to throw her own parties!).

And truthfully, hell, I love presents (both giving and getting), so I’m happy to help her in this endeavor . . . just a little bit of deference to me (and Skip) would be nice.

Also, if I may toot my own little horn just a bit, here, I get why she wants me to throw this party: I’m good at it, if for no other reason than the fact that I get really into it. I’m like Martha Stewart, only Black and without the money (or the insider trading scandal)). I do like to plan and prepare a really groovy menu, and make cute little invitations, and find clever little party favors. The wedding shower and baby shower that I planned and threw for my sister were such big hits among my mother’s crowd (yeah, the parties were my idea, but the guest list is always my mother’s baby) that my mom started recruiting me to cater her bridge club meetings. Plus I think she figures that her ideas about Good Party Grub would disappoint me, because I am a true believer that the food is one of the most important things about the party (and booze doesn’t hurt, either ;))

So I get it.

But can she at least pretend to ask me if I’d be willing to do this? Can she at least pretend to ask if we want any of this? Or, at the very least, can she stop holding it over my head that she’s spending more money on me than she did on my sister (since we eloped, she simply gave us the same amount of money she spent on my sister’s wedding–we spent some of it on the Vegas trip, and used the rest to pay off some bills (which for some reason ticked her off)–and now she’s spending even more on this party) as if I asked for this?

That, Zoe, is what I want.

That, and for Skip to come, if he wants to. I know he’s certainly willing, and that he’ll go anywhere for shrimp, but really all that matters to me is that he’s happy, so if he wants to use my mother’s freakazoidal guest list rules (mind you, my mother has a friend coming from Denver (we’re in Northeast Kansas) for this thing, but Skip somehow doesn’t make the list?) as an outclause, I’m fine with that. If he really wants to come, however, dammit, he comes.

But I guess I should be talking to him about that.

Anyway Shirley, thanks so much for the good wishes. I’m not surprised you missed the announcement, what with all that’s been going on with you lately!

Oh, and um . . . CrazyCatLady, far be it from me to make judgments on your marriage, but what are you doing with a boyfriend??? :wink:

17

First off, congratulations from one Doper bride to another. :slight_smile: [sub]Chicago Faucet, some of us skipped the trip to the GYN before we met our Doper. See sig for details.[/sig]

Second, if your mother wants the damn party so much, let her throw it. I mean it. Let her know that the only way she’s going to have one is if she does it. Otherwise, you’re going to do it, invite who you want, serve the food that you want, and that’s final. So that problem is solved.

Now, if I can make a suggestion. Go to Target or a department store, whatever, and set up at least a token registry. At Target, you’re not limited to housewares or anything like that, so feel free to pick stuff that you want. Since you and Skip probably have housefuls of stuff already, feel free to request gift cards.

Another suggestion is to get lists of addresses from your family and from Skip’s, and send out wedding announcements. List the address you want gifts and checks sent to, include Skip’s last name, and that problem is solved as well.

And there you go.

Robin

18

Thanks, MsRobyn. I actually plan to get announcements made and sent out (but jeez, how time flies–I’ve been hitched almost 3 weeks!), and we’re registering this weekend. I love (LOVE, do you hear me?) Target, so that may be one of our options!

We may also be stopping by to visit a caterer I know. :slight_smile:

19

Whatever you do, auntie em, do NOT let your mother disinvite Skip from the party. Too bad if she thinks she’ll have to have all the hubbies there in that case. If it’s either both of you or none of you, and she really, REALLY wants to have this party, she’ll have to cave.

Basically, I agree totally with what whiterabbit said – except with one addition: Send your mom the caterer’s bill. It’s HER party, not yours! Make it clear that you and Skip will show up, smile, open presents, and have a fun time, and that is ALL you will do. Too bad if you’re the better party planner! The guest of honor does NOT act as caterer/coordinator for her own party!

20

I can’t believe she’s disinviting Skip. This isn’t a damned bridal shower, it’s a reception in honor of your wedding.

I’m sorry, but unless the party is traditionally gender-limited for some reason or there’s some pressing reason that only half of a couple would be invited, she has to invite spouses/fiances too.

Your mom is being amazingly tacky. Jaw-droppingly so. She is manipulating you into spending money on “your” party and in handling the invites and so on, disinviting your husband from a party honoring your marriage, using that as an excuse to skimp on who she invites, and so on. Register, give her the information about where you registered, and refuse to participate further. If she dangles the amount of money she gave you over your head, just thank her for the gift and ignore the implications - it’s not like you forced her to shell out more on you than on your sister, did you?