Oh, and just for a little perspective, my wife has never been wrong in her entire life, so anything different than what she thinks is, by definition, wrong. How do you reason with someone like that? Any real suggestions would be most appreciated.
Mr. Neville and I rode to and from our wedding in ordinary cars, though we didn’t drive ourselves.
I still think that if it’s not her money, she really has no right to try to control whether your daughter gets a limo or not. Why is this so important to her?
If she would really throw a hissy fit because someone else is being nice to her daughter, which I would classify paying for the car she wants for the wedding as, then there is nothing you can do.
You can either,
- Ignore her about this
- Tell her to mind her own business and let her daughter be happy on her wedding day.
- Hi Opal!
Me, I’d go with #2.
Unfortunately, I have no advise for you, but you do have my sympathies.
I was married this past May and the amount of insanity involved with wedding is breath-taking.
My mother is a lot like your wife. I was scared of her, but I ended up ignoring her and doing what my fiance and I wanted to do. (We were paying for the wedding. Your daughter is very lucky to have generous parents. 
)
Meh. Sorry, but I kinda lost sight of the problem when I heard that the budget was $25,000.
Put bluntly, I can think of MANY other uses that $25,000 could be put towards. Maybe if you reminded the players in this little drama of this fact, they’d regain THEIR perspective.
–sofaspud
I just got married in about as low-key of a wedding that you can have when it’s a church wedding and formal dinner dance (big money was on feeding people well, with small money on everything else). I didn’t want a limo, and my dad insisted on a Town Car that he would drive. It turned out to be very good that we used one, since a gown with a train is hard to manage and the bigger doors were a huge help.
Does your daughter’s gown have a train? If you explain the above to your wife it might help. Nobody wants to see the white gown get grease on it from hinges before the ceremony. Also, I thought it was nice for my dad to drive me to the church.
My sympathies to you. My mother-in-law was like that. She ruined my wife’s wedding (she didn’t ruin mine: I found the wrestling match over the microphone at the top table amusing). They haven’t spoken since, and that was four years ago.
My wife wanted a stretch Lincoln Continental, and fair play to her, that’s what she got. We paid for our own ceremony, and it was close to the same budget as your daughter’s.
In my opinion, you should go for the limo. The trick is to stop your wife making a scene if it turns up. Is there a third party you could appeal to to keep her from throwing a fit, whom she might respect a bit more? We “commissioned” my mother-in-law’s cousin to be her “minder” during the ceremony. He did a good job for the most part (despite losing control at a crucial point).
I wonder if you sould tell your wife up front that the car is a wedding gift from the in-laws, specifically because it is an extravagance and therefore not something your daughter would normally be able to afford. This deals with the situation in 2 ways - advance notice that the car will be there, so she gets less upset about it on the day, and also a nod to the fact that she thinks it’s too much to spend.
Alternatively, you’ve given your daughter $25K to spend, it’s up to her how to spend this. If she goes with a $250 car, she needs to cut $250 from somewhere else. This way she’s working within a budget, which may placate her mother as she will be clearly aware of the cost of this part of the wedding.
Out of interest, what is your wife’s suggestion about transportation on the day? How did you guys get to the church on time for your wedding?
Your wife is just being stupid. A limo is normal at weddings, especially relatively lavish ones like your daughter is having. I suppose if it’s one of those weddings where the bride gets dressed at the church, it’s not needed. Otherwise, if you’re having a big wedding, the big arrival is part of it, and that calls for a limo.
I had a stretch for the bridesmaids and an antique car for me. That was fairly superfluous.
Ditto.
It is far too late to really do anything about this. The wedding is this weekend, and the fighting isn’t really about the car. It’s about the year or more of bullshit arguing and surpressed emotions that have led up to this week. If it wasn’t the car, they’d be fighting at the last minute about something else equally inane – like hair, or the exact shade of lipstick, or the wrong fucking lightbulbs used at the reception.
There is literally nothing you can do about this, and that’s what you should do: nothing. When your wife bitches to you about this, shut your mouth and hum mindlessly to yourself. Do the same if your daughter brings it up. Or your in-laws.
If you can’t bring yourself to hum mindlessly, then I hereby assign you the task I assigned to my brother during all my wedding planning meetings8. The task is simple. It consists of saying, yelling if needby, the following phrase: “It’s just a party. It’s just a fucking party.”
[sub]* My bride and I ran our wedding planning meetings as a business: written agendas, assigned tasks, clear responsibilities, and if someone brought up point F while we were discussing point B, they had their knuckles rapped. Wedding planning isn’t for amateurs, folks. [/sub]
That should be an asterisk, not an 8. D’oh!
Oh yeah – my wife and I flagged down a cab to get to our wedding. Wearing our formal finery 
It’s more than a trifle depressing how often wedding planning involves strife.
You’d think that license to spend absurd amounts of money on a party for yourself and friends would almost guarantee a good time. But serious friction (especially between bride & mother) seems almost routine.
Have you tried asking your wife why she is so adamant against a limo, especially if she’s not paying for it? Does she want the bride to arrive in a horse - drawn carriage? A Sherman Tank? On foot?
And have you reminded her that she has already had her wedding, that this one is your daughters and she gets to decide what she wants?
Stories like this make me so glad we eloped.
Offer to rent a rigshaw and tell your wife to pull the couple around. Ok, so maybe it’s not safe to do that.
This sounds like a snit fit, with some unspoken underlying cause coming into play. Maybe you can ask your wife what’s really bothering her, when the daughter is not around.
I’m going to bet on it being that it sounded like a demand at the time and unfortunate timing when the subject was brouched. Things were said by both and they’re both to proud to admit this is childish and apoligize.
Just ignore them. When the actual wedding begins, everyone will be so happy and be having so much fun that all of that petty bullshit will be forgotton.
Wait, I thought limos were a really traditional, normal thing to have for a wedding? Like from $2500 to $25,000 weddings you need:
Rings
Wedding gown
Tuxedo
Cake
Flowers
Limo
Unless you are having the wedding and reception at the same place…how does the bridal party get whisked away for pictures and distributed 45 minutes later at the reception hall? On a city bus?
Have you told your wife that your daughter cries when this subject is brought up? If you haven’t you should. If she does know have you asked her if the car and $250 is really worth the additional stress this is putting on your daughter and herself? A wedding is supposed to be a happy time and stressing out over $250 on a 25,000 wedding seems like an odd thing to freak over. You might also ask her if there is another reason she is set against a limo or town car.
Slee
Lie.
Have the Limo company issue you two invoices. One for $100, the other for $150. Show your wife the $100 one and say you got a deal.
-Tcat