Sad.
Shayna is harsh but accurate.
How many more events is she going to threaten to ruin unless she gets her way?
I’m assuming you’re responding to my post above, and will ask what part of the bolded text, “that someone else is willing to pay for” escaped your awareness.
His daughter’s future in-laws have offered to pay for the Towne car.
The selfish mother is still pitching a hissy fit.
And the father would rather his daughter miss out on an aspect of her wedding that she has told him is really important to her, than to stand up to his selfish wife and tell her to shut the fuck up because it’s none of her damn business what other people do with their money.
I think they both ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Note that I didn’t advocate that, just warned not to be surprised if they find themselves marginalized now that their daughter is starting her own new family, not because of how much money they have spent or not spent, but because one of them is still trying to control the daughter even as she embarks on building her own future independent of her parents and the other makes no effort to step in and do the right thing. If the mother continues this type of behavior and the father continues to let her run roughshod over the daughter, their relationship will undoubtedly suffer for it in the long run. Mark my words. This is symptomatic of a much larger problem than a stupid $250 Towne car.
Your wife and her mom haven’t spoken for four years!? You lucky SOB!
Seriously, dauerbach, no one’s advice is going to help you any. The planning of a wedding is no place for a male. I’m glad your wife and daughter worked something out (not really, but sort of, it sounds like) but your best bet is to stay as far away from this as possible, show up for the rehearsal and the wedding and do as you’re told. Both of my sons were married recently; one in a simple mountainside ceremony that involved wildflowers and blue jeans, the other in an elaborate production at the local country club. In both cases, I was the least important person in attendance, and the second-least-important was the bride’s father. And in both cases, they and I shared bottles of fine Scotch to get us through the ordeal.
Being the father of the bride is like passing a kidney stone – drink plenty of fluids, take pain killers and let nature take its course.
Well, what you are saying may very well be true and the wife could be a horribly controlling witch and the daughter beleagured orphan and all but in my experience people just get kind of psychotic under the stress of weddings and/or parents put their foot down about the weirdest things. My sister, getting married the day after the OP at the Ritz Carlton, probably didn’t want coconut centrepieces. But for some reason my parents are vehemently against the idea of bouquets. I just think it would be sort of stupid for her (my sister) to think her entire day was completely and utterly and totally ruined over one minor detail, even though my parents just paid for a Ritz Carlton wedding with open bar and 15 course gourmet tapas Indian dinner and actually went back to India to buy her an extravagant trousseau from the mothership itself.
Now, can they afford flower centerpieces rather than coco-freaking-nuts? Clearly they can. But they insisted on the stupid coconuts and my sister could have spent her time crying and acting like her really, really nice and totally free wedding was ruined. Or, like the OP’s daugther, she just controlled her reaction, shrugged her shoulders and eventually came around to the idea of coconuts in brass urns. Maybe because my parents had gone out of their way to give her everything else?? That even though they don’t drink they agreed to an open bar, that even though they’re religious they agreed to a non-vegetarian wedding? Actually, right now everyone thinks it’s kind of a cool idea.
I totally think the OP’s daughter took the higher road compared to her mother and I have to applaud her for getting some perspective even though the mom hasn’t, and someday maybe she’ll come around to the idea that it was sort of cool and unique to just ride in the parents’ car than the standard limo. But I have a very hard time believing that 2 parents that put (as the OP stated) a significant dent in their personal savings are horrible controlling creatures that should be shunned or excluded over a disagreement related to 1 issue linked to a widely-acknowledged-as stressful event.
YMMV
By the way, I will totally admit that my perspective is coloured by the fact that my parents while crazy, are quite loveable such that I’m inclined to cut the OP and his wife some slack. Maybe you all are seeing something I’m not.
Anu
I gotta say I agree with Shayna, perhaps because there are a lot of control issues in my family, which everyone insists on disguising and denying.
Now that I am lucky enough to have a wonderfully genuine husband, and fantastic inlaws, I have less & less to do with my own family all the time.
Why does your wife care if SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOU AND HER pays for it?
I dunno why but the term
“coco-freakin-nuts”
really made me laugh out loud.;
Thanks, anu-lala.
At first I thought it was a reference to dauerbach’s wife.
(It’d make a good user name.)
That was the thing that got me. She still didn’t want her daughter to have the limo, although her daughter really wanted it, even if someone else paid for it. That just sounds like a really controlling person to me. And add to it the idea that “she’s never been wrong in her life” and (if I were the daughter) I would send a nice thank you note after the wedding and run like hell.
For the second and final time, I never said they should be. The rest of your opening paragraph is so far off anything else I’ve posted or implied in this thread, it’s not even worth the effort to dissect.
The bride is a truly a mensch.
The mother is a controlling bitch.
The father needs to grow a pair and tell the wife to butt the hell out of business that isn’t hers.
Your parents were paying for the centerpieces, be they flowers or coconuts. Their money, their final say.
The bride’s parents here aren’t being asked to pay for the Towne car, so it’s none of their concern. That they’re making it such a huge issue that it’s causing tears and yelling and, ultimately, the bride to have to forego a gift from other people just to placate her controlling, selfish mother is atrocious.
Yes!
And let’s not forget she’s just been rewarded (again, apparently) for her despicable (IMO) behavior.
My inlaws (who are seperated) both use their money to control others, which I find loathsome. When paying for someone else’s wedding, however, putting a limit on extravegance is certainly acceptable, so too is asking that a bit of your own ideas be added or considered. This is different. The mother is getting her way by using the threat of a mid-wedding tantrum because pulling the money didn’t work.
There’s always the possibility that now that she has “won” and some of the pressure’s off, dauerbach’s wife will reconsider. Some people just gotta play those kind of mind games, don’t you know?
I’ll admit that I have a hard time viewing this situation objectively. The spending of this amount of money on a wedding is something I feel strongly about, but I realize it’s none of my beeswax. I concur with all the people who are telling dauerbach to lie low and wait for the insanity to pass. His other family problems might need their own thread.
After I spent a frillion dollars on a wedding, if the bride came along and said, “Oh, just one more thing” I think I’d pop.
I used to work in a bridal shop. I wish more people would stand up to brides and tell them that they need to calm the hell down.
The OP’s daughter did a good thing in accepting the situation. And it’s entirely possible it’s not her fault. But it’s also possible she was just piling item after item waiting to see when the brakes would be applied.
Well, I was responding largely to your multiple assertions that the mother is ruining and flat-out destroying the BRIDE’S BIG DAY AND SHINING GLORIOUS MOMENT over a limo or towncar (or in this case, lack thereof) which yes, you have asserted time and time again. Over a limo, geez! I’ve agreed with you the mom is flatout weird and crazy for caring when someone else is paying, my point is just that I don’t think it’s that important a detail to imply so much control-freakitude, especially since the family just handed over 25K for everything else. But somehow you seem very close to this issue and are getting increasingly histrionic and belligerent in your responses to me though I’m being perfectly cordial, so I’m going to bow out. Sorry to have touched a nerve.
No, I didn’t. You’re simply wrong.
In my first post to this thread I said, “That she is willing to destroy the joy and happiness of the day for her own daughter, over her personal principals about other people’s “superfluous” spending, is disgusting.” I stand by that. She’s putting on hystrionics, yelling, making her daughter cry and giving her husband an ulcer over a gift that someone else is giving her daughter. THIS IS NOT ABOUT A CAR. This is about the mother’s behavior over something that is none of her damn business.
I’ve made 4 more posts to this thread (this is the 5th), and not a single one of them says anything about ruining her entire day or referred to it as her “shining glorious moment” or anything even remotely like that.
Quit mischaracterizing what I’ve posted.
Repeatedly misrepresenting what I’ve said is hardly perfectly cordial. I’ll be glad not to have further exchanges with you if that’s how it would continue.
Have a nice day.
There is certainly an element of Bridezilla to “I have to have a towncar and its worth crying over” But I think the bride has managed to prove - by giving up the towncar that her future inlaws are willing to pay for because her mother somehow objects - that she is the adult in this situation.
But Shayna has a point. Marriages are a point where life changes. The first several months may determine how much you see of your daughter during her married life. Right now, if I were your daughter, I’d be thinking “I’d rather spend time with my reasonable in laws than my insane over-controlling mother.”
That doesn’t mean parents should give into every little whim of a bride to keep the peace. But things that OTHER PEOPLE ARE PAYING FOR are not under your control. And threating to throw a wedding tantrum over a towncar is behavior we are trying to break my six year old daughter of - not behavior I’d expect in a woman old enough to have a daughter getting married. Some adults - perhaps your future son-in law and your daughter - choose not to deal with adults who behave worse than six year olds.
Mom won the battle, but she probably lost the war. And you’ll probably both regret it.
huh?
I find it interesting that the Mommy of the Bride puts her foot down to control something that is none of her business ( one can only wonder what that is like to witness.) and the daughter bursts into tears to get things her way.
I feel our doper friend needs to move out of the house for his own sanity. Are there any other males in the house?
Zebra nailed it on the head with Mommy Lion stuff.