“If you’d like to plan, organize, and finance the whole thing we’d be happy to attend. Just let us know when to be there.”
I agree. This one is a beautiful thing. 
I would stick to pithy things like
‘To each, their own!’
‘Different strokes for different folks!’
‘Take’s all kinds to make a world!’
And, the eternally useful, never fails;
‘Indeed!’, then swiftly change subject.
Done, and done.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a WINNER for the “Beating a Dead Horse” award! Tracyfish MIL please come to the podium and collect your award!
Nothing you can say, Tracyfish. Nothing you can do. To this woman’s dying day, she’s gonna harp on this. Seriously. Let it remain her problem and NOT yours.
Get a glassy-eyed look on your face as you stare off to nowhere (booze helps) and say, “Thank you for sharing this.”
Please note: if you decide to have children, she will want to organize and throw parties for baptism, birthday, Valentine’s, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Arbor Day, Fourth of July, First Tooth, First Skinned knee, First Day of School, etc etc etc.
Your choices are limited:
(1) Get upset and have a nasty argument each time this happens.
(2) Kill her now and get it over with.
(3) Find a way to take your emotions out of the situation, and just let the aggravation go
My daughter is at the doctor’s office with a killer migraine, because of this very situation (hers is a different occasion, but it’s the same damned thing).
She’d probably vote for Number 2 on the list above.
~VOW
First time she mentions it, glance at your watch. Then say to LOUNE, “2pm, you owe me 10 bucks.”
She wants us to have a reception now. Last weekend, she told me that we could have something at the Quality Inn for $7 a person and started naming mutual friends who she thinks would give us a lot of money. She also likes to repeat variations of, “I just don’t understand why you don’t want to have a wedding! You’re spending money all this money on other people’s weddings!” When she talks about how much money we’d make, I try to remind her that weddings also cost money. Plus, we’re not out to fleece our friends and family (didn’t word it that way to her).
A few months ago, she brought up that when she got married, she wanted both of her parents to walk her down the aisle. People were trying to dissuade her from doing it because that wasn’t how it was done at the time, and she told them that it was her wedding, so she’d do what she wanted. Later, when the fact that we eloped got brought up again, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to point out that we also did what we wanted. Her answer? “Yeah, well I did it the right way (by having a wedding)!” :rolleyes: If she brings up “getting married the right way” again I’ll probably go with some variation of what PotLuck said.
I’m assuming we’re going to keep hearing about this until one of us dies (me, husband, or mother-in-law). Like Lucretia said, I don’t really want to antagonize her. I want to try to keep my answers more light-hearted/funny and not so much, “Suck it, bitch!” like what my husband has suggested. It’s still fun to think about what I’d say if I could get away with anything, though. I could just keep them to myself and smile while I give the nice, polite answer.
My mother-in-law is the only one who has complained that we didn’t have a wedding, so I guess we can be thankful for that much.
I can see where “not letting this go” is annoying, but what reason have you given her for “just up and eloping” that she can take to the bank? Clearly it meant a lot to her to have a wedding, to see her son get married “properly”. Even if it means less than nothing to you and LOUNE, part of being a functioning member of society in general - and one’s family in particular - is going through with the expected rituals that define one’s family and society culture.
I know more than one couple who got married quickly for various reasons (a combination of impulse, money and scheduling work/vacation time for a honeymoon) and then had a “traditional” reception later - one of them a month later, another one 6 months later and yet another on the first anniversary. So what she’s proposing is not unprecedented.
If it IS a matter of cost, well, that’s that. “$7 a head for a proper wedding” is still at least $1,000 for 100 people all told, factoring in all the other costs, and where’s it going to come from? “You’ll make it back in gifts” may be true, but it won’t all be in cash gifts - you’d be laying out $1,000+ up front to get some combination of cash and crapola you maybe don’t want, need or have space for to offset it.
But if she’s willing to put up the funding for it, why not go through with it? Just saying “to hell with you parents, it’s our life and we don’t like parties” is (to me) a completely unnecessary F-U gesture. If she’s actually running through lists of relatives who would fund it, tell her to coordinate it and get back to you. The message would be “no gifts necessary, just fund the party and we’ll celegbrate our union”, which is all I think she’s really looking for here.
There was a bit on How I Met Your Mother the other week that you can replicate as necessary; one character makes a conversation out of titles of 80’s black sitcoms.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Different strokes.’
‘Good times!’
‘What’s happening now?’
Tracyfish, it’s a bit icky she’s only thinking about the wedding as a money-making scheme; maybe she’ll want to sell tickets to any future baby’s baptism/sprinkling.
She’ll let it go when her brain decides it’s time to start nagging about grandkids. Sorry.
A good friend of mine responds to some of her realtives’ batshit needling insanity by simply looking them in the eye and saying “thank you”.
If you don’t mind having a reception, but don’t one badly enough to pay for it and/or plan it, you could bounce it back to her. “Gosh, $7 per person? And you’d do that for us? How generous of you!” Along the lines of what Hampshire said.
If you really don’t care to do it, some silly lighthearted thing like “We’ve checked our calendar for the next two years and it just won’t fit in,” or “The wedding vows we took included a promise to not have a reception, so I’m afraid we can’t.”
It’s time to trot out the fine old Southern saying “Well bless your heart,” which any Southerner will explain means “Fuck you.”
Even better, you can combine it with almost any conversational stop point.
“Well thank you and bless your heart.”
“Well bless your heart, I wouldn’t want to be any trouble.”
“Well bless your heart, but we already had plans.”
“Well bless your heart but Jesus knows we’re already married.”
“Keep it up and we’re going to elope from this Christmas party.”
Be prepared to follow through. It may take a few Christmases before she gets the point.
yes, but unfortunately for MIL, this is not about her or what she wants.
That’s all that matters.
there isn’t a rolleyes emoticon big enough to be an appropriate response to this.
Sorry but I completely disagree, both as a child and a parent. I have a strong sense of family obligation in certain areas. Clearly not everyone does, but to me it’s a disappointing display of an attitude of “my life is for me alone” that I deem selfish.
There are three major milestones (not counting religious ones) in one’s life: birth, marriage and death. Your parents (well, your mother at least) are necessarily present at the first, and it would be a tragedy if they were present at the last. That leaves marriage, which is optional (including the option for serial exercising). You don’t HAVE to get married. But if you do, leaving your parents out of the picture, barring estrangement for other reasons, is an F-U gesture.
So if parents have wishes in this regard, a child is obligated to consider them. Not to kowtow completely or to break on principle, like to have a religious ceremony where one is not religious, but there is no way a “I don’t have to justify why I’m not having a wedding reception so get lost” is, on the face of it, an acceptable attitude to one’s parents.
To clarify my position, in this case it’s inappropriate for the MIL to harp on this to the daughter in law. The one who’s on the hook here is her own son, LOUNE. Though from his suggested response to his mother, he’s got some “filial respect” issues of his own.
I won’t comment.
if it works for you, all the best.
simply being one’s parent doesn’t make them undeserving of an f-u gesture.
drivel. If said parents want to dictate the kind of wedding their offspring has, they had better be prepared to stump up some funding for it. Otherwise, they’re just spending other people’s money which is crass at best.
they don’t have to justify anything, it’s their wedding. MIL presumably had her wedding.
I wish you could’ve sat me down and told me this before my wedding, Tracyfish.
My mom wanted me to have a reception just so she could “make back” all the money she spent on *her *friends’ kids at *their *weddings. I don’t think she realized that we could have made a lot more profit it we’d had a destination wedding in Santa Cruz with only a few guests invited – people probably would’ve just sent a check and not showed up to the party. It still makes me sick to my stomach to know that’s how she viewed my wedding day – as payback.
FWIW, I agreed that if you can keep a sense of humor about the argument, it’ll drive your MIL batty. Good luck with that.
My husband and I have been married over a decade, and the only reason we didn’t elope is that he didn’t want to disappoint his parents; his dad even threatened to disown him. These days, not eloping is one of our greatest regrets and if we had to do it over again, we’d elope.
Frankly, having an after-the-fact event will look to many like a classless gift grab. I don’t see why they should do that to their reputation just to make a sulking MIL shut up.
Look, I don’t disagree that context is everything, and maybe I missed an earlier thread from either LOUNE or Tracyfish that gave it (and I really hope that’s what it is).
For example it seems you agree this is an F-U type of response, just not undeserved. Nor did I read from the OP that the primary reason she’s suggesting it is to make money (other than as a reason why it being so expensive is not a deterrent). And in my suggested response, she should tell the MIL in question to get the funding and get back to her, and make it clear that profit was not a goal (“if 20 aunts/uncles want to chip in for a reception, let’s have a party but I won’t need any gifts in that case”).
My assumption is that LOUNE’s mom simply feels cheated of a chance to celebrate her son’s marriage and show off a bit. Completely harmless to let her have that in my book, as long as she doesn’t go all Bridezilla and start dictating who wears what and dances to what song at what time after eating such-and-such a piece of cake at this table with Uncle A and Cousin B.
I see a winning strategy developing here.
Maybe MIL could host a casual Open House type reception/Meet the newlyweds at her home and invite family and friends.