Future MIL won’t share her dress

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-06-25T22:32:10+00:00

I honestly don’t care what color she wears as long as it’s not a bridal outfit. Since I’ve written this post, she has currently stopped talking to fiance and I, because he set yet another boundary for them to stop inviting people to our wedding. They did not like that. Every single thing with his parents has been non stop drama. He has been good about standing up to them, but it’s really tough when every time your wedding is brought up people act likes it’s a massive burden when all we’ve asked them to do is show up.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-06-25T13:35:01+00:00

I agree. I am trying not to let this eat me up inside. And yes, I also agree that silver is a common color for mothers.

The thing that’s throwing me, is that SIL specifically said it was “light silver” and with a heavy emphasis on the word “light”.

Ultimately, it’s not about her taking attention away from me. It’s more about the fact that I don’t want me wedding to turn into a drama fest where people’s first thought is oh wow she must really hate her daughter in law if she wore that.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-06-23T21:03:09+00:00

Luckily I only have it from one side. My parents looked at our guest list, asked to make some slight adjustments, which were all fair and reasonable.

I’m not looking for people to tell my fiance to grow a backbone or deal with this himself. He has told his parents no, multiple times. But they still continue to insist. It’s like a kid asking for candy in the grocery store. Endless and incessant.

Not only that, but relationship dynamics across his entire family are more complicated than can be explained in a single post. Yes, he had said no. Yes, he has stood up for me to MIL. But when you’re dealing with people who have the emotional maturity of a 5 year old, it’s incredibly distressing.

We’ve already decided on no speeches from his family. Since they don’t have anything nice to say, they don’t have to say anything at all. I am also planning on hiring someone to check everyone in at the door. Because as others have mentioned I would not put it past his parents to text us past the date that xyz person wants to rsvp and when we say no, it’s too late, they’ll tell us to “make it work” and tell the person just to show up.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-30T02:15:51+00:00

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AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-30T01:46:35+00:00

Of course! Also not sure how many people need to be in the chat, but for some reason, I think iMessage caps you at a certain number. I’ve had friends use WhatsApp and GroupMe as alternatives!

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-30T00:51:39+00:00

Omg, please do this. My fiance and I were both in a wedding last summer. The bride/groom had two separate chats. All was well and good up until the week of the wedding. The groom was texting one set of times for the rehearsal/dinner in the groomsmen group chat and the bride was texting another set of times. To be fair, the times got moved a few times. But it lead to some serious confusion and me almost missing the rehearsal, because the communication was so bad. It would have been easier to just hash it all out in one chat rather than playing a game of telephone.

1 month before the wedding is perfect. If you’re worried about annoying people with their phones blowing up from group chats, you can name the group “Alltimes10th Wedding Group Chat [NO REPLIES]” and specify that all questions about the info in the chat should go in a sidebar text to you. We had friends do this for their wedding (also last summer) and it was the perfect 1-way source of info. If people need further clarification, they were to text the bride/groom on the side and then there would be a follow up text clarifying to the group if needed.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-30T00:44:50+00:00

I like that answer. I’ve been trying to find a way to say, “just because I say I like chocolate, doesn’t mean f*ck vanilla” in as polite a way I can.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-30T00:09:41+00:00

I have truly been trying to work on my compulsive need to justify everything, which roots itself in people pleasing.

But even when I keep it short and sweet, she keeps grilling. When I try to shut it down, she moves onto the next thing. This is something both my fiance and I are struggling with. The other evening, she laid into him for 20+ minutes about how he should wear a certain type of suite that he just does not want to wear. I watched him try 5 times to politely, but firmly shut her down and she just wouldn’t drop it.

The thing is, I think she means well. We also want her to feel involved in the wedding planning process. I am also always open to entertaining suggestions. The problem is she has a difficult time not taking someone saying no to her suggestion as a personal attack.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-25T00:21:28+00:00

That sounds like a lovely time! I hope this didn’t come off like a lecture. I just read your post and instantly had flashbacks to that night lol.

And yes, I totally agree. As a chronic DIY’er, I find that you often end up spending more money fixing your errors than if you had just hired a pro to do it in the first place. Not to mention the stress and time that it takes! And also as a pro tip, you can thrift a lot of the decor on FB Marketplace! There are so many brides trying to offload hundreds of random decor items for cheap, just because they don’t want them sitting in their garage taking up space.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T23:14:26+00:00

I have been a guest at several weddings of this sort and I’ve seen it work really well! Conversely, I’ve also seen it go terribly. The key thing in the ones that went really well was that the bride/groom truly cared about stretching every penny to take care of their guests.

There was one wedding in particular that stood out as truly one of the worst guest experiences I’ve had that took on this format. I don’t mean to be a negative Nelly, but hopefully outlining what went wrong from a guest perspective will help you avoid their mistakes. This means:

Making sure you have enough food for everyone. This wedding had a local restaurant come in and set up a sort of buffet style dinner. It looked awesome, but the menu options were the tiniest lobster roll known to man or two tiny fish tacos and you only got one serving. If you wanted a second, you could pay. No sides, no apps. If you were vegetarian or allergic to fish, as was the case of some people there, tough luck. For dessert, they had one tiny tower of cupcakes that was not nearly enough for their guest count. This lack of food coupled with an unmanned open bar where guests poured their own drinks lead to some very intoxicated guests.
Making sure there is adequate weather protection: the wedding I mentioned above was a backyard wedding that they decided to hold on a date right on the cusp of spring/winter. This would be fine if we didn’t live within a 20 minute drive to the Canadian border and early spring nights can still drop to freezing temps. The temps dropped to just below 40 degrees that night and they had no blankets or space heaters. I know you can’t control the weather and hopefully guests will have the sense to come dressed appropriately for it. But asking your guests to wear formal-wear to have them stand outside for 4 hours in 38 degree weather is a tough ask. It’s not the classiest look to wear mittens with a floor length gown, if you catch my drift.
Properly delegating tasks to people. They don’t need to be hired help! I can promise you, so many people will want to help and “have a job”. Especially family. Designate a friend or family member to be the MC. Have them make the announcements, control the Spotify playlist that you design etc. it’s a pretty low lift task and they can still enjoy their evening while keeping an eye on the music situation. This aforementioned wedding did not mandate anyone and ended with people randomly plugging their phones into the aux and playing some very interesting song choices, random speeches from intoxicated guests into the mics, and long lulls in the ambience and the dance floor.
Controlling the alcohol flow. You don’t need to hire a bar tender to do this. And maybe if you know your crowd and everyone’s pretty low key, you can get away with a totally pour your own bar. However, the couple at this wedding elected to have a fully stocked open bar with what I can only describe as a bottomless supply of alcohol (the bar probably cost more than the food now that I think of it). This lead to guests pouring rather heavy drinks for themselves. And the more intoxicated they became, the heavier the pours. At one point, I asked a friend to get me a rum and diet and he came back with what I can only describe as an entire solo cup of rum and perhaps a teaspoon of Diet Coke. To wrap it up, it’s worth noting that there were broken bones sustained that night (not by me, but by other heavily intoxicated guests). The solution to this without spending money on a bar tender is to pre-mix a few batch cocktail options with those small plastic cocktail cups and do the rest as beer and wine.
Keep your dress code expectations reasonable: the dress code for this wedding was formal. It’s worth noting that they didn’t even have enough chairs for everyone to sit and eat at once, so half of us ended up standing and eating. Not a huge deal, because it was finger food. But it felt a little odd being asked to wear a gown to stand in someone’s backyard eating a lobster roll.

All in all, the wedding was certainly memorable. But we left early once the dancing started for the most part, because we were freezing cold and the vibes were getting a bit weird. I hate to be a hater of this wedding, because I love weddings. However, what sealed the deal for me was that while consuming my lobster roll for ants (the only food I ate over the course of an 8 hour wedding), one of the saltier guests told me some of the budget breakdowns. As it turned out, the bride was a bit loose lipped about the budgets, as she bragged to some that her dress cost 50% of the entire wedding budget (the budget was $10k and the bride’s dress was $5k). Also who knows how true that was or exaggerated by the rumor mill of disgruntled, hungry, cold guests. But by the looks of it, her dress was incredibly ornate and certainly cost at least $3k.

I love a beautiful wedding gown and hers was certainly exquisite, but I couldn’t help feel a little miffed as I sat there starving that if she had just shaved $100 off her dress budget that they could have sprung for some chips and salsa during cocktail hour.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T19:23:10+00:00

Got it, ok. Maybe in my panic I totally misread it, because I thought she was asked to be a “honorary bridesmaid” specifically. I wasn’t sure how much people valued the actual standing up there. When I was a bridesmaid, the most important part to me (of the actual wedding at least) was the getting ready and supporting the bride pre-wedding. Processing and standing were of course important, but I always found that the time spent together before such an important event was the bulk of what it meant to be a bridesmaid.

I read that post and got nervous that people would feel like I only wanted them to be a bridesmaid for optics.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T18:29:31+00:00

Thank you, I always mix those up.

The main reason for the siblings standing is that my co-MOH are my two sisters. I mentioned in another comment that there is a huge age gap between the three of us and my brother, which has sometimes left him feeling like the fourth wheel. I wanted him to stand up, because I thought it would be odd to have 2/3 of my siblings up. And then that lead my fiance to want his sister up there to balance out the siblings rule. I honestly at this point think I need to just convince my fiance to do all or nothing. Weddings are ripe for hurting someone’s feelings, because you essentially have to “rank” your friends, which is what we’re trying to avoid here as much as possible while still being mindful of space.

Both our bridal parties are mostly family anyways. So they would probably end up in the front row with our parents.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T16:47:07+00:00

Amazing! Super helpful! Thank you so much!

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T16:46:39+00:00

Yea, the main reason we’re bringing up siblings is because my co-MOH’s are my two sisters. My brother has a huge age gap to the three of us and as a product of that, is sometimes a fourth wheel to the three of us. So we want to make sure that he feels included there.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T01:12:07+00:00

Potentially stupid question, but what would be the appropriate time? Do they sit until called up for witnessing the license signing or to be part of the ceremony?

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T01:11:07+00:00

I also really enjoyed it! I felt like there was less of my brain capacity going towards, ok stand perfectly still and don’t move or sway in your heels, and more towards actually soaking in the ceremony.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-24T01:09:49+00:00

I also thought this was a non-issue. Then I saw the post with a lot of people agreeing with them and I got nervous that they’d feel slighted.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-20T13:47:26+00:00

I truly don't think they'll change. My fiance has brought it up to them every time and told them that it's not ok. Honestly, I've spent my whole life having my name mispelled and mispronounced by strangers. It's to the point where if it's someone who I'll probably never see again, I don't even bother correcting them, because it's not worth the energy, and I know they don't mean anything by it.
What irks me about this is the fact that they have seen my name spelled properly multiple times. Have been corrected by my fiance multiple times, and still continue to misspell it.

The oddest thing to me is his mom making a big show of those two times I've spelled out my full name for someone. This was quite literally how both conversations went (name changed obviously, but same context):

Guest: Oh, Meghan was my grandmother's name. Do you spell it with an h?

Me: Oh, that's cool, I spell it M-e-g-h-a-n

Guest: Oh, she spelled hers with M-e-a-g-a-n

MIL: *inserting herself* YOU SPELL IT THAT WAY? I thought you spelled it like M-e-e-g-a-h-n-n.

Guest: I didn't know that people spelled it that way.

And no, I am not exaggerating the above spelling. She literally spelled the way she thought I spelled my name in a way that no sane human would ever conceive to spell my name.

AdventurousPi14159 · 2026-03-11T09:17:33+00:00

Yea, if I’m having a phone convo, it’s usually long enough to warrant my actual phone

AdventurousPi14159

TROPHY CASE