Update: the wedding happened, MIL *mostly* behaved (passive aggressiveness ruled the day)

I’ve had several people ask me for an update. My last post is on my profile (posting on mobile and it won’t let me link)! Obligatory, don’t
share this post. Long post incoming:

The wedding itself was beautiful and I was so happy that day that I didn’t pay much attention to her at all. Our friends and family showed out on the dance floor, the food was great, coordinator did a great job, overall it was a beautiful day. There are some notable mentions of her behavior though.

Some background & context that’s relevant (feel free to skip if you’ve been following my
story, this is a rehash):

One of the central fights of the wedding planning process was the date. My husband and I had told everyone we were looking to pin a venue down for May/June. We later booked for May and paid the non-refundable deposit. After we had booked, MIL got a text from her sister that husband’s cousin selected his date and it was the same weekend. They live many states away and in the same state as my husband’s maternal grandparents.

Now, I will say, my husband mildly f’d up because he didn’t tell them we had set the date immediately. He ended up calling her to tell them the date a week or so after we booked, which happened to be the same day MIL got the text about her nephew’s wedding.

• It’s important to note a few things:
• Our venue had no other dates in May/June
• My husband is not close with his grandparents and doesn’t regard them highly, as they were abusive to his mom
• In the six years my husband and I have been together, I have never met the cousin that
  got married nor MIL’s sister. Husband hadn’t talked to his cousin in over a decade and
  we didn’t invite cousins to the wedding

We didn’t change the date, which caused a multi-week tantrum on her end, where she
screamed, cried, manipulated, tried to call the venue to change the date, tried to get my parents to change the date for us (they paid for the venue) and called my mom a bitch when she politely shut her down.

The rehearsal:

Leading up to the rehearsal it was very clear that my MIL was using the dinner as a substitute wedding. She tried demanding that we buy all new outfits for the dinner and forced her other children to buy $300 outfits each.

We had set the dress code to ‘dressy casual’ for the rehearsal since we had a cocktail wedding. We opted to ignore her and wear things we already owned, and I showed up wearing a simple black dress, cardigan, and sandals. Husband wore chinos and a button down with dress loafers.

The rehearsal was set to start at 5:00 and go to 5:30 and the dinner was supposed to be at
6:30. Now, I didn’t think this much of a gap was necessary, but she insisted and luckily the
venue for dinner let us in early since we got there at 5:45.

The rehearsal itself, MIL & FIL showed up late (because she was busy setting up the rehearsal dinner space), at 5:20. MIL’s first words to me were “I thought we were dressing up” while looking at myself and our wedding party up and down. She then was trying to do all of her greetings and got annoyed when our coordinator was trying to hurry us. Her being late to the rehearsal will matter later!

The dinner was extremely long. We all got there about 5:45, but since the technical start time was 6:30, food wasn’t served until 7:00. During dinner, MIL and FIL gave an approximately 30 minute long speech, where they mentioned the ‘date conflict’ no less than four times. I tuned out a lot of the speech because it was just so long.

Around 8:30, people (myself included) were ready to leave. Just as people were starting to say their goodbyes, she pulls husband and I to
the front of the room to do a variation of the ‘shoe game’. To me this is more of a wedding
shower activity, and not something we are into, but we let it happen figuring it would take like 15 minutes. It took another 45 minutes (my sister actually timed it LOL). We didn’t leave our rehearsal dinner until 9:30 and I’m pretty sure the room was only booked from 6:30 – 8:30 because the staff looked so annoyed.

The wedding:

The day of the wedding, I made it a point to deal with MIL as little as possible. Luckily, she did not get ready with us. She booked her own (bridal) HMUA (adding: important to note she thought I was not having a HMUA, my sister paid for one as a surprise. MIL got heavy makeup and an intricate updo) and got ready in a separate air-bnb rental right next to the venue. She didn’t wear white, thank god, but she did wear what was clearly a bridal accessory kit (I know because I had seen the same accessories when I was looking: all pearls, French tip nails, pearls in hair, etc).

We did the photos before the ceremony, mostly because we hate group photos and know that you basically need the whole cocktail hour to wrangle that many people, so I figured we’d get it out of the way first and we’d enjoy cocktail hour.

MIL showed up (late again) and her first words to me were ” are we doing the pictures outside? It’s wet out there from the rain and my shoes are silk and can’t get wet.” I told her we were doing them outside and she switched into a different pair of shoes and tried to tell the photographer to not get her feet in any of the pictures lol.

My two BIL’s also forgot to tell their SOs to come for family pictures, so we have none with
them. Although, I feel like it lowkey makes us even as they both no-call, no-showed my bridal shower (one had the date wrong, the other was hungover).

The only other ‘bigger’ problem was the ceremony seating. My grandma and her partner (who is senile and easily confused) walked down the aisle first, followed by my FIL’s mom, my parents, and then husband’s parents. Because my MIL & FIL were so late to rehearsal, we didn’t get to fully rehearse with them and because the wedding ceremony got shifted indoors with rows of 4 instead of 5, my nana and partner got confused and sat in the first row where MIL & FIL were supposed to be, instead of the second row.

She apparently bitched about this to anyone who would listen, but never thought to ask them to quietly switch. She also bitched that it meant the photographer wouldn’t have any good photos of her watching the ceremony, but I’d get tons of good ones of my parents (all about her, as always). My brother actually shut her bitching down, go him!

Some other things that weren’t a big deal but just funny:

1. When my FIL was in the ‘dance circle’ with husband’s friends, MIL shoved him out of the
   way so she could be in the center
2. Ultra cringey Mom-Son dance. She interlocked her fingers with his and cried into his shoulder while he looked uncomfortable.
3. Talked to at least five of my extended family about the wedding date drama and told my
   husband that they ‘were all on her side’ (they weren’t and told me she had ‘crazy
   energy’)
4. Made the rounds to all the tables, acting like she hosted the event (my parents paid for
   the venue & catering, MIL only did the rehearsal)
5. Kept saying that my husband’s friends love her (they don’t, his closest friend who has
   known him since elementary school called her a demon and said no one ever wanted to
   hang out at husband’s house because of her outbursts)
6. She pulled our photographer to take family photos without myself or my husband (I did
   ok this, the photographer asked and I said fine, but not a ton because I did not want to
   deal with the drama)

Post wedding

Post wedding has been mostly quiet, as we’ve been largely ignoring her. A few notable
mentions though:

1. In a family group chat with husband’s immediate family & spouses, they were all sharing photos from the wedding. Wanna guess how many I was in? If you guessed zero, you’d be correct! She had to put out a call to the rest of her extended family to see if anyone
   managed to get a photo of my husband and I at the reception (ceremony was
   unplugged).
2. Announced the wedding on FB before we did and without our permission. Included two
   photos that had me in them on her 11 photo collage. The caption was the icing on the
   cake “I kept my mind and spirit calm for the wedding of my child to his lovely bride. It
   was a blessed day. Here’s a sneak peek before we get pro photos!” She also posted again about the date conflict with a pic of the wedding she had to “Miss”
3. Has asked husband every couple days if we’ve gotten the pro photos back, it’s only been a few weeks since the wedding and we told her it’d take 2-3 months.
4. Dropped in conversation that she is looking at getting her real estate license in our state.
   Background on this: she lives one state over and is licensed in that state, she has sold
   two houses both for family and doesn’t know our area at all. She has insisted that we
   need to use her and that it would look weird and that it will ‘fundamentally change our
   relationship’ if we don’t. We aren’t even looking to buy yet and have told her as much.
   She definitely thinks that if she gets her license in our state it’ll ‘force’ us to use her. We
   were never going to use her as our agent. I actually joked months ago on this sub
   (deleted post, sorry) that she was going to do this.
5. Tried to demand we stay at an Airbnb she booked without telling us for my BILs November wedding. His venue is 45 minutes away so we are staying at home, she tried to guilt him and say he needs to “be there for his brother like we were for your wedding”. Meanwhile I asked FSIL and she said to just stay at home and gave me the full itinerary, lol.

Neither of us have spoken to her in a couple weeks (I haven’t talked to her since the wedding) We are gearing up to send her a frank message in a few weeks about her behavior and about how we won’t be using her as a real estate agent. Right now, we are enjoying a mostly peaceful first few weeks of marriage!

I’m sure I’ll be back here soon once the gates of hell open after we tell her she won’t be our real estate agent.