That’ll Teach Her To Not Wear White To Her Son’s Wedding
“I went to the wedding of a good friend of my boyfriend’s this weekend. He is a lovely guy and his bride is ah-mazing!
We arrived at the church and were rather early, but no biggie. I had two small bottles of a fizzy drink mix with me, so we sat outside the church, the weather was brilliant, and enjoyed the atmosphere. We had a hotel room for the night where the reception was going to be held, which was right around the corner but couldn’t check in until later.
Anyways, I’m a slow drinker with fizzy stuff cause it tends to go to my head really quickly so I had maybe drank half of it when the other guest started to arrive. At first everything is great but suddenly everyone just stops talking. I had to ask my boyfriend what was going on because I’m only 5’1 while he is 6’0. He tells me that the groom’s mother just showed up – in a white-lacy-gown and a little veil thing in front of her face. Everyone was in shock.
The bridesmaids and Maid of Honor (MOH) arrived before the bride and I pulled the MOH to the side and asked her if it was planned that the Mother of the Groom (MOG) was wearing white (it wasn’t of course, bride and MOG had picked out a nice silvery dress for her). I asked her if she could do something about it (she had no idea on what she could do). I asked her if she wanted me to do something about it (to which she answered YES PLEASE!). So I handed my boyfriend my purse, gathered all the strength of my spine available and walked up to MOG and her husband, pretending to the quite wobbly already (if you have ever worn high heels on pebble, you know its not hard to do so). I greeted the Father of the Groom (who looked severely uncomfortable next to his wife) and then it happened – when I went to greet the MOG, I stumbled and the left over content of my little bottle of fizzy drink just sloshed out of it – and landed on her dress. I, obviously, felt so, so bad. The shock of it sobered me up right away and I tried to make it better by rubbing on the stains with my hanky. Now, if you try to clean something with your hanky, do make sure that it’s a clean one and that you hadn’t dropped it sometime beforehand because it’ll make things worse.
To sum things up, the ceremony was delayed by 30 minutes because MOG had to go and change. My boyfriend had a hiccups from laughing so hard. I was congratulated on my aim no less than 12 times. MOG hates me but who cares. Everyone had a fantastic time. MOH wants to name her first born after me and hopes it’ll have ‘balls of steel like me, no matter the gender.’ Bride and Groom almost crushed me while hugging the next morning at breakfast when they heard of what happened.”
No Touching Means No Touching
“When I was six, bad things happened to me at the hands of someone I had been told I could trust. Part of the aftermath of that situation was lots of therapy and an introduction to a strange and wonderful thing called ‘bodily autonomy.’ I was told that I, even as a child, could tell other people that I did not want them to touch me. If anyone touched me without my consent, it was okay for me to tell them ‘no,’ and it was okay for me to be as loud and emphatic about this as it took for them to get the message. I could even push them away if they persisted! Adults might be upset if I said ‘no,’ but that was not my problem, because adults are expected to control their emotions and actions.
At first, the only people I would allow to touch me at all were my mother, my maternal grandmother, and my aunt (Mom’s sister). It took a while, but eventually, I was able to expand the list. Family members who received my permission were aware of the implications of my trust, and treated it as a serious privilege.
Now, there’s a substantial age gap between me and my brother–about 14 years. (I was quite a surprise.) At the time of this story, I was about 8 years old. I was a small kid; even now, I’m under five and a half feet tall. I was a major tomboy, and my mom kept my hair trimmed into a shoulder-length bob because I was terrible at taking care of it.
My brother had been dating a girl for a couple of years, and they decided that they liked each other well enough to get married. His mother-in-law-to-be was… interesting. Very, very touchy-feely, huggy-wuggy, smoochy-woochy. Thus she earned the nickname of ‘Huggy Holly.’ Upon seeing pictures of me, she squealed that I was just the cutest thing she’d ever seen, and she couldn’t wait to meet me and give me a biiiiig hug! And pinch my cute round cheeks! And ruffle my pwetty hair! And kiss my widdle rosebud mouth!
My brother told her no. ‘No, don’t hug my sister. Don’t pinch her cheeks. Don’t ruffle her hair. Don’t kiss her. Don’t touch her at all. Don’t even ask to touch her. If she offers you a hug, that’s one thing, but do not, under any circumstances, touch her without her express permission.’
Huggy Holly could not wrap her head around the idea that a child could tell an adult not to touch them and expect to have their wishes heeded. My brother mentioned that he must have tried to explain it to her a dozen times. She just could not, or would not, understand.
During the course of wedding planning, there was a fair amount of communication between my family and my brother’s future in-laws. I was brought up as a topic on several occasions, and every single time, my mother reiterated my brother’s warnings. Huggy Holly would always say, ‘Yes, I remember, but–‘ and as we all know here, ‘but’ is shorthand for ‘watch how fast I invalidate what I just said.’ In this case, the ‘but’ was always followed by weirdly rapturous comments about how adorable and darling I was and so on. Moreover, she seemed to have unclear ideas of how this in-law thing works, because she kept talking about how much she was looking forward to ‘getting another darling little daughter’ that she could spoil with fancy tea parties and dress up in pretty princess outfits, like she’d done with her own daughters. My mother must have so much fun dressing me up like a little doll!
I remember my mom laughing until tears came into her eyes during a few of these phone calls, because she knew exactly what kind of semi-feral wolf-child she’d raised. This woman believed with the holy fire of a fanatic that I was some kind of living, breathing Precious Moments figurine. She’d be rabbiting on about this goochie-goo nonsense while my mom was gazing out the back door, watching me roam the back yard, eating live ants and mud while building elaborate stages for the deadly battles of my Thundercats and He-Man figures out of sticks, grass, rocks, and whatever mud I didn’t eat.
The day of the wedding rolled around. Because I loved my big brother and had opted to gracefully tolerate his chosen spouse until such time as I developed actual liking for her, I cooperated with the efforts of my mother and grandmother to make me look presentable. I was wearing my very best outfit, which was a frilly pale-blue dress trimmed with white lace and, yes, it made me look adorable. We disembarked from the car and went into the church to mill around in the pre-ceremony confusion.
Suddenly, out of the crowd, this strange woman in a cerise satin dress which emphasized a bust that needed no extra emphasis and a hairdo like an explosion in the blonde factory came swooping at me with her arms flung wide, emitting a sort of teakettle noise. I back-stepped fast and said, ‘No!’ loudly and clearly, but on she came, her fuchsia lips scrunching into a kiss-pout that resembled a hemorrhoid pillow, burping out something about the ‘sweet little princess.’
My entire assembled family–brother, mother, aunt, grandmother, grandfather, one uncle and his wife–all shouted ‘Don’t!’ at the same time. It was probably the most organized as a group they’ve ever been. (My family is mostly Irish, which means we mostly fight with each other, except for my Czechoslovakian grandfather, who always watched the fights from a peaceful safe distance.) My uncle, the person physically closest to the brewing disaster, tried to intervene, but the weird lady was moving like she’d been fired out of a ballista made of bad decisions, and frankly that particular uncle isn’t a fast mover even when not faced with a high-speed idiot.
Secure in my knowledge of Bodily Autonomy and armored with the assurance that defending myself from unwanted contact was the Right Thing to Do, I was prepared to act. So, as Huggy Holly swooped upon me, single-mindedly focused on hugging the child she’d been repeatedly told by several different people not to hug, I took action. I squared up, planted my feet, and hauled both fists back at shoulder level.
‘DON’T TOUCH ME!’ I screamed at the very top of my lungs, and double-punched my brother’s imminent mother-in-law squarely in the chest.
Anyone who has ever been punched in the chest knows that this is not a fun experience. Possessing a balcony that one could do Shakespeare off of, Huggy Holly had a fair bit of upholstering, but her momentum combined with the small contact patch of my eight-year-old fists concentrating the force resulted in a not-insignificant impact. She reeled backwards, arms flailing Kermit-fashion, and my uncle just barely missed (so he claims; I suspect intentional action, but that’s fine by me) catching her as she toppled onto her be-satined butt, incidentally crushing the gigantic stupid frilly bow on the back of her dress.
Having defended myself adequately, I shot into the cluster of my family members and hid behind my grandfather, the short cheerful smiling gentle old man whose heirlooms included a WWII Luger that he acquired from ‘a German officer who didn’t need it any more’ in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia (you may draw your own conclusions). My uncle, who honestly looked as if he’d rather kick the woman, helped Huggy Holly back to her feet while she began to gasp and sob, clutching at her bosom.
‘Why did she do that?!’ she demanded.
My mother calmly said, ‘We did warn you not to touch her. Several times.’
Huggy Holly wailed, ‘But she’s so smaaaaaaaaaall and prettyyyyyyy!’
‘You know, dynamite comes in small, decorative-looking packages, too,’ my grandmother remarked, then turned to my brother. ‘Okay, where are we sitting?’
That was literally the first time I saw this woman. She did not improve with further exposure.”
She Wanted Her Daughter’s Wedding To Be Perfect, By Any Means Possible
“My sister-in-law got married in September, my husband and I estimated that everything probably cost around $15,000-$20,000. The wedding was nice and we had a good time, my husband and his siblings all get along fine but we knew that my sister-in-law and her new husband probably got a substantial amount of help paying for the wedding. This was after my mother-in-law told us they wouldn’t be paying a thing for our wedding (3 years ago) but then my father-in-law eventually said they would pay for the flowers (a few hundred dollars and we were very grateful for it). My sister-in-law and her new husband together made a little less than what my husband and I made when we got married and we were pretty much the same age as they are, except he had around $40,000 in student loan debt (master’s degree) whereas my sister-in-law has none (one year aesthetician’s license).
My sister-in-law’s husband did tell my husband a couple of days later that my mother/father-in-laws paid for almost all of the wedding. When my husband told me that, I was kind of floored but thought, oh well that’s life. I sort of figured my mother-in-law wasn’t a fan of our very simple wedding so she was far more willing to help make my sister-in-law’s wedding something bigger and it was a really nice wedding/reception.
Yesterday, my husband gets a letter in the mail from a collection company. It seems like it can’t be right because they say he owed about $8,000 on a credit card he’s never seen before. He called their number and the company said they would cut him a deal and he’d only have to pay $5,000. He thought it was a scam so he hung up. He then called the actual credit card company and found out the card was real and it was in his name but it hadn’t been paid for several months. The address listed on the account was his parents’ house, 400 miles away, and he hadn’t lived there for at least 6 years.
He called his mother yesterday and she denied knowing anything about it, his father said the same thing. When my husband said he would just have to report it as theft to the police, he said his mother’s demeanor changed completely, telling him he shouldn’t go to the police and should just take the $5,000 off to pay it off. She said something about there’s a good chance I was the one who opened the account and probably had a secret shopping habit. He told her that was ridiculous as there was no way for me to have it since the address listed was her house and that he would just let the police take care of it.
At that point, she finally confessed to taking the credit card out in his name back in January ‘but only to pay for the wedding” ‘You see, she wanted her daughter to have her dream wedding but knew they couldn’t afford it. My mother-in-law couldn’t afford it all either, so they took a credit card out in my husband’s name so that they could make the dream wedding happen. She then told my husband to just pay the bill so that my brother-in-law wouldn’t be mad about it and to not call the police about it.
My husband hung up without saying a word and made a police report. Since it was well into the range of felony theft, a detective took the case. About a week after he made the report, the detective calls us and tells us other officers had just arrested my mother-in-law earlier in the day at her workplace. My husband tried to call his father but didn’t get an answer.
My mother-in-law ended up spending the night in jail since she was arrested late enough in the day that she couldn’t see a judge that afternoon. Apparently my father-in-law was at the jail and had basically no cell reception when my husband originally called him. FiL did call my husband around 9-10pm and said that he understands why we went to the police. Next morning comes around and she posts $2,500 bond and gets a court date. We hear literally nothing from her at all, which is completely out of the ordinary. For 3 months there is hardly any contact with my father-in-law, either. About a month ago, the court agrees to drop the charge down to misdemeanor theft and she agrees to a plea deal of 250 hours of community service, 2 years court supervision and she has to pay restitution of over $20,000.
When I saw that $20,000 number, I was confused, my husband was confused. We had no idea what was up with that since it was $8,000 from us. Turns out she took out a credit card in my sister-in-law’s name as well to pay for the wedding. Same company and everything.
To top it off, we found out a few weeks ago she had been getting in-patient psychiatric treatment shortly after getting out of jail. She did 60 days in a facility and has been getting ongoing treatment since then. Last week was the first we’ve heard from her in months and she apologized profusely and genuinely seemed to mean it. She said she didn’t see what she did was wrong when she did it, but she knows now she should have never done it.
My husband and I forgave her. We knew she had been kind of acting weird for years but it seems like it was some sort of undiagnosed mental health issue.
The credit card is no longer on my husband’s credit and the collection company sent us a letter saying they have removed the debt from their books. His credit score is back to where it was.”