AITA MIL Wore Her WEDDING DRESS + They KICKED HER OUT | Wedding Planner REACTS

Hi and welcome to Union Podcast. My name is Jamie Wolfer and I'm a wedding planner who absolutely loves to share how I got started and scale my business to above six figures in this amazing and occasionally extremely competitive industry. In this podcast, I share the tech, tactics, mindset and mistakes that got me to where I am today. No gatekeeping, no cloak and dagger, just full disclosure and a little humor along the way. So whether you're a planner or a solopreneur, my goal is for you to be a better business person than I ever could have been and support you on this journey. I let's dive into this week's episode. In order to be effective in the wedding industry, sometimes it's extremely important to know what are the pain points of your audience. Today we're going to take a listen to one of my most popular YouTube videos in the audio form. Because every once in a while it's a good idea to step away from the video and let it hit that brain centered a little different with just the audio. You know what I'm saying? So let's take a listen. Too long. Didn't read My mother in law wore her wedding dress to my bridal shower. So we kicked her from our wedding. Kicked her out of from our. This resulted in a lot of family dropping off our guest list. Hi, welcome to another episode of Am I the A Hole? Except for this one's actually posted in Relationship Advice. We're just gonna like riff off the general idea. Let's dive right on into it. My 26 female fiance. 26 male. And I kicked his mom. 59 female. I love when we add ages. Love that we had the mom's age off our wedding guest list. Now we're being shunned by his family. How can we minimize the damage? My fiance and I have decided to not include his mother in our wedding for a number of reasons. Originally, he did not want her there. Nor did I. Ooh, we got history. But we agreed it would be too much drama to exclude her. She is a mom to two boys, including my fiance, and has always had an inappropriate relationship with the two of them. Though it is much worse with my fiance. Oh joy. He's the younger one of the two and she constantly talks about how she doesn't want to lose her baby and how she wishes she could have kept him a baby forever. Oh my goodness. Won't go into too much detail, but this resulted in her bullying me. For the past nine years I've been with my fiance. Okay, now we see a little backstory. For why. Why she possibly wasn't going to be invited. Oh, my gosh. Nine years. Have we set up boundaries already or is this like a first time for us? I'm not. I'm. No judgment, no hate. Okay, sorry. Sound a little judgy. I didn't mean that. Once we announced our engagement and started sending out invitations, his mother was hysterical. She started begging him to call off the wedding, claiming she couldn't take it at her old age. She is 59. Okay, now I see where the age is relevant. Thank you. And that lots of young couples are choosing to not hold. Hold a wedding these days. We can't really be sure yet. We've been together for nine years. It's a waste of money, etc. She's doing too much. Things got even worse when we told her there would not be a mother son dance. And we didn't want her having a major role in the wedding. Oh, not her baby. She threatened not to come. Oh, please. No. Because it would be embarrassing for her. But she still RSVP'd for our wedding once we explained that we would not be calling it off. Hey, we're still having it. So you throw in a little adult hissy fit, it's not gonna change the fact that we've been together for nigh on a decade. Okay? And we just decided to make this thing official. Calm down, toots. Cause that's what you call someone who's 59, toots. What caused us to back down and remove her from the guest list, though, was when she showed up to my bridal shower in her wedding dress. My mom had posted about my bridal shower on Facebook with open invites. Well, there's your first mistake. So anyone who was close with our family was able to come, which was clearly a huge mistake. On the same page. Had her wedding dress altered to be a bit shorter and fit her after her body changed a little. Well, that happens to most of us after weddings. Most of the guest list was my family, as there are not a lot of women in my fiance's family. But his mom's sister and a couple of his female cousins had shown up. My mom politely asked her to leave. Hi, Barb. Can you go, please? To which she refused and said I was a brat for wanting to be the only woman in her son's life. When did that come out of our mouths, Barbara? When did anybody say that? I was not wanting a big scene about it, so I let her stay. About an hour or so later, my fiance came to drop me some flowers. It's a tradition in our family of the man or whoever is having the bridal shower surprises the bride with flowers at the shower. I love this tradition. I think it's so cute. I love a little drop in moment. I also love like co ed showers where everyone's there. And also I love. Okay, we're tangenting. It's totally fine if you're a dude and you're getting married and you don't have tools yet. Have yourself a groom shower. Go register for some tools, okay? Or if you're like my husband and just kind of obsessed with tools in general. Just a great excuse to get some more. When he came in and saw his mother's outfit, he was furious. He told her he was embarrassed to be her son and told her she was no longer welcome at the wedding. How loud was this conversation? Was it in front of everybody? Oh, my face is hot just reading this. Okay? She got upset and blamed me for this, saying I brainwashed him and that he never would have said something like that if not for me. Oh, mommy dearest. Surprisingly to us, his aunt sided with his mom and said it was nice that his mom even decided to come at all after we had taken away her mother son dance and asked her not to take a big role in the wedding. You should just be grateful she's here, okay? Let her wear whatever she wants. You hurt her. I feel like not wearing a wedding dress to someone else's wedding activities is like the number one rule, okay? Unless you didn't know that it was a wedding. If you know, you know. They both left along with the cousins as his aunt was their ride. Wait, like the mom's too? Like you saw her get into the car and you're like, yeah, you look good sis. Still fits you like a glove. Not weird at all. Hours later, his mom blocked me on Facebook but posted saying that we embarrassed her and that he is putting her in an uncomfortable spot by kicking her out of the wedding and that she is very hurt. Anyone who uses Facebook to air and or discuss family issues or has their own personal diary. On behalf of myself and everyone else watching this video kick rocks, okay? We discuss these things in private. Unless your son blew up at you in public, you know, like in front of the show. I don't, but like that's more private than the Internet. But then again, the bride is also sharing all this on the Internet anonymously of course. But my opinion is nuanced. The aunt backed her up by saying we are abusive towards them and they advise the rest of the family to drop out of the wedding. Oh, this is, this is generational. That's fun. Following this, we got several emails from his family dropping from the wedding. We expected his aunt to drop out, but so did his dad, both sets of grandparents, his cousins and his family friends. His brother stepped down from being best man and has told us that their family is telling him not to go at all. Oh my goodness. We cannot believe how many people decided not to come. The wedding is only a month away and we've paid for all of their meals and bought centerpieces for their tables. We don't know how to salvage this further too long. Didn't read. My mother in law wore her wedding dress to my bridal shower so we kicked her from our wedding. This resulted in a lot of family dropping off our guest list. Let's be honest, wedding planning is a lot. Whether you are getting started or you're investigating getting started or you're actually now planning weddings. You know as well as I do that it can be a very intense job with a lot of plates spinning and a lot of things to keep track of. That's why I love partnering with any sort of technology that makes me a better wedding planner. I know, I know. I'm admitting out loud to the interwebs that I may not be the best wedding planner on the planet. But you know what makes me look really good? You know what really and truly helps me knock people's socks off? 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I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that in the beginning I printed out every single piece of paper, every single contract, I took handwritten notes and created a binder for every single one of My wedding planning clients. Now, in theory, that sounds really cool, and I thought I would look really cool showing up to these meetings with these binders that are full of all of these contracts with handwritten notes. But let me tell you, the chaos that ensued when I tried to stay organized on my own and got over five events at a time. It was a nightmare. Enter Honeybook. I'm telling you guys, Honeybook was literally exactly how my brain was processing wedding planning, but just in digital form. It's so easy to go in there and make any sort of customizations that you want, from adjusting your contracts to adjusting your packages, maintaining conversations back and forth that not only pop up in the app on the website, but also in your inbox as well. It's a great way to stay organized. So get out of the paper and get onto the Digital. Head to wolf runco.com HB and use code Union at checkout to get the best deal. Hi. If you're new here, my name is Jamie Wolfer. I'm your online wedding planner at Plan Weddings and Make Content. Online wedding plan. That's how that comes together. You should subscribe. By the way. I very rarely find myself, like, in a position where I feel really stumped by an AITA or a relational wedding post like this. What do you do in a situation where half of the guest list, or presumably close to half of the guest list, completely drops off? And I hate to say this, but there is absolutely no perfect answer here at all whatsoever? It's do we maintain the boundary right of you crossed a line, you will not be invited, simple as that. And then simply enjoy your wedding day with the guests that want to be there? Do you call the family members who have since declined or rescinded their RSVP and explain the story to them and let them know where you're coming from? Do you feel like that's something you want to do? Do you follow mom's lead and take this public and post something on Facebook? You know, there. There are options. There are options. Personally, ooh, this one is ick. Because I totally support the couple for wanting to set up this boundary and maintain it. But to lose half the guest list a month out from the wedding is just. Man, that would gut me. I feel like I personally would take the approach of calling a handful of people on that side of the family if I was the groom in this situation and letting them know where I was coming from. Hey, I just. I just wanted you hear from me. We would love to have you at our wedding day if you have questions or want to discuss why mom is not being invited, I will discuss them with you. I'm not going out of my way to disparage her. I feel like she's had an opportunity to say her side, so if you want to hear mine, I welcome the conversation just for clarity's sake. But I want you to know that your presence is important to me, and I would really appreciate it if you were there. This is not the be all, end all of this relationship with mom, but in so many words, she has shown that she cannot be trusted around wedding events. So we just need to be mindful and aware that her attendance is probably not a good idea. What. What I find wild, though, is that all the family members, they have to know this, right? It's like the mom is acting like this out of nowhere. Obviously. Earlier on, the bride was talking about how she wanted him to be her baby forever, how she was really encouraging them to not get married at all. She's been unsupportive of this wedding since the very beginning. And then, in her little form of protest, wore her, like, intentionally went out and had altered wedding dress to wear to the bridal shower of the woman who is taking her baby away. And you mean to tell me that none of the other family members heard this? She's saying all of this in private, or they're all supportive of this behavior, or they all dismiss it, like, you know, that's just how she is. She doesn't mean any harm by it. And you say, but it bugs me, and she does mean harm by it, and she's actively trying to sabotage a relationship and our wedding. I don't have an answer for this. What would you do? Okay, help me out. What would you do in this scenario? Because I don't. I don't know. Because I would want to defend my honor. I would want to be like, listen, I didn't. I didn't do jack in this scenario, except for say, hey, knock it off. Stop. You are crossing lines left and right. And you know what? We're putting up boundaries, and she clearly doesn't like them. But I would still want my family to come. I don't know. I usually have an answer in this one. I don't. As an enneagram3, unfortunately, I would consider allowing mom to come. This is the unhealthy part of me, though. Okay? This is the unhealthy part of Enneagram Threes is wanting people to like us so we make choices so more people like us sometimes so we have to really be mindful of that. But if I really wanted all my family to come, I would consider rescinding that boundary momentarily, temporarily, for this event. Putting family members on her. Okay. If she shows up in a wedding dress, if she shows up in something white, if she does anything outlandish, then she's gone. Just so everyone's on the same page. That might be. Actually, now that I'm saying all this out loud, that might be the decision that I make to ensure that I get to have my part of the family there. Because those are people that I actually want there. And if all of them, they have no idea or they're just like, this is just how mom acts, but I want them present, that would be the option that I would suggest. A lot of you might disagree with me. That might be a hot take in this scenario. But what do you do? What do you do? Okay, as I'm editing this, I need to enter in an additional thought. I feel like we're missing context. You know, something happened. How did the whole half of the family, including family friends, how did the couple do something? I don't know. Maybe I'm just playing devil's advocate, but this needed to be added. Let me know in the comments. Speaking of comments, let's go to the comment section. You can't fix this. She'll show up to the wedding in her wedding dress. She's going to show up anyway and throw a fit. Donate the leftover food to charity. Your fiance is amazing because he saw what she did and he responded to it. Get security for the wedding. Half this, Agreed to half of it. I don't. But I do love that the fiance stepped in. I do love that the fiance said, mom, we are united front. You don't get to treat her like this. You don't get to show up at her bridal shower wearing that. Absolutely not. And he's the one that made the call. You're done. You're done. Because in emotional scenarios like this, that doesn't always happen. So we love that he stood up for her. She'll show up in a brand new, more elaborate wedding dress, even if she has to remortgage her house to buy it. You know, you might not be wrong. That's so sad. Totally agree that this isn't fixable since you've already paid op do some last minute invites to fill those places you've already paid for. Nah, that's. That's not gonna work because you can't have finding like, what, half your guest list a month before Your wedding. Plus those people are gonna be like, wait a minute, wait a minute. So I wasn't invited the first time around and now I'm invited because family drama went down and half of your guest list like unsubscribed from the chat. I don't, I don't know if I like that one. You can just tell the peeps that you only had so many invitations and were giving most others you wanted their a verbal invite. I'm sure you will still have fun and beautiful wedding day. That's, that's. That sounds like a great option. That doesn't mean it's necessarily gonna work out. Some of them, especially mother in law may show up anyway. You might need some security. You know, honestly, I never think security is a bad idea. Oftentimes people hear this and they think, oh, you're trying to keep people out of your. Which could be possible if you have your event space in something that's a little bit more public and you don't want anyone crashing the event. That's very likely. But we also have a lot of events that just require security in general simply because you are having alcohol present. So that can be an off duty cop, that can be through a security company for the most part. I see the price range for this being between like 30 to $45 an hour. So it really, really is not an expensive cost to add on. So if you are a little bit concerned about the behavior of anyone at your wedding or anyone who shouldn't be at your wedding, I don't see it as a bad idea to add security on. Just as like a feel safe, a just in case moment. Or you might have a venue that requires it anyways, which we've seen plenty of times. Let them miss the wedding. It is money you would have spent anyway. Let people who want to come come. Those who do not. Let them stay away, donate the food over to the homeless. Stand by your husband's side. He is a good man and you are lucky to have such a brave man by your side. It is not something minor uninviting your own mother to your wedding. He did it for you. I don't know. He did it for himself as well. So let's not heap guilt onto her. She's already feeling uncomfortable as is. Be his infinite fountain of cheerfulness and happiness. Not only today and the day of the wedding, but every day forward. It is possible his family will shun him for many years to come. Give him a new family, one that will never betray him, nor pick others instead of Him. I wish you the best. This is a crummy situation. You can only do your best. Okay. Okay. Okay. Mourn if you need to. Mourn if you need to, because you can be sad on behalf of your fiance. You could be sad for your event. I have family members on my husband's side that I absolutely adore. He's got three sisters. Are you kidding me? Like, I love my husband's family, and if they didn't show up, I would be heartbroken. I'd be heartbroken for myself and for him. So this idea of just, like, be bubbly and be cheered because he's gonna need it. Yeah. I mean, I get the spirit of this commentary. I get the spirit of this advice, but I just want to make room for the fact that both of y' all some feelings, and it might be really hard to be chipper and cheery. Feel what you need to feel. Be there for what he needs to feel, and then figure out how you want to move on together. And let's not fall into this trap that if you have children, they'll never betray you, they never disobey you. They'll never do what you don't want them to do. This is going to take a lot of work to kind of unlearn some of these behaviors. Raising children is a lot of work, especially when you're trying not to carry on generational traumas and pile those on top of your kids and kind of reform your view of what parenting is. That got really deep, really fast. Do exactly this. The reason they are going so nuclear. And when you back down, it will excuse all her behavior. That sentence doesn't make sense. The wedding dress, the baby comments, all of it. Giving a fake apology and reinviting her to the wedding will not be their only demand either. Are they demanding anything, or they just said, if she's not going, we're not going. Maybe I missed that somewhere. At best, she will want to wear her dress to the wedding and get the dance. At worst, she will demand the wedding be postponed. Postponed or called off immediately. Well, that's not. That doesn't matter. If she demands that, that doesn't matter. That's irrelevant. Plus, didn't she already say she wasn't gonna go anyways because she didn't support the wedding, then she RSVP'd yes and then had more cringe behavior. And so you're like, fine, just don't come. You didn't want to be there in the first place. Just don't. Okay? All right. She's already Asked for the wedding to be called off entirely. So that's, that's not. That's not new information. Sounds like fiance's brother is still on your guys side even if he is waffling. Ask him to inquire as to what would be needed to restore peace. That's. That might be a good idea if he's willing and a good communicator and emotionally stable enough to be a liaison in the situation. If it's anything more than an apology which they don't deserve and reinvite that will be telling. It also could be one of those scenarios where it's like hey mom, I stand by what I said. I do apologize though that I did it so publicly. I could have pulled you aside. I was not my intention to embarrass you further in that moment. Again we don't know how it was delivered. So like I'm not entirely sure if this is even an accurate statement but that I can apologize for adding that on. It feels as though you have been really against this marriage from the start with some of the commentary that you've been using. You even said that you weren't going to come and then chose to make a really really public statement wearing that dress at her bridal shower. So just seems to me like you are not invested in this relationship. You're not invested in this marriage and you don't even want to be going anyways. Let's talk through that. This is a show of power on her part and it is important that she be shown she has none. I don't know about that. Everyone in the situation is an adult and if they want each other in their lives, someone has to agree to others terms. You and fiance's terms are basic respect for you and no more pushing her emotional incest nonsense. What? Why'd you take it there? Mom's terms are keep treating her adult son like a combination of a toddler and a surrogate partner for herself. I didn't. Okay and is the priority over any romantic relationship he is part. If one side doesn't agree to the others then there is no reason to be in contact. North Carolina ladies and gentlemen. This person says at best you will want to wear the dress to the wedding. This is a fairly bright line. Violation number one rule is don't upstage the bride and she shows up in a dang wedding dress not remotely kosher. I love this response though personally I would find it utterly hilarious if my mother in law dared to show up to her sons in my wedding in an actual wedding dress. It would be less mortifying to wear one of those blow up T. Rex suits because at least with that people would think that maybe there was a weird joke or a bet or a promise they weren't in on. You know, like making you sit at a table by yourself. A mother wearing a wedding dress to her own child's wedding indicates so obviously just a plethora of hideous character traits. And I love the expose. Expose. Hmm. Please, please, please publicly humiliate yourself where everyone knows who you are and there is extensive photo video proof. Oh shame. I cringe for her imaginary soul. Just think about it. Imaginary. So. Oh gosh. But there is something to be said about that. There's only so much that you can manage and or should manage if your family members don't see it as wrong that she has continuously disparaged this relationship that has actively encouraged you to cancel this wedding because she doesn't want to lose her baby and then says she's not even going to go and then randomly shows up at the wedding shower wearing her own wedding dress. If they don't see all that stuff put together, I kind of don't know how to help them. But I still think it's worth having the conversation if you really want them there. Weddings are a very emotional time. They're very stressful. The actual act of planning a wedding, like booking certain vendors, staying within budget, is not difficult. And if you think it's difficult or you're really struggling with it, please come join me in the master plan. It's the only program where I get to be your actual online wedding planner and walk you through the entire process and teach you how to plan your wedding on a budget and as stress free as possible and still looking absolutely gorgeous because you deserve to have a stress free wedding day. It's situations like this, the expectations, the finances, the emotions that really kind of ramp things up to a whole, whole nother level. And also a lot of times you'll see a lot of unhinged behavior coming out of a lot of your family members that you didn't expect. Your co workers. All of a sudden your best friend has an opinion or is getting moody for some reason. And while there is a lot of emotion and tension around your wedding day, it does not have to be the be all, end all of that relationship. If you are taking care to cultivate real, honest, intentional conversations should you choose to, it will not be the end of the relationship if they do not come to your wedding. It is big. It's going to take a lot to get over. It's going to take a lot of conversations after the fact. Potentially, it might even take some group therapy or some therapy for yourself and your fiance to be able to figure out how to work through this. But just bear in mind it is one of the most important days of your life. It is not the most important day of your life. And I want that to be my parting encouragement to you guys before we go. That's what we have for today's video. Guys, thank you so much for watching. Let me know your opinion in the comments because this one was truly and deeply next level unhinged and I don't have right answer. Kay, if you haven't done so already, jump on down there. Like the video. If you liked the video and subscribe to this channel for more tips and tricks for the modern day bride. And until next week, bye guys. That's all we have for this week's episode. Guys. If you enjoyed it, do me a favor, screenshot that episode and share it on socials. Tag me in it. I would love to see Wolfer and Co on Instagram. Let me know if you're enjoying it. You can also let me know if you didn't enjoy it, but I'm probably not going to reassure that one. I hope you guys enjoy this week's episode and we'll see you in the next one.