My wedding story -
My wife is an only adopted daughter, and her mom has never really liked me. We have a relationship that is complicated, to say the least.
After we announced our engagement, my MIL says, "I don't know that we can afford a huge wedding." This was just after they bought the new house. And car. My wife worked in the not for profit world at the time, and knew a bunch of folks and called a few favors in. We had a late afternoon wedding with a dessert bar afterwards, the two ladies who owned the catering company knew my wife from work and charged us just enough to cover the cost of the food. We had a cappuccino guy there, he charged cut rates. The photographer charged us about 25% of what he normally charged. The most expensive outlay (other than my wife's dress) was the four piece jazz band we hired, and we had to pay slightly above minimum due to the union contract, which was no big deal.
Now, I proposed in November, we set an October wedding, and in May my MIL announces she has breast cancer. Very treatable, she did very well, and she came through with flying colors. But she wanted to postpone the wedding because after the chemo she thought she would "look to bad" and didn't want people to think of her that way, which should have been my first clue I suppose. Meanwhile, the guest list is growing, and in addition to the complaining about "The chemo is making me so sick" we get "this is getting very expensive for us" every conversation we have with her.
My wife is a very creative person, and bought the materials for our invitation. She spent a few days putting the pieces together, tweaking it (sort of like painting your custom camo scheme on a model, you try it out first to get the process right, then after the first one is done, assembly line time), and got it looking great. In fact, a few of her friends asked her to do theirs for their wedding.
So, we meet MIL for lunch one day. She's has started chemo, but shes doing the whole brave face thing, and literally first thing through the door is she announces the guest list is getting bigger. I say, this isn't exactly what we were going for, but OK. Lunch, and afterwards my wife pulls out the invite. My MIL takes one look at it, declares it amateurish and says that she can't send that out, what will people think? I say "Is that really your call to make?" and she looks me right in the eye and says "Well, your not paying for it, I am so it is my call." and my wife gets up and leaves, in tears. Luckily we had come in separate cars, or she would have left me there.
I leave, follow my wife, get her home, make sure shes OK, then go to my in laws house about four hours later, under the pretense of stopping by work for a meeting.
I have a conversation with my mother in law. My father in law is there as well, but I talk for just a few minutes. I tell her that if she doesn't apologize to my wife in person, she's no longer invited to the wedding. She starts to interrupt me but I stare at her, the sort of stare that makes my Father in Law pause, swallow, and say "Hon, shut the hell up and listen." I tell her She's no longer welcome in my house, or at any of my wife's and I events. We don't want her money, or her "help", especially if it comes with the strings she's attached. I tell her she made my wife cry once, and that was one time to many, and if she does it again I will make sure that she will regret it for the rest of her life. And I tell her in no uncertain terms that if she doesn't apologize to my wife and she shows up at the wedding, I will first announce to the assembled guests what she has done, and then I will put one hand on the back of her neck, one hand on her beltline, and I will physically throw her out of the church. My Father in Law gets up, escorts me to the door and says "I had no idea this was going on, I'll take care of this," shakes my hand, and I leave. So I drive home, the long way, and when I get there, my in laws are there, my mother in law is upset, my wife is upset, but my mother in law apologized, and a general truce was called. We had a great wedding, and after party.
Kicker of the story is when my wife and I were on honeymoon, my parents helped my inlaws move our gifts into the house, and my mother in law thought it would be a good idea to tell my mom what had gone down, and asked my mothers opinion on the matter. My mom apparently said "I think that for someone to act that way is despicable." and my MIL agreed, saying she didn't approve of my behavior, to which my mom replied "No, you misunderstood me. I think what you did was horrible (although according to my dad and in law she used different verbiage), and if you had tried calling my sons bluff he never would have been able to throw you out the church, because I would have beaten him to it. You try anything like that again you make sure your willing to live with the consequences, because my son doesn't joke about things like that. Ever."
That was 13 years ago. It's been a Cold War since then, but things are starting to get...interesting.
Davout
