Weddings bring out the best and the worst in people. Sure, they’re a celebration of love and you get to party in your best get-up amongst flowers and great music. But they’re also high-pressure, and the importance and stakes involved in starting a marriage can lead to some mishaps and bad behaviour on the big day - from both guests and the wedding party.
If you were ever looking for an example of a high-stress wedding story or a bad wedding guest etiquette example, Reddit would be the place to start. More specifically, the wedding shaming subreddit, where wedding themes, brides, grooms, vendors or - in this case - mother in laws (MIL) are shamed for their bad behaviour, poor taste, or whatever else people can find to complain about.
Normally, this subreddit is filled to the brim with undeniably bad behaviour - usually from brides or mothers-in-law. But one story posted two days agois a bit of a head-scratcher and a room divider. It’s hard to tell who the victim actually is and whether the right port of call was made. 607 votes and many comments later, people have some big thoughts about the whole thing.
The post is from a bride who recently married her groom and had a problem with the behaviour of her mother in law during the event. It goes like this:
‘My husband and I got married a few years ago, but I recently discovered this sub, and thought about how my lovely MIL wore her own wedding gown to our wedding. This woman was far far from the Jocasta type, and actually not much of an attention seeker, but she was a perpetual victim, and in her mind, I had committed a grievous sin, when I vetoed the dress she wanted to wear to our wedding (colour clashed, not MOG appropriate) I guess she thought she was getting some revenge on me.
She had gotten married a year and a half before us, so it wasn't like she pulled some 80s wedding dress out of a box. This was actually gorgeous, thankfully cream not white, and it definitely stood out at our fairly simple wedding. I was very upset. It was a slap in the face, and honestly, I have some insecurities about my looks.
We got married young, neither of us could legally drink, and there are some alcohol issues in my family, so we decided to skip the alcohol altogether. I got some drinks about how we should pour red wine on her, but alas there was no red wine.
Now I'm not saying this is the best solution, or his finest moment (though God damn it, I'm proud of him) but my husband finally had enough. She had snubbed me all evening and had an attitude. Before the cake cutting, he cut a very large piece and went over to where she was sitting, and just full-on caked her in the face. It was glorious (and I'm not a fan of couples doing it). Her dad, who is the biggest enabler in the world, laughed at her. Even her husband laughed at her. My husband, with his shiny spine [this refers to people growing a spine and means that you don't let yourself be a doormat because of others wants or requests] said ‘well, they told me it was time to cut the cake, and I thought you wanted to be the bride.’
MIL honestly took it a bit better than I expected. She sort of shifted focus from hating me, to attacking her husband with cake for laughing at her. She ended up laughing it off eventually, but I still have the glorious imagine of when he first did it, her utter shock and fury.’
I’m sure the poster wishes she’d let her mother in law wear her original dress choice now! What could look worse than a guest in a wedding dress covered in a cake? And why was she accepting and rejecting guest outfits in the first place?
So... yeah. Pretty devastating wedding scene. And it doesn’t stop there. The mother in law ended up walking out of the wedding and getting into a fight with her husband. The original poster writes ‘she had to walk out like that and everyone got a nice view of her. I'm not even mad that she turned it into a cake fight, because her husband is the one who put her up to wearing the dress and apparently wanted to buy her a new one because her dress was cream and not white, and he wanted her in full-on bridal white (this man despises us).’
Honestly, it sounds like the mother-in-law's husband was the real enemy here. Wanting his wife to look ‘full-on bridal’ for someone else’s wedding? Yikes.
This mother in law and her husband do sound like mean people, but did this couple have the best way of dealing with it? According to the comment section, not really.
‘I would have been extremely embarrassed to be a guest at your wedding, you and your husband and everyone involved sound as bad as your mother in law. What a mess,’ one user wrote in response to the story, while another replied ‘Tell me you’re not mature enough to be married without saying it.’ Another said ‘I’m not surprised your mother in law doesn’t talk to you anymore.’
The OP continues to write that her mother in law's husband got his dream job and a few months later, they moved out of state. ‘Thankfully they moved out of state. She can't be bothered to call or visit, so we have almost completely no contact, except the occasional holiday at her parents' house.’
But some people are taking the original poster’s side, with one user writing ‘your mother is being a complete child’ and another user replying ‘I got so lucky with my MIL - she was a sweetheart. Yours sounds like a really difficult person.’
They have a point - the mother in law in this story clearly has a bit of an evil side and choosing an actual wedding to get your revenge on someone, is awful, but I can’t help but feel sympathy towards her having to walk out covered in cake while everyone laughed at her.
Smearing cake in your mothers face is a bold move. But then again, so is rocking up to your son’s big day in your very own wedding dress. How hard is it to tell someone they’re dressed inappropriately and to go home and change?
Ultimately, the post is causing a divide – the commenters seem to be overwhelmingly 'team MIL', but we’re not sure it’s that cut and dry. Can you really control how you react when someone turns up to your wedding in an actual bridal dress? But what do you think… evil mother in law, or a badly behaved bride?