Planning in Peace: Sharon Naylor's blog to being a harmonious bride at iVillage.com
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Handling Meddling Moms #1
Today starts a new series on one of the toughest, most stressful parts of planning your wedding when family is involved. What do you do when your mom or mom-in-law are WAY too invested in the plans, push their ideas on you, drop a guilt-bomb on you every time they want something their way, and pout when you don't give in? Dealing with the moms comes with a huge amount of baggage, since no matter how old you are, you still have a tug of wanting to make your mom happy. She's excited about the wedding, after all, so it's tough to say No when her ideas clash with yours. But you have to...because not only will you lose your most-wanted elements of the wedding day, but -- even worse -- you'll allow a pattern of her bossing you around. Give in now, and you may not ever be able to rein her in. Yikes!
So today's tip for getting back to Peaceful Planning with the moms is this: learn how to put on the brakes. Up until now, you may have allowed many of Mom's ideas since you were trying to be nice [People Pleaser alert!]. But it's just getting out of hand. So call her or visit her and say this: "Mom, I love it that we're getting to plan the wedding together, and I know you're excited that we'll have (menu item), (song), (flower type in the centerpieces), and (religious reading in the ceremony.) So let's hold off on talking about any more plans for a while so that (groom) and I can talk about what we want for the rest of the wedding plans, okay?" Just establish a stall. Make it a few weeks. And if she still calls or e-mails with ideas, tell her you'll get to those ideas next month. YOU have to set good boundaries, and you can do so with a smile. Very often, it's not what the moms are suggesting, it's how often they're suggesting something that freaks you out.
Moms may not admit it, but they tend to throw a ton of ideas at you before The Other Mom has a chance to do so. It all comes from wanting to stay Top Mom in your life. So keep that in mind, and practice good empathy when Mom 'forgets' and keeps those ideas coming. A gentle reminder is all that's needed to buy you some time and return you to peace. Tell your groom that you've established a Breathing Period so that he can slow down his mom too.
Click here for more tips on how to handle your mom and his:
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My story is that my daughter and I started planning her wedding together- we picked the location, colors, wedding dress and so on. 6 months before the wedding my daughter calls me up and tells me that she is gay and tells me the name of the woman- (its a woman that I could not stand from the day I met her and told my daughter so) she at the time told me not to worry - that she just works with her- so I didn’t worry- anyway- I told her to either cancel the wedding or postpone it until she can figure out her feelings and not hurt this man by doing this to him-after all he adored her-she said that she is going to go thru the wedding anyway and I got upset at her and told her "then why call me and tell me this”. Anyway to make a long story short- she replaces her sister with this woman as her maid of honor and I told her of my displeasure and she told me not to come to the wedding if I didn’t like her friend and proceeded to finish off the wedding plans with this woman’s mom. I was not invited to the wedding and never attended- she kept this woman as her lover all these years and even subjected her husband to it by telling him that if he didn’t like it she would leave him- he loved her so much that he let this woman move in and lived this way for several years.- paid all of my daughters bills- supported her lover and when they were both financially able to move out on their own-by then my daughter had a son of 2 years old (which I never get to see due to this woman) they did- leaving the man broken- I can say that I almost hate my daughter for this- how could I had given birth to such a monster I don’t know- but she called me a meddling mom and told everyone that would listen that I was trying to ruin her wedding plans- this may not qualify - it just struck a nerve and I felt I had to talk about it.
wow, your daughter is CRAZY! I feel sooo sorry for you and the guy she married. You are completely right... she is a monster and a lot worse!