Big rant, fed up

You are right about the BM dresses. Have you offered to contribute to the cost so you can get the dresses you want? If your mum won't listen to your assertions about £40 being a reasonable cost (in fact we all know it's cheap!), that seems the only other way to resolve the issue.

With regard to your strapless dress, have you checked with your priest that strapless is okay? If so, then don't worry about it. My mum is trying to convince me into a below the knee dress to cover my scars and misshapen left knee from a lot of surgery I had, but everyone at the wedding knows I have scars and I know above the knee is what I feel more comfortable in, so I'm just doing what I want.

I agree with you. £40 is a modest amount for a BM dress but I'm sure you can find something nice. £10 is just too risky.

Strapless dresses are fine for church weddings. Many brides also wear a veil which covers their back & shoulders, or a lace bolero. Book the day you want or you will regret it and hold it against your mum for the rest of your life.

I did offer to pay for all the dresses but she's making me feel bad about that too as it makes her feel less involved. I know at my sisters wedding her husbands parents gave them loads of money as they lived in South Africa and couldn't help with the planning, that made my mum feel really bad cos they didn't pay as much towards it even though they helped with the planning, it's a similar situation with us, OHs parents paid for half our venue as they felt they wouldn't be much use with the planning and now my mum feels the same again. So I don;t wanna take away anything they wanna help with but if she's going to make my life difficult over it I'd rather do it al myself!

I haven't checked with the vicar about the dress yet but to be honest I am now considering cancelling the church and just having the ceremony in a hotel or something Mainly because she has literally just told me that I can't have anything green in a church!!!!!! urgh I wanna cry

I've never heard of not having green in church (I have been a churchgoer my whole life) and I can't find anything on the internet to corroborate that either. If she's going to say such weird things, ask her for evidence to back it up!

This is how l would resolve it. I have been to a fair few church weddings and brides do wear strapless dresses -some wear shrugs etc.

I have been to two church weddings where the bridesmaids were in green. WTF is she on?

I got my BM dresses in the sales, and they cost me £20-45 (2 different styles) and I thought that was cheap. I think £10 will be nigh on impossible, or if it is possible, it's likely to me either made entirely of Lycra, obscenely revealing or very low quality. Or potentially a combination of all 3. I agree that they will only be wearing them for a few hrs, but many people but a new outfit for a wedding and wouldn't think twice to paying upwards of £50.

Strapless dresses are perfectly acceptable in most churches, aside from maybe Greek Orthodox. But you might be best to talk to your priest. Having been an avid watcher of 'Big Fat Gypsy Weddings' I very much doubt there are any actual dress codes anymore...

With regards to green: my mum has always said that it is unlucky to wear green to a wedding, it's something that my grandmother and aunts always said too. No idea why, and no one else ever seems to know of this rule, but they have always said it as if it is an unwritten rule for life. I personally quite like green, and, especially if we had been having a more earthy/pagan style wedding, I would probably have gone for green bm dresses as it would have suited all of my bms!

I wore a strapless dress for my first wedding, in an Anglican church. I just wore a fingertip length veil so it covered my shoulders. If you're really worried, check with the vicar, then tell your Mum if he's ok with it, then she can be too.