As I’m new I’ll give you a little info on our day – We are having a very small wedding, the ceremony venue can only hold us + 20 guests (all are family members). After this we return to our house for a quick tea party with the ceremony guests. At 5pm we open our doors to the rest of our family and close friends for a garden party to celebrate the day.
The dilemma I have is with the evening list, we have been VERY strict and also VERY fair with our invites – only our other close relatives (that we could not fit in the ceremony) and our closest friends have been invited, we have about 3-4 other people who don’t fall into these categories but we wanted to invite. We also gave 1 spare evening invitation to each mum so they could invite a friend and here is where the problems begin! (Our total for the evening is about 40 guests)
MIL wants another 1! So potentially, this could be another 4 guests (I’d have to give another to my mum too and I assume they would have partners – I would not ask them to come alone), I am not happy about this for a few reasons:
1) She has not been interested in the actual wedding at all, the only thing she is ever bothered about is who she thinks we should invite and who we shouldn’t invite (she has specifically asked us not to invite certain people). I am upset about this because I have tried so hard to involve her in the planning. For example, she is very artistic so I asked if she would like to take care of decorating the ceremony venue and only the other day she was asked by someone what the colour scheme is, to which she replied with something totally different accompanied by a dig (the colours are red and white – we are having an alice in wonderland theme so have a few secondary colours, pink, silver and some black – her reply when questioned was ‘the colours are red and black, black’s a bit weird’). We had actually gone round her house to discuss the decorating, answer any questions and give any help we could - she spent the whole time fuzzing about in her kitchen by the time she had finished it was about 10:30pm and we had to leave!
2) She has not provided me at all with a list of my OH’s family members, I have had to rely on him for this, when I have asked her for addresses, it’s been like pulling teeth, I had to get them from his Aunt in the end as I got fed up of asking.
3) She tried to trick me by lying – yep, she actually looked me in the eyes and said ‘you did tell me I could invite some of my friends didn’t you’ when I replied No, she then tried to tell me it must have been my OH (which I also knew she was lying about).
4) She told us she thought we should invite my OH’s sisters ‘in laws’, I said we had already discussed it and decided not to because we have only met them once, they are very lovely but are not more important than our own friends who we haven’t invited. Her response was, ‘maybe I’ll give her my spare invite then’ – I hand on heart know that she had no intention of doing this, she was just trying to manipulate me.
5) A few weeks ago I gave her the invite for herself and also a blank evening one for her ‘friend’, since then she has not been in contact about the wedding at all apart from to visit my OH at work (he is working round the corner from where she lives) to tell she can’t decide which friend to ask so could she get an extra invite. I actually put up a post on my facebook about a week before this, to say me and OH had visited the venue, she did not even ask him about this!! I sent her an email with some pictures last week to help her out and she hasn't even acknowledged it!
So basically I have refused, mainly because she should not be going behind my back (she has had no other wedding related discussions with my OH - he agreed that she asked him because she thought I would say no). I have told him that because she used these technique she has blown it because if it works for her this time, she’ll think it is the way to get her own way in future. How dare she put my OH in this position, it has really angered me that she would try to get him to go against me, knowing full well it could cause an argument, all for her own personal gain.
I just find her attitude so selfish, we have so much to think about already, I cannot believe she thinks her friend choice is some kind of priority?? Honestly, where are all the offers of help etc (she only planned his sisters wedding 2 years ago, she must have lots of advice to offer)??
Am I being unreasonable???
