I just can't let this one go - I just still can't believe it, and how, thru all of the crap my ILs put me thru in the past, I have never ever been embarrassed to be 'one of them' before like this...
So, the mother of the groom paid for the rehearsal dinner. There were almost 40 people there, and it was about $45 a head. So, a very nice dinner. She's a single mom of 3 grown kids - a kindergarten teacher. Nice lady. I know this was a lot of money for her...hell, it should be considered a lot of money for anyone...upwards of $1500 or more?!
So, the first full day we are in the state of the wedding, we go to lunch with SIL (the bride to be extraordinaire), MIL, FIL and the three of us. We got P's tux, yada yada yada. We get back to the house, and the three of them have a martini while H naps. So, like, 2:30 in the afternoon, which to me, for just sitting around the house is a bit early, but that's just me.
Then MIL starts on about how, although they think the restaurant is charging too much for the alcohol, they think the groom's mother should be paying for the alcohol. They say that the least she should do is pay for a glass of wine for everyone to toast with. This gets my MIL on a tangent for over an hour about how "this isn't how our family does this" etc etc etc, and that SIL has to get groom to get his mother to explain to every...single...person...what she's doing, because "our friends" won't get it. Yeah, you are decently well off, but come on - if you were paying for this too, you'd be squirming.
Then the groom calls SIL, and she dutifully relays all this to groom. Aggressively to the groom...I feel bad for him - he's now between her and his mother the day before the wedding. She has told him she will not pay for the alcohol straight out, multiple times apparently. Then I ask her, if she cares so much, why not pay for it herself with the groom. Her answer?! "Well, not that it really matters (which always means it does), she would kinda be getting the credit for it when we were the ones paying". WTF?
MIL decides that she won't drink anything as a sign of protest. P and I are feeling it's not worth drinking because, well, we have a lot to do the next day with the wedding and all, and we're tired. So the tangents continue into the afternoon. FIL is strangely silent. Smart man.
We get to the restaurant, and everything is fine. The waitstaff tell us that x, y and z are included. Everyone is fine with this. It's common. One of the IL's friends makes a loud and obnoxious comment about the jack daniel's sauce for the bread pudding: "I thought there was no alcohol at this event!" So, apparently, MIL spent the socializing time before dinner telling her friends how embarassed and ashamed she is of this to cause the friend to mouth off about it?!?!
We left "early" at 9pm cause The Peanut was cooked. So the next morning, we hear how the rest of the party went...I guess the waiters came around at the end to collect for the adult beverages that were purchased and the same friend (who is obscenely rich, btw), stands up and says "clearly so that everyone knew what a nice thing he was doing"(quoting my MIL) (humility is not valued a lot in this family apparently) that he was "sick of this nickel and diming crap" and that he was going to pay it all.
I asked if the grooms mother heard this. MIL didn't seem to see what I was worried about...she said "If not, I made sure bride knew, so that she could get groom to let his mom know what a nice thing friend did."
Ummmm...saying that your host that just spent over $1500 on dinner is nickeling and diming isn't a "nice thing." It's being a show-off rich prick. And the info to set him off was fed to him, I'm pretty sure on purpose, by the pissy off MIL.
I feel so bad for groom's mom...I didn't get to talk to her a lot, but she seemed really nice. And even if she was a stark raving mad bitch, no one should be ungrateful like that. And apparently, most of my ILs were that night....
The rub of all this? When we got married 13 years ago, my ILs were such jerks about everything, because MIL didn't want me taking her baby away. P had to out and out ask them if they were going to offer to do anything (say, pay for the rehearsal or the bar tab or whatever) 2 months ahead (we were engaged for almost 2 years), because they weren't tactful enough to offer. They finally grudgingly offered to pay for the bar tab for the wedding...my mother and father ended up telling us to use the money for our honeymoon, because they didn't need something that was so unwillingly offered. Also, when my mother wrote a letter to MIL about x y and z with the wedding (one item being a memorial candle for her departed parents), she never even bothered to respond. But now, they are mad that their friends martinis aren't paid for. I don't like hypocrites.
I wasn't there, I was not a part of all this, but I'm embarrassed to ever see his mom again, how tactless our family and their friends acted...
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