Every bride dreams of her wedding day being perfect, a harmonious blend of joy, love, and celebration. But what happens when someone disrupts this harmony with a shocking and hurtful comment? For one bride, her mother-in-law’s comment about her mother ruined what could have been the best day of her life.
She explained what happened.
I just got married and found out that during the wedding, my MIL and my actual mother got into a small... incident. To summarize, my MIL made some snide comments about my mother not being dressy enough for the wedding and insinuated that she didn't look nice.
My mother is quite a quiet woman, so she didn't say much, but offered a half-hearted compliment about my MIL's dress. My mother was wearing our culture's traditional wear, and everyone else thought that she looked lovely. My partner and I also thought she looked great.
I only found out about this the day after the wedding, and I was mad. I told my husband, and he was very angry and ready to go and confront his mother about this. But I told him not to.
For context, his mother is quite unreasonable and difficult to deal with and has been rather unpleasant. She's very vain and obsessed with her appearance. Knowing that, I wanted to get some sort of vengeance for my mum.
I dropped my wedding photographer a message with a short request. I asked for every single not-flattering photo of my MIL to be edited and added to our deliverables, and to remove any decent shots of her. The photographer had also mentioned previously that there may be some skin touch-ups or beautification effects added to people in the photos. I requested for there to be absolutely none done for my MIL.
I don't know what I expected, but BOY DID MY PHOTOGRAPHER DELIVER. There were pictures of her yelling at kids, another photo with food in her teeth, and so on. Not going to lie, I giggled a little.
Anyway, she saw the photos and she's upset. I feel a little bad for her because the photos are up for everyone to see. She demanded that I take some of them down, and I told her that I would need to ask the photographer to, and that might take a few days.
My partner feels quite guilty and caught in the middle, and he thinks that I shouldn't have done this, and I should have just let him confront his mother. He also dropped by my mum's house to speak with her about the incident and offered his apologies for it. I still stand by my decisions, though. Nobody messes with my mother and makes her feel bad about herself, ESPECIALLY on my wedding day.
But I guess I could have done the constructive thing and actually communicated with my MIL.
People stood on her side.
- "You’re an absolute legend! Let’s face it, talking to MIL was going to achieve nothing; you’ve hit her where it hurts, which is much, much better. All you did was make sure that her inner ugliness was showing on the outside.
If you do get the photographer to change the album, make sure she puts just average, untouched photos of your MIL and really nice touch-up, but not really conspicuously so, ones of your mum." Outrageous-Ad-9635 / Reddit - "You already tried to communicate with your MIL, your husband tried to communicate with her previously. Did she hear you? No.
Maybe it's a bit childish, but it seems that she understands the humiliation. Now, with your husband, you can get to her home and explain to her that her feelings are exactly the kind of feelings people have when they are humiliated by her!" Lyzab77 / Reddit - "Your MIL never learned empathy, but I'm pretty sure she just learned consequences." goingincirclestoo / Reddit
- "Number one rule, people: you never unjustifiably insult someone else's mother. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes..." No_Apartment_5578 / Reddit
- "Were there smarter solutions? Probably. Were there more awesome solutions? Probably not." joergensen92 / Reddit
- "I think you should tell your MIL that you know how she treated your mom at your wedding, and these pictures of her will not be taken down until she apologizes to your mom. And if she ever treats her poorly again, the pictures will go right back up." Stormandsunshine / Reddit
Through this experience, she learned that while revenge may not always be the answer, standing up for those we care about and refusing to let spite go unanswered can be its own form of justice.