Mother-In-Law Tried To Sabotage A Bride's 'Strip Club' Wedding Dress Until The Store Owner Got Suspicious
Her mother-in-law thought she was slick, but her dressmaker was onto her.
Nothing brings out the worst in people like planning a wedding. And for one woman on Reddit, things got downright devious between her and her mother-in-law.
As she shared in a post to Reddit's "r/AmITheA--hole," a forum for people to ask for advice on how they handled a conflict, the bride's mother-in-law was so dead-set on having her input into the wedding that she was willing to get her way by any means necessary.
It all worked out until she got caught.
A bride's mother-in-law sabotaged her wedding dress by canceling the order.
The mother-in-law had very specific ideas about how the wedding should go, and they did not line up with the bride's. So she took things into her own hands.
"My future MIL [mother-in-law] has never been a fan of me for the entire duration of mine and my fiancé's relationship," she writes. "I'm honestly not sure why it is that she's always disliked me and been cold to me, but after multiple attempts over the years to build some type of relationship with her (we've been together for 4 years) nothing has worked."
She went on to say that her future mother-in-law "couldn't give two sh-ts about me" for the entire duration of her and her future husband's relationship—until it came time to plan their wedding, that is.
The mother-in-law has been meddling in every aspect of the wedding and trying to control all of the wedding planning.
Despite not paying for any of the wedding—the couple themselves are covering the costs with help from the bride's parents—the bride's mother-in-law "is giving her opinion on things as if she's footing the bill," she writes.
She's taken over everything from the color scheme to the food to the seating arrangements and is even demanding they not have an open bar so that the wedding reception doesn't become "too rowdy." But none of that held a candle to the way she inserted herself into the selection of the bride's wedding dress.
The mother-in-law said the bride's wedding dress looked like something from a 'strip club.'
The bride selected a wedding dress on the sexier side, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary nowadays. She describes it as, "low cut on the chest, and mermaid style" that complements her "curvy hourglass figure," and while it is a form-fitting gown "it's nothing I'd be ashamed of my family and friends seeing me in."
But her mother-in-law, as you might guess, firmly disagreed. The bride made the mistake of letting her mother-in-law come along on a shopping trip, and she hated the dress, telling the bride, "this is a wedding, not a strip club."
The bride bought the dress anyway, of course, because aside from the fact that it's her wedding, she's also paying for it. But that didn't stop her mother-in-law from trying to get her way.
The mother-in-law called the dress shop, impersonated the bride, and canceled the wedding dress order.
The bride writes that while she and her fiancé were cleaning up after dinner one night, the phone rang and it was the bridal shop where she bought her dress. "They were calling me concerned because apparently a lady (my MIL) called [them] pretending to be me and wanted to switch the dress I chose to a more appropriate dress."
Thankfully the sales associate realized the phone numbers didn't match up, and immediately called the bride to check in on the situation before actually canceling the order for the dress. But the incident left both the bride and her fiancé "livid." When she confronted her future mother-in-law, she denied it over and over, but finally "fessed up" as the bride put it, and so she disinvited her right then and there.
"I told her if she's so bothered by my dress to consider herself uninvited from the wedding and hung up on her," she writes.
Naturally, her future mother-in-law is infuriated, and she says she has been calling both her and her groom to try to defend herself and patch things up, but the bride says she's "had enough."
Still, she feels bad that her groom won't "get to have his planned dance with her," which is of course a long-running wedding tradition.
Wedding professionals say issues between bride and their future mother-in-law are an incredibly common problem while planning weddings.
Conflicts with mothers-in-law are pervasive in general, whether dealing with a wedding or not, in fact.
A 2022 study published by the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science found that both men and women report having more conflict with their mother-in-law than their actual mothers by a five-point margin, with 44% getting into drama with mother-in-law vs just 39% with their mom.
As a wedding planner and TikToker Denise Suthoff put it, "dealing with your mother-in-law on a normal day can be difficult, but during wedding planning she can go from mother-in-law to monster-in-law."
After all, this problem has become such a cultural mainstay that there's even a movie called "Monster-In-Law" where Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda duke it out over precisely this kind of meddlesome, underhanded drama.
Speaking from her experience, Suthoff suggests working toward open, forthright communication with the future mother-in-law, and remembering what a milestone a wedding is for parents of the bride and groom. Acknowledging this, Suthoff says, "may go a long way in her accepting you."
Of course, when your mother-in-law is canceling your wedding dress order, that ship has probably sailed. But hey, at least she didn't try to poison the bride like Jane Fonda did to J.Lo in "Monster-In-Law."
For every problematic mother-in-law, there's always one who's worse!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.