Groom Secretly Returns Bride’s Wedding Dress To Replace It With One His Mom Liked Better
It was out of line.
Juice Flair | Shutterstock Picking out your wedding dress is supposed to be a joyful experience, but for one bride, it ended in disaster after her fiancé returned her dress and replaced it with one that his mother picked out instead.
Posting to Reddit, the bride, 28, explained the situation and her subsequent reaction to the bizarre scenario. Needless to say, her experience had many women sounding the alarm about what seems like some questionable boundaries between her intended and his mom.
The bride-to-be said her fiancé returned her dress behind her back because it didn't fit his mom's 'vision.'
The bride explained that she and her fiancé, 33, were in the midst of wedding planning, but his mother managed to get herself involved in every decision. It wasn't just excitement either. She seemed to put up a fuss about every detail and "wasn't willing to agree on most things."
"My fiancé said that since he's her only son then I should respect and appreciate this 'vision' she has for the wedding and how it should be," she explained.
Natalia Bostan | Shutterstock
When it came to wedding dress shopping, her fiancé's mother insisted that she wanted to tag along with the bride's mother and friends. It wasn't long before the bride found the dress that she was happy with, but her future mother-in-law spotted a different dress that she liked even better.
"She picked a dress that she liked so much and said that 'she always pictured her son's bride in it,' mom and friends thought this line was creepy," she continued, adding that she turned down the woman's dress suggestion politely and went with her original choice. Her fiancé's mother immediately got upset and relayed the events to her son, who, in turn, became angry with his fiancée.
The groom-to-be insisted that his fiancée wear the wedding dress his mother picked out, even though it wasn't her style.
After arguing about it for some time, the two eventually dropped the topic altogether without finding common ground. She should have known better than to think the issue was dropped, however. Soon after, she returned home to find that her fiancé had returned the dress and replaced it with the one her mother-in-law had picked out.
Understandably, she became enraged, yelling at her fiancé for going behind her back and returning the dress, even after she explicitly told him that she didn't want to wear the dress his mother liked. "He got home and we had an argument. I then went to stay with one of my friends and he kept calling and calling than texting saying that I overreacted and it was his wedding too," she said.
Even though the bride should have the final say in what kind of wedding dress she wears while walking down the aisle, the woman's fiancé tried to defend his mother, saying that she had good intentions and just wanted to see her "vision" come true.
Commenters were unimpressed with his reasoning. "I have no idea why you want to marry this man. He clearly has one woman he holds above everyone. And guess what that's not you," one user wrote. "I am shocked at the audacity of his mother. And even more so of his behavior." Another user sagely pointed out, "But this isn't really about a dress, is it? This is about boundaries and about a fiancé who is already making it clear how you rate compared to his mom."
Boundaries with in-laws are integral to the success of a relationship, especially a newly married couple.
Relationships with in-laws, especially daughter and mother-in-law relationships, are notoriously volatile. There's a reason for the in-law trope that is so pervasive in movies and pop culture. In fact, a 2022 study found that both men and women have much more fractured relationships with their mothers-in-law than their mothers, and mothers specifically, have more conflict with their daughters-in-law than their biological daughters. What's more worrisome is that a whopping 2/3 of daughters-in-law said they thought their mothers-in-law exhibited a jealous love toward their sons — kind of like the relationship this bride-to-be described.
What that all means, however, is that in order for these budding relationships to start off on the right foot, everyone involved needs to be comfortable with setting healthy boundaries. "Boundaries let others know how they should treat us and how far they can go," Aura De Los Santos, a clinical and educational psychologist, explained to the knot. She went on to say, "At their core, they're simply ways we communicate our needs."
Ultimately, De Los Santos stressed, "They are a form of security we have against what we do not want in our life." Adding, "Boundaries protect us from situations we don't want to be in and provide us with well-being and satisfaction."
If this bride-to-be is going to forgive her fiancé for returning her dress to make his mom happy, it has to come with the understanding that their relationship cannot move forward without setting boundaries with his mother. If that's not something he's willing to do, she should really reconsider her wedding plans.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
