My Mother Has Made My Wedding Into Hers

I`m sorry if this is going to sound harsh honey, but yes, your husband is right. You should have stood up to her. I suspect that your mom manipulated you and knew that you`d cave in once she turned the tap on. If you dont stand up to her now, you could spend your entire married life inconveniencing you and hubby becos you`re pleasing her.
STAND UP TO HER NOW!
Tell her you love her but its your wedding and his, so she has to be considerate and let you have your day. If you think thats daunting, picture how upset your wonderful hubby is, cos someone is ruining what should be his special day. (If it was your MIL doing this, how would you feel?) If you want to elope, by all means do so, but the issue here isnt just your wedding, its your marriage, and in marriage, your husband should ALWAYS come first.

Hmmm...Something I`m not clear on here is who is paying for the wedding. Is your mom adding tons of people to the list at your expense? At hers?

Is there any way you can strike a compromise? Let some of the relatives come but no friends? Often people do understand being cut out if you tell them how small the wedding is--the trick is, don`t invite one person from the office and not the others. Just leave them all off.

Another solution might be to allot everyone a certain number of invitations--your parents, his parents, you, and him. If its 80, make it 20/20/20/20, or something. Those people can use those invitations any way they wish. But they may not go over the number. Maybe your mom would be more responsive if she realized that her asking 50 people meant that your fiancee`s parents only get 5 people, or something. Surely some sense of fairness will kick in then.

If all else fails, be sensitive but stress how much you want this to be small. She`ll probably adjust to the idea in time...

Hope that helps. I`m guessing here too. Its hard to be in the middle!

If your mom is paying for this wedding, I don`t think there is much you can do. It sounds like your fiance is a bit jealous because your "side" will out number his "side". That`s really immature and not fair to your mom. If the added guests are close friends and relatives, I would just accept that the guest list will be bigger than you expected and be thankful for the gifts! (lol). However, if the added guests are casual aquaintances of your mothers who you don`t even know, you could have an honest talk with her and explain that you want a more "intimate" wedding and hadn`t planned on inviting people you don`t know.

My father tried pulling this crap with me. My fiance and I wanted a small gust list and my father offered to give us $4,000 to pay for the reception. After I had picked the site and and chose our guest list (about 100 people) completely equal with 50% being my fiance`s side, and 50% being my side, my father laughed at it and told be I had to add 40 more people that HE wanted, including people I DID NOT LIKE and people I didn`t know. When I told him that it wasn`t fair to my fiance who had wanted to add more people but coudn`t , he responded with " Who`s paying for the wedding?" He told me that if we wanted our guest list to be our own then we should pay for it. The best part was that he invited my moms cousin who I don`t get along with and who my mother does not at all feel comfortable around. This was a woman who my father always reffered to as "crazy" when he and my mother were still married. Now that my parents are divorced, he insisted I invite her just to make my mother uncomfortable! Amazing, isn`t it?! Whats funny is that after I added the extra 40 people, it went up to $5500 and when I told my father that, he told me my fiance and I would have to cut some of OUR friends from the list to "make it work". I told my father to shove it, none of those extra 40 people were coming, and that I was going to take off some of his friends who I didn`t like, but who I put the on the origional list just for him. I told him that we would pay for it ourselves, and we did.
In the end, you have to be the desision maker. Even if your mother is paying for the whole thing, she should at least be willing to compromise whith you. It is not her wedding, even if she is footing the bill. I don`t think your fiancee is being unreasonable. Don`t let this situation put a strain on your relationship.

HURRAY for Emily! ! !

I know exactly how you feel! My mom is doing this to me too! Whether she is paying for the wedding or not, she needs to remember it`s YOUR wedding! I think your fiance is right, you do need to stand up to her.