If Your Mother-In-Law Wears Her Wedding Dress To Your Nuptials, What’s She Going To Do When You Have A Baby?

shutterstock_176634134I love a good crazy mother-in-law story, and the Internet is full of them. Some are hilarious. Some–like the woman who threw out all her daughter-in-law’s pumped, frozen breast milk–are rage-inducing. Others are just bizarre, like the lady complaining that her mother-in-law announced plans to re-wear her wedding dress at her son’s upcoming wedding.

The future bride who wrote in to Dear Prudence seems pretty chill about the whole affair. She is not so much angry as she is like, “WTF?” Which would be a completely normal reaction. Being a chill bride, she’s inclined to let her mother wear her wedding gown, but she’s understandably a bit concerned that it sets a bad precedent. If the mother-in-law wears a wedding gown to her daughter-in-law’s wedding, what’s she going to do when there’s a baby? I predict her showing up in a hospital gown and faking contractions like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale.

“My future mother-in-law would like to wear her wedding dress to our wedding. I’m less concerned about the dress and more concerned about what this says about our future relationship. She is a very kind, considerate person, and I am certain that she knows this is not a very nice thing to do. What could her possible motivations be and what should I do about it? I’m inclined to let her wear whatever she wants, as it doesn’t bother me as much as maybe something else would. Should I pick my battles, as they say? Or will not saying something make me seem like a pushover?”

While it is true that nobody will be confused about who the bride is, it is also true that it is impolite to try to upstage the bride on her wedding day, and this definitely counts as upstaging the bride because if you went to a wedding where this happened, all you would talk about afterwards is, “So … the mom’s nuts, right?”

Because that really will be the main result of the wedding if the mother-in-law wears her wedding gown, which is certainly at least 20 to 30 years out of date right now. Oh god, I accidentally visualized it and now I suddenly really want to go to a wedding where the groom’s mother shows up in a puff-sleeved white gown and veil from 1980. That would be delicious and awkward and a story I would never stop telling. I would write a one-act play about it. It

Maybe there’s nothing malicious about it and the lady just loves her dress. I mean, my dress was fab and I’d love to wear it again, but that’s probably not going to happen. I certainly hope that if I made a move to wear my wedding gown to someone else’s wedding, my kids would love me enough to say, “Mom, stahhhhp!”

Photo: Shutterstock

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