Further Evidence That Moms Shouldn’t Be Involved In Your Wedding Night

My mother and I have always had a troubled relationship, but after my mother had a period of ill health, on the run up to our wedding, my now-husband and I — also male — tried to patch things up.

My mother doesn’t know what it is to be poor; her parents had a decent amount of money — not rich, but definitely comfortable — and while she’s a complete penny pincher I never had the impression as a child that she was struggling or tightening her belt.

My husband and I, however, were poor. Dirt poor. We barely scraped by on benefits for several years due to my being disabled and my husband being my carer. So, our wedding was as cheap and DIY as we could make it while still feeling like an “occasion.”

My mother offered to buy flowers — actually, insisted, despite us not wanting them due to my husband’s hay fever — but much more appreciated was her offer to pay for a hotel room for the wedding night. Our best couple of friends were taking us for a single-day honeymoon, so that was nice! We still had to get home to drop off our wedding stuff and pick up our stuff for the next day before going to the hotel, but as we lived in a shared house, it helped the whole thing feel like one event.

My mother asked us which hotel we wanted; there was one literally two minutes walk from us, and one in the town centre, which involved our best friends picking us up and taking us there as we didn’t drive. We knew nothing about either and were going frantic with getting everything done, so I asked her to look into them and give us some information. She came back and said she went for the one in the town centre “because it was ten pounds cheaper.”

As it turned out, the one near us was much quieter, had a four-star rating, and had breakfast included. It would have allowed us to drop back home that much easier. Instead, we had to pay out of pocket for breakfast, listen to loud drunks passing through the town or drinking at bars, and had a far smaller room, and of course, we couldn’t get home easily.

It feels petty to complain about it; she still paid for the room for us. But I’m still a little bitter that she just looked at the price tag and, despite being very comfortable, financially, and never helping us out in that regard, took the worse option for ten freakin’ pounds less, leaving us to spend money we hadn’t accounted for in order to have breakfast in the morning.

By the way, we’re doing much better now. I’m self-employed and my husband and I have a great relationship. And as this story is really the tiny tip of the iceberg, I’m no longer in contact with my mother.