The Mother of All Wedding Gossip

My husband and I just celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary. We had already been together for about a decade before that, so really the only thing that changed was our tax filing status. We did, however, get to have a lovely ceremony at a local nature preserve that has a truly lovely pavilion by the lake.

The weather was perfect, the day was magical, a beautiful swan showed up in the lake just as the ceremony was starting, my brother and brother-in-law went for a pre-ceremony walk through some of the paths and came back with some Praying Mantis pals in hand / on shoulders; we almost couldn’t ask for better.

Almost.

As I said, the venue was local, specifically for us. But both my and my husband’s family is spread out widely, between one and four hours’ drive away. However, it was our wedding, and we had already made the trip out to visit others plenty of times before for birthdays, holidays, and yes, weddings! Siblings, cousins, and in-laws were all happy to come celebrate with us, with the only negative commentary coming from my mother.

She just didn’t understand why we wanted to have our wedding “in the middle of nowhere.” “Nowhere” is the town I grew up in, where she had lived with my father for decades before he passed, and she moved back up to the city. She complained on behalf of everyone else about all the traveling and expense and difficulty and accommodations, and everything else.

No complaints actually FROM them, of course. My then-fiancé checked with my brother to make sure everything was okay, and my bro backed up my statement that my mom just liked to share rumors and gossip to get people talking to her, because she always needed some amount of attention. Even if that attention caused problems for others, because she just kept picking at old wounds that everyone else had already gotten past.

On our wedding, though? NOT acceptable, and I had words with her, calmly and in private, but just a reminder that today was NOT her day, she was NOT allowed to start causing grief, she could, in fact, simply talk with the family and enjoy a nice day like everyone else did.

Apparently, my mother took this as both an insult and a challenge, because the “rumors” started going twice as fast. This person was commenting on their in-law’s weight. That one was trying to get others to pay for their hotel. Cousin’s plus one was actually a vegan and was talking nonsense about the meat at the meal. Uncle was talking about how a same-sex couple wasn’t right.

LITERALLY NONE OF IT WAS TRUE.

She went from sharing/exaggerating actual things to just inventing problems to drive a wedge between people. All with this impish little smile on her face, like she was playing a harmless prank.

Nope. Not on our wedding. Explosions went off. Shouting occurred.

Mom was kicked out of the wedding, and everyone either turned off phones or blocked her because, OF COURSE, she had to start calling people before even leaving the parking lot. Apparently, she thought she could start a family civil war and get others to leave with her? I don’t know, but there was so much less tension and bad mood after she left.

My cousin was the one who delivered the message that my husband and I would talk to her again when she apologized, and swore to never pull such a stunt again.

So, what brought up this memory? As I said, we just celebrated the one-year anniversary of our wedding… And of the so-far last time we talked to my mother.

CORRECTION: This story was incorrectly tagged as ‘Right’ instead of ‘Related’.