Weddingbee boards

Well I have finally gotten FH to admit it would have been better to elope...

So FMIL has a stationary business and therefore by default, is handling all of our wedding stationary needs, including STDs.  We ordered them and they came in last week.  FMIL then takes it upon herself to start addressing all of 'her' envelopes and asks me for the rest of the guest list so she can do that for us too.  Seems helpful, right?

NO...more like sneaky and controlling to me!  She sent me a rough guest list right after we got engaged and I was OK with it because a) there are a lot of people that absoultely will not come (ie they are Orthodox Jews and will not come to a Saturday wedding) and b) we had to guarantee a minimum amount at our venue and with everyones lists (my parents, FH and I, FILs) we would not go over the minimum guarantee.  My parents are paying for the whole reception and FILs have not offered up anything.

Back to the STDs.  I had a gut feeling that FMILs list may have changed since the initial list, so FH and I stopped by FILs house to "see the STDs" and also so I could check out her guest list. SURPRISE - there are people on her list that were NOT on the original list.  FMIL wasn't home, but FFIL and FSIL are there and see me kind of getting upset - they talk to FMIL later and tell her she has to give me a guest list and that she needs to have a 'B' list - not ALL of her potential guests can get STDs!!  FH also tells her that we have a guest limit and she cannot go over it.

OK so FFIL types up a more formal list and emails it to us - it has now GROWN TO 90 PEOPLE (from 70-75 before) and 1 couple is on the B list!!!!! WTF!!  My parents aren't even inviting HALF that amount and they are paying for the whole reception!!!!  FH and I have a resonable list of maybe 50 with some of that on a B list.  Our budget is for 140 guests.

FH calls FMIL and tries to explain that she has WAY too many people and needs to cut at least 20.  She yells at him and says that a lot of people aren't going to come, and that her list is based off of his bar mitzvah list from OVER 15 YEARS AGO AND SHE PAID FOR THAT!  FH tries to explain that even with all the relatives not coming, she still has too many people, and that my parents are paying for all of this and she cannot invite whoever she wants.  She hangs up on him at some point.

He calls back and she finally starts slashing the list, she still has the largest share of guests but it now falls in our limit of 140.  She also agreed to pay if we went over 140.

Mind you, she still has all of her STDs because they are waiting for some addresses and the envelopes are half addressed.  I, being completely paranoid and a control freak, want her STDs because I feel like she will still send them out knowing she cannot invite some people.  FH says I am ridiculous (quite possible) but the fact that she was just going to have me send over my and my parents lists and SHE would send everything out, inviting whoever she wanted without telling me or my parents, just is BEYOND rude and sneaky and I do not trust her.

I mean really, HOW DARE SHE????

OK...end rant :)  Slowly calming down...

@mrskesslertobe:  Well I would except despite them not offering to pay for anything (which is fine, they can't afford it), when we asked how much we owed for them, FFIL said not to worry about it...so it's a gift.

Also since some of the envelopes are 'half addressed' we can't really take them and have someone else address the other half.  And we don't have enough spare envelopes to do them over.  Everyone else's envelopes are getting nice neat labels courtsey of mail merge :)

@sassypants: Thank you!  We are kind of assuming that she may also pay for the invitations because she mentioned getting them hand calligraphied (is that a word?).  However for the calligrapher we HAVE to give them an excel sheet and she is computer illiterate thank GOD and would not be able to do anything with the list.  We will be insisting on being the ones to mail those out as we'll get the postage and all.  At least I figured all of this out before the actual invitations - now I know how to handle it.

Thank god I am a control freak and would not have sent her the rest of the guest list for the STDs!!

I think you have all handled this well. Good communication and I hope that you can give her the benefit of the doubt for the STDs and then make sure YOU send the invitations yourself when it comes to it. I'm sure you can think up a reason to have them at your house before they get posted and not at hers/her workplace. But well done :)

@VickyAurea: Thank you! I am hoping this is pretty much resolved for now.

The ironic thing about this situation is that FH's and my parents have become VERY good friends since even before we got engaged, they go out together once a week! When we got engaged and FMIL started getting on my nerves, I would complain to my parents and couldn't understand how they didn't see the same things I did.

Then one day I asked my mom if they talked about the wedding when they were with FH's parents, and she said NO! I couldn't believe it, but that explains why they haven't had a problem with her - I never had a problem with FMIL until she became FMIL!  So they never talked about the guest list amongst themselves - obviously FH and I have better communication skills than our parents!

So, I just had to give an update.  We got all of his parents' addressed STDs - OMG.  Half of them had misspellings/missing/wrong information.  In addition, a bunch of them were addressed too high on the envelope to put the stamp on. 

This was the sloppiest and most unacceptable thing to me.  I felt like this was a work project where I had to review someone's work and make corrections before sending out.  These are HER friends and she can't even get their names or addresses correct? I was able to fix some and re-print others, but some are just going out with some typos.  Hopefully her friends realize that she addressed them and don't think we are the sloppy ones.

She did make a point of saying that "this is my son's wedding and it's going to be done right" when we picked out our STDs.  I guess that didn't apply to taking the time to review her friends and family's addresses.