Weddingbee boards

Long post.

A few months before our wedding, husband's sister got married.  After the ceremony, they spent forever getting every combination of extended family in formal portraits.  I didn't want to do that as I thought most of the formal portraits would never make it to print and we just didn't have the time.

At our wedding, we were out on the lawn doing bridal party and parent photos and I said "Somebody get the Hislastnames!" meaning his parents.  Well, whoever went to get them interpreted that as husband's father's whole entire extended family.  So they all came out and we got a photo with them.  We did not get a photo with my mom's family, my father's family, or husband's mother's family.

Unfortunately, we actually forgot to get a photo with husband's mother's mother.  We didn't want her to have to run all around the lawn of the park for the portraits so we were going to get a photo with her inside the venue but got so distracted that it never happened.  I apologized the next day.  Husband and I said that as a Christmas gift, we would take his grandmother to get a formal portrait with us.

Well, two days after the wedding (before she even called me to congratulate me), husband's mother told him that she is planning to hire a professional photographer to come on Thanksgiving to get photos of her family since we forgot to get them at the wedding.  For some reason this really pisses me off.  First of all, we didn't forget.  We just didn't do formal family photos.  The one we did do was an accident.  Secondly, two days after the wedding!?  Let us bask in the perfection of our day a little longer before pointing out the things we did wrong!  Third, we have gorgeous photos of the entire extended family from his sister's wedding just two months ago and photos of us on Thanksgiving aren't really going to compensate for the fact that we don't have a photo of everyone from our wedding.  All of the family is in lots of great party shots and they will all be in the albums we make.

I feel like hiring a photographer to come to make up for our mistakes is just hurtful.  It will never be the same as a wedding photo and we already have a current family portrait so the only purpose it serves is to get everyone together and point out that we did something wrong at the wedding.  My husband keeps saying that his mother doesn't want this to be a big deal which is why she is trying to fix it, but it feels like she is making this a big deal.

I know I should just grin and bear it, but for some reason this makes me feel really catty and immature, and I want to just go to my parents for Thanksgiving to be difficult.

Unfortunately, I am pretty sure it isn't about having my back or fending off criticism from other family members.  She is sort of a negative person who latches on to the one thing in every situation she can complain about.  Her siblings are very laid back and couldn't care less about one more family portrait.  She has never really warmed to my family, who hosted the wedding, and I think this is an expression of how she feels.  It stings a little that she had time to decide to hire a photographer but didn't have the time to call me or my mother to say, "Hey, thanks!  Nice wedding."

Again, I am not sure it is about an updated photo, either.  We have an identical photo taken in August and we are going to get a photo of the two of us with the grandmother.

I had to deal with the family portrait issue too and I think I am starting to understand it.  I think that when our parents got married (at least mine) people didn't take a lot of pictures, so a wedding was an oppurtunity to have a picture taken.  I like to look at the family protraits from my parents wedding b/c there simply aren't many other pictures of people.

When I got back from the honeymoon my Mom mentioned that she was dissapointed that we hadn't done extended family pictures.  It POURED rain almost the entire day and the only covered space was where the reception was so we couldn't do pictures in there.  It literally stopped raining just long enough for the (not tented) ceremony and some pictures.  We had just enough time to take immediate family pictures, bridal party pictures and bride/groom pictures.  It started to rain as we were finishing up our Bride/Groom pictures! 

I was bummed that she was calling attention to something negative so soon after the wedding but I tried not to let it get to me.

I realize that this was something that they wanted but I didn't know I should do.  So I can understand where they are coming from.  And Daisy, your description of the history of the family portrait makes sense.  I just wish that like your mother, she could mention it, and let it go rather than dragging it out and making such a big deal out of it by hiring a professional.  It could blow over so easily without anyone ever thinking twice about it, but instead she is shining this huge spotlight on the one thing that I messed up on and calling her entire family's attention to it when they probably didn't even care in the first place.