My fmil is more excited than my own mom.

My mom was definitely excited for us, but has not really been interested in the wedding or helping me do anything. My MIL has helped me a lot more than my mom has - she's even hosting my shower. My mom isn't doing anything for my shower at all and doesn't care to hear about any of my plans. The only thing she has really been involved in was when I got my dress and she made that experience pretty awful with finding something bad about every dress I tried on. I definitely get how you're feeling and it sucks. I see a lot of brides who have moms that are there for them every step of the way and I just wish I could have had that experience too.

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I don't even know if I want her to come with me/be there for everything else. I feel like she resents me in a way. She just brought up how she had a courthouse wedding and a generic cake from a grocery store for her wedding.

Too bad my Future husband is getting my mom as an in law and I'm getting his amazing family. He got robbed. lol

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I don't get why older generations say that. My parents love to bring up the fact that their entire wedding only cost $300 for them. Like that's fine for some people, but we wanted to go all out for ours and that's what we're doing.

I personally wouldn't try to take it so hard. I'm not sure if you are an only child, but I am my mom's only daughter, and my brother won't ever get married (He's older) so she may just be sad/not ready to accept that you are getting married. My mom was the same way, she went wedding dress shopping once with me, but that's because I basically forced her LOL. She was excited for me, don't get me wrong, but I think ultimately she was just so upset that I was getting married that she had a hard time expressing it/didn't want to accept it. That may not be the case for your mom, but maybe take what I said with a grain of salt, and things will get better closer to date!

View Quoted Comment My younger brother literally responded "sorry your wedding sucked" haha. I love him

View Quoted Comment I'm th middle child/only daughter. My brother and his now wife (who is so incredibly happy and supportive for me) eloped in July and got married as a surprise over zoom. You'd think she'd be happy to help plan and be there for me. But 🤷

It's definitely the court house thing! I love my in laws but we get the same stuff from them. They had a wedding in the 80s that was super cheap and they only paid for my ffil shoes and my fmil borrowed her wedding dress. They think we're spending way too much money on everything when we might be spending about 6,000 total. I've literally been driving myself crazy trying to find the best deals possible and they still think it's too much. Because of this they are helping us the least even though they make 3 times as much as my mom and I. I'm grateful but it is a little hurtful. We've stopped including them on planning. We let them know after decisions have been made. 🙃

I'm sorry you have to deal with that, hopefully as the wedding gets closer she'll come around. Has she always been emotionless and have a couldn't care less attitude?


My family wasn't like this but my best friend of 16 years was like this. She made fun of my ring and just downed me and showed absolutely no excitement when I told her I got engaged. It was very disappointing I was hoping she wouldn't have gone all ugly green jealous on me. I told her the ring was his grandmothers and she wants me to have it, her response was "I knew it, I told my mom the ring looked used. But I waa disappointed but I was I kind of expected it from her. The last 10 years she became more and more negative towards me, always trying to compete with me even though I never would compete against my bff and always trying to knock me down. Thankfully I ended that toxic friendship a week after getting engaged.

My parents didn't give a crap about my fiancee and I's engagement. In fact, what they did was they decided to move out of the freaking country (in the middle of COVID), leaving their oldest daughter behind. They literally threw money at me, and left. My wedding is in two weeks and my parents aren't going to be at my wedding, they promised me they'd go to my wedding, but they called me one day, and said "Sorry, we can't make it because we're really concerned about the COVID cases in your area..." What BS, what absolute BS, how am I supposed to be understanding about COVID when my parents had no problems with moving out the freaking country, right in the middle of COVID. Because of them, basically none of my family members are going to my wedding, I think only nine of my family members are going. It's a crappy situation, and if it weren't for my friends and my future in-laws I would have cancelled and just eloped.

Both my mom and FMIL could care less! Lol. FMIL raises her GREAT-granddaughter so she has too much on her plate to be worrying about weddings

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My mom has adult children and I'm her only daughter, she could at least humor me.

View Quoted Comment Did you tell her that her apparent lack of interest bothered you?

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Not at all. I don't want her to fake it, we've neve had a good relationship anyway, I dont know what I was expecting

You're not alone.

My mom didn't even bother to ask how wedding planning was going until we were 4months into planning (and less than 4 months away from the wedding). Her only offering to help in any form was to go get a cake, where she lives, and drive it, 60 miles, in August, on the east coast... to the wedding.

She did make noises about helping the BP with the wedding shower, but, again, she lives far away... and the BP knows better than to get her involved with anything.

In the end, she didn't come to the wedding because she didn't like the invitations.

I'm sorry your mom is so distant, but ... some people are like that. Some people hate wedding planning, some have toxic relationships, some just don't currently have the bandwidth.

If you're close enough to talk to her, maybe sit down and ask for more *emotional* support. No matter, take your FMIL's enthusiasm and run with it. It'll be a great bonding experience for the two of you, and she'll feel included.

I'm sorry you're dealing with that. My mom has been involved and both sets of parents have helped pay for the wedding. Although, my mom has had her moments. We went dress shopping together and I was on cloud 9 when I bought my dress. I asked what she thought about it and she said that I thought you would have gone with something more plain.....she's made comments about my weight and needing to fit into the dress (which I fit into fine). She was overbearing with the guest list so my FH had to take a couple ppl off. She's been helpful but also irritating. I've never been really close to her either because of how she treated me growing up. So I sympathize with how your mom has been because mine has been all over the place.

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I almost don't want to have her help pay for the venue, because I feel like it might be used against me. She's not evil in the "Well I payed for this so I get to choose" it would be more like "Well if I'd have known you were just going to use my money and not listen to my opinons, I wouldn't have offered."

I'm in the same boat! Neither of my parents seem excited or ever want to talk about the wedding. But my fiancés parents are the opposite and are so excited/helpful. My parents keep asking why we don't have a tiny wedding like they did in the 70's. It's definitely been very frustrating. To add, we are also paying for our wedding ourselves, which we're happy about so no one has anything to hold over us. My sister tells me I should try to include my mom more but, she didn't even enjoy going dress shopping and doesn't seem to care. I feel for you!

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A tiny wedding from the 70's would probably still run like 5-10k unless it was "courthouse small" lol

People just feel differently about weddings. My MIL was SOOOO HAPPY when my husband and I got engaged and relived when we actually got married. I think for her she really wanted her kids to get married, because that was a measure of happiness/success for her and she wanted that for them too.

My mom was certainly happy/excited for me but was also more of in the mindset of "I want you to be happy" and less of a "I am going to define happiness for you by the same things that made me happy." Also, when I told my mom about my ring I actually completely caught her off guard because she never had an engagement ring herself so she sort of forgot they were a thing. I could have never showed her a ring and she likely would have forgotten about it until her nosy friends started asking her question. My mom isn't really into modern conveniences, social media, or tech, so her concept of what things are is based more on what things were for her and her experiences vs what is trendy or modern or commonplace nowadays. My mom had a very simple, modest wedding and never had a major role in a sibling or friend's wedding for comparison, and she's not "with" current trends so stuff like engagement parties, bacholerettes, and gender reveals, which are all fairly new social constructs, are completely foreign to my mom. So if your mom never had a shower, isn't surrounded by people giving or throwing or attending showers, and isn't inundated with that concept through media, she could easily sort of "forget" that those are a thing.

Both my mom and MIL were super supportive but not really "involved" in our wedding at all and let us take the lead. Either would have stepped up and helped in any way I asked, but they didn't want to over assert themselves and really did very little to inject themselves into our wedding planning. I never took it as a lack of excitement or interest, more as it was not about them (our parents) it was about us (my husband and I).

Another thing - if your mom had negative experiences with her own wedding (maybe her mom was super controlling and meddled too much, or didn't support her at all, or maybe the wedding just wasn't what she wanted) maybe she is just trying to avoid doing the same to you or bringing up bad memories and letting her negativity impact your day.

I think it doesn't hurt to have a conversation with your mom - tell her you are really excited and hope that she can be excited for you too. If you'd like her to be more involved, suggest ways in which she can do so. Try to explain how you feel without pointing fingers or placing blame, and try to see where she is coming from. Maybe she just has no idea that her casual attitude is affecting you.