Meeting Midway: 5 Tips for Sanity When Planning with Mom

Posted by Marielle in Weddings.

Hello, all! First off, I’d like to apologize for my blogging delinquency. I’d like to say I was busy saving lives or campaigning for Barack Obama (same thing?), but I was tied up only by typical day-to-day life…changing jobs, planning a wedding, and playing Lego Batman for Wii, which has to be the cutest freaking game I’ve played since Kingdom Hearts came out.

But back to weddings, I’d like to take today to talk about navigating a minefield I think many brides have in common — their mothers.

My mother and I were buddies growing up. We shared a pun-y sense of humor, a sharp intellect, and a love of musicals and Mel Brooks movies. Thanks to these, and many reasons I will probably never understand, I became her proclaimed “favorite daughter.” She could depend on me to laugh at her jokes and to absorb her wide range of interests like a sponge. Later in life, I realized she was the ultimate stage mother, the mama to my Gypsy Rose Lee. I have proof: more than once, she has mimicked Rosalind Russel’s “Sing out, Louise!” when I was being too timid in preparation for choir solo auditions. She was annoying perhaps, but no one could say she wasn’t right behind her little girl.

As often happens, my relationship with my mother began to mutate in high school. The more I became my own person, the less I was the person she had spent her life preparing me to be. I think the first big blow was becoming more religiously observant in direct contrast to her agnostic abandoning of Orthodox Judaism. That, coupled with coming out to my mother as bisexual in October 2005, dealt a damaging blow (On a side note, if you are away at college, do not come out to your parents over e-mail… big mistake. If you have to tell them, do it in person). I feel I should add that she would have been OK with it if I were a lesbian. But somehow she was offended that I “chose” to like both sexes, as if I was the flip-flopping John Kerry of sexual orientation.

If I hadn’t done enough damage throughout college in an effort to be myself, the near-severing blow to my relationship with my mother was surely my New Year’s Eve engagement to my fiance, just two weeks before leaving to study abroad for the Spring 2007 semester. This January we will have been engaged for 2 years and I can’t tell you if she’s warmed up the slightest bit to him. She frequently insists that him having a high-paying job would speed up the process, but given that she is a creature of outrageous contradictions, I doubt it.

I tell you all this because trying to repair our relationship has taught me some valuable lessons about wedding planning with your mother, whatever the state of your relationship.

1. Your mother loves you. If she constantly puts you or your partner down, it’s only because she wants the best for you. Sometimes mother really does know what’s best, but I think it’s fair to say that her judgment is clouded just as often. This goes for father and other legal guardians, too. No matter how difficult they make your life, in the end they really just want you to be happy. Keep this in mind and you will be slower to anger.
2. If you can’t beat ‘em, ignore ‘em. No matter how many times we argue, I am never going to agree that we need to have a $30,000 wedding to get enough cash and gifts to start off our married life right. If mom and dad are paying the bills and they want to spend that much… well, I guess they win that argument. But there are plenty of times that arguments are not constructive: for example, any amount of ethnic guilt she throws on about how she sat alone in the dark so that you could go to a good college and marry a doctor is just destructive and irrelevant — so ignore it.
3. But also try to listen. If you pay close attention, you can hear your mother’s heart breaking because she feels she is losing a daughter. Find ways to remind her that you are still going to be there for her. Watch an old movie you both love, or let her teach you how to cook for the holidays. Try to say “I love you” more often, and hug and kiss her more often, too. It’s harder for her to stay mad when you suck up.
4. Occasionally give in. Consider that everything you want may not be rational. I’ve thrown out dozens of fun and creative ideas — a sylvan wedding where we camp in the woods for a weekend, a masquerade wedding, DIY invitations with Madlibs-style RSVP cards — all because my mother flat-out refused. Sometimes we can compromise: I might have a masquerade-themed bachelorette party and I am allowed to send those funky RSVP cards to friends so long as I don’t bother anyone over the age of 60 with them. In the end, fight for what’s important to you, but don’t be a Bridezilla, indie or otherwise.
5. Keep your eye on the prize. Always remember why you are getting married. Don’t let arguments about caterers, dresses, or even your life partner-to-be transform a family-building event into a family-splitting catastrophe. You can’t control your parents’ actions when it comes to working to meet halfway, but you can always be the first to offer a compromise, an alternative solution, or an “I’m sorry” when warranted.

When my mother called me a Bridezilla a few months ago, she gave me the wake-up call I needed to stop working against the grain. My mother and I have started working better together, keeping negative thoughts to ourselves, and agreeing to disagree when we can’t meet. Her new mantra is “what it is, it is” and mine is, “accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can, and have the wisdom to know the difference.” Keeping these tips in mind has improved my planning process a hundred-fold. If you have any tips of your own, please share them in the comments below! We can all benefit from your experience.

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