My future MIL had spent months trying to control our wedding, but I honestly thought the worst was behind us. Then I came home one afternoon and found something that made it impossible to keep pretending her behavior was harmless.

My future mother-in-law, Mavis, had opinions about our wedding before Ryan had even officially proposed.

When he showed her the ring he planned to buy, she said, “It’s lovely, but have you checked whether she’d prefer a larger stone?”

Ryan came home and told me about it wearing the exhausted expression of a man who had just survived a three-hour meeting.

I laughed.

At the time.

Once we were actually engaged, Mavis treated the wedding like a project she’d somehow been appointed to manage.

She hated the flowers because white roses were “too funeral.”

“Why can’t you just add a few tables?” she asked one Sunday.

“Because the room has a maximum capacity,” I said.

“Maximum according to whom?”

“The fire department.”

Mavis stared at me.

“People always use that excuse.”

Ryan nearly choked on his coffee.

Then came the guest list.

That was where everything got worse.

Ryan and I had agreed early on that we wanted fewer than one hundred guests. We were paying for most of the wedding ourselves, and neither of us wanted to spend the evening greeting people we barely knew.

One night, Mavis arrived at our apartment carrying a handwritten list.

“Eighteen people,” she announced.

Ryan looked down at the paper.

“Who are these people?”

“Family.”

He pointed at one name.

“Who’s Dennis?”

“Your second cousin.”

Continue reading