Mamadrama, Part I

I've gotten multiple emails in the last few weeks requesting posts on Mamadrama (as we're calling it... Papadrama just doesn't have the same ring). I realized it was high time I wrote a post about the stress of families and weddings, but I wasn't quite sure how to approach it. Obviously telling sob stories about family stress wasn't the way to go (that's just depressing and not even constructive). After a query on Twitter, Sarah suggested "I see all Mamadrama as an opportunity to Man Up (as it were) and assert some real adulthood. It's about a healthy separation." And I realized that was exactly it. So this post is about Boundaries, and about the way that weddings are still a huge life transition for most of us, even if we don't think about it that way.

The thing is, when we get married, we are starting a brand new family. Even if we've dated and lived with our partner for years, the world didn't really look at us as a family in the Official Sense until now. But for me, the noticeable shift was internal. Suddenly, when making decisions, I felt more loyalty to David than to my family of origin, and at first I found this shocking and slightly unnerving. It's not that I *didn't* feel loyalty to my family of origin (of course I did), but I suddenly emotionally realized that my future, and my kids future, lay between the two of us, and my choices needed to reflect that.

That change made for some interesting wedding negotiations. There were times one of us had a really strong opinion on something - a really strong emotional need - and the other persons parents had the opposite opinion. When that happened, we'd have to talk through the fact that, while it might be easier for the child to just agree with their parents and be done with it, that wasn't how we were going to do things as a new family. We had to begin to learn the process of sticking up for our wife/husband's needs, even if that meant disagreeing with our parents.

So we practiced. And we practiced. And there were tears, and there was yelling. Sometimes we did it with more grace, and sometimes we did it with less grace. But I'm really glad that we practiced with things that, in the end, are as insignificant as wedding details, because next time the decisions might be very significant indeed.

It comes back to the idea that the wedding day is not your day - it's everyone's day, but the wedding is *your* wedding, just like the family you are forming is your family. And it's a very small baby family, and it needs to be protected while it grows. And protecting and nurturing your fledgling family, is totally different from doing it YOUR way because it's YOUR day, no?

So Mamadrama? It happens to ALL of us. Sometimes it's big and horrible, and sometimes its small and icky. But you know what? The fact that it is happening lets you learn to draw boundaries, and then insist that people honor them. It makes you practice being a family. So it sucks,* but in the end it's worth it. You learn what you need to learn, and you practice being bravely and fully on your own side, and on the side of your family of choice.

No go out and be brave. Brave and graceful and firm (with only a little bit of yelling).

And please, share your Mamadrama tips and tricks in the comments.

*Please honor that. Nothing is wrong with you, you are not broken. Sucking is normal.

Your Wedding Is Not An Imposition

This is too important to bury in the comments. So here we go:

YOUR WEDDING IS NOT AN IMPOSITION.

Did you get that? It's not an imposition on *anyone.* And let me tell you why. It's not because your guests will have fun at your wedding (though, duh, they will), it's because your guests are grown-ass people. They are GROWN UPS. If your wedding is too expensive, or too far away, or just too much of a bother? They won't come. If you're lucky, they'll be very kind when they tell you about it. If you're not lucky? Then you didn't want them there anyway (try to remember that mid-sob, it was hard for me.)

But the people that come to your wedding? Well, let me quote the wise Marisa-Andrea, "This is what I have learned: The people who love you and care about you will not feel like your wedding is a burden or an imposition. They will be thrilled that out of all of the people you could have invited, you want THEM. The (editors note: FEW) people who do feel burdened -- eh. You are always going to have someone who isn't satisfied.*"

And if they are not grown ups? If they are quite small? Well. I trust you are serving cake and punch and giving them room to run around? If so, they'll remember your wedding fondly for the rest of their lives, and they'll hope one day their wedding will be just like it.

*Ass-hats.

Ask Me: How Do You Solve A Problem Like My Mother?

So, I know you're not exactly an advice columnist, AND I know you're on blogging break right now and are probably backed up with emails anyway just because you're fabulous. But just in case there happens to be a spot for this anywhere...I don't know where else to turn to out there in the wedding community (because I refuse to write to theknot) when I'm a crying mess of bride-to-be. I tried to bring up wedding budget to my mother and all she did was ignore me and change the subject. She started talking about how she's going to go get a new cell phone. So now I'm a crying mess because my mother doesn't seem to want to talk about wedding stuff at ALL, and I know most girls are frustrated because their moms are over-involved, but y'know, I'd like mine to be involved just a LITTLE bit. I'd like her to at least pretend to care that her youngest daughter is getting married. Point of all this being, my mother and I don't talk. Not about anything serious, anyway. We get along for the most part, but there's a REAL problem area when it comes to real life situations. And this is a real life situation. Before I was engaged, she made a joke about how she hoped I eloped so she wouldn't have to shell out money for a wedding. This is my mother's inappropriate way of hinting that she IS planning on pitching in for the wedding. So, since I was never taught how to HAVE a serious conversation with my mother, I tried to get her to confirm she was contributing the only way I know how - through joking. I went to her saying, "I'm running away! I counted and we have 110 FAMILY members to invite - not even any of our friends, not even the bridal party, JUST family members. I can't afford to feed all those people!". I was hoping for something along the lines of, "Well, you don't have to pay for it all, we're helping." And...I got a conversation about cell phones in return. Long story short, I can't figure out how to find out how much my parents are planning on contributing. Which is going to make a big difference in what we can and can't have. I don't want much. I want to make my own bouquet, I'm making my own dress, our friends are photographing, we're serving a finger food reception. I just want to know how much we can afford to spend on the venue and the finger food, really. I know if I get any advice at all, it's probably going to be a lot of people advising me to just sit down and talk to my mom one-on-one. And I know that eventually, I'll have to. But I don't know how. I doubt very many people understand how INCREDIBLY hard that is, since it really seems like most brides either have wonderful, supportive mothers, or mothers who are way TOO involved. Not mothers who think they're mentally ill if they try to have a normal breakdown. - Mandy

Ok lady. First things first: Not all moms are awesome when it comes to weddings (even normally wonderful moms) and not all families are awesome about weddings (even normally wonderful families). It's just that, um, people lie. It's that simple. It's hard to tell the internet (especially if your not anonymous, achem) about the times that your family is made you mentally ill during wedding planning. So lets just disabuse you of the idea that you're alone on this: you are NOT. (Feel free to raise an anonymous hand in the comments if you feel me on this).

Second of all, there is this wedding planning myth that planning a wedding is a wonderful mother-daughter bonding experience, and its a powerful marketing myth, not so much a reality. I can't tell you the number of fights I had with my mom about wanting her to be more involved, because I did want that. But the reality was, my mom was seriously ill, she was over stressed, and she doesn't like throwing parties. There were still lots of things she was good at - listening, say, and backing up my crazy choices without blinking an eye, but she was never going to be the magical Mother of the Bride I hoped for. She was just going to be herself. In those moments I had to be reminded to rejoice in what I did have (and in my case that was a terrifically involved partner and some fabulous friends). So let yourself off the hook a little bit. Your relationship with your mother isn't going to magically change during wedding planning, no matter how much you wish it would. And that is NOT YOUR FAULT.

Now, on to the issue at hand - parents helping out financially. Ah. Good times, that. First of all, you need to have a serious talk with your fiance, and give some serious thought to deciding if you want your mother to help pay for the wedding. Because here is the thing - if she contributes financially , she is automatically more involved, for better or for worse. (This is fair, by the way. When I give large sums of money I want my opinions heard too.) I am not one of those bloggers that is going to argue that your parents shouldn't pay because it's your day, because bullsh*t. It's everyone's day, no matter what. But think carefully in this case. Very carefully.

And finally. Getting family to talk and think realistically about money (and worse, getting them to believe the astronomical costs of today's *modest* wedding, when even we don't believe it). The best I can recommend is something along the lines of what we did when money conversations got complicated: we calculated and offered two rough budgets. Budget A was how we would throw the party on our own dime in our own un-compromised style (never, never bluff here. This should be an option you are totally comfortable with actually following through on). Budget A often includes things like fewer people or less expensive food (maybe you still invite the 110 family members but just serve them cake and punch on the church lawn, or maybe you only invite 20 of your closest friends and family and take them all out to dinner.)

Budget B is a sensible, realistic plan for meeting family wishes (110 family members and dinner in a traditional venue, lets say). It includes the amount you can contribute, and then the amount family would need to contribute to make the plan feasible. It's still a plan that you are comfortable with, and reflects who you are, but in clearly gives the cost for whatever XXX thing parents *really* want you to have/provide. The great thing about this plan is it lets everyone figure out what their priorities are. Your mom may say, "Heck no. I'm not willing to pay $10K to feed those family members! I don't even like most of them!" and done, courthouse wedding it is. Or, she may say, "It would make me really uncomfortable if you just served family members cake and punch, so let me help pay for the dinner" and done, simple dinner wedding it is.

Or, she may continue to avoid the topic. And if that is the case, let that be your answer. Throw the party that is right for you and your partner - what you can afford and what makes you happy (which you should of course be thinking about anyway) and let the rest go.

Good luck, my dear! Just remember, all those stories about mother daughter bonding over wedding colors? They may be true for someone one, but for most of us? Family remains its sometimes wonderful sometimes difficult self (just amped up) when we plan a wedding.

But at the end, you are rewarded with a brand new family of two. A family that you chose.

xo
Meg

Hatch, Match, Dispatch

When working on our guest list this weekend we took one name off for someone who had died, and added one name on for someone who had been born.

Celebrate what you have while you have it. Come together. That's what we're all doing with these parties we call weddings, in the end.

And what else is there, really?

Planning A Indie Wedding - With Your Family Too

There seem to be two predominate ways of dealing with one's family during the wedding planning process that you hear about on the web or in wedding magazines. One, I'll call the traditional approach, which seems to be, very loosely stated: Dad pays, Mom helps you plan each little detail, and the wedding is very traditional and proper so that no ones friends or family are at all shocked. Two, I'll call the indie approach, again loosely stated: the bride and the groom pay, the parents don't have very much input, the wedding is non-traditional and a beautiful reflection of the bride and the groom.

Both of these approaches sound fine. In fact, many days I wish we were planning one of these ways because they sound sound so straightforward! But, neither idea comes anywhere close to what our wedding planning experience has been like. David and I are doing most of the planning for our wedding, we're working hard to make it a clear reflection of who we are as a couple, and in many ways it is not terribly traditional. That said, we're both close to our families, and we know that our wedding day is important to them too. Each time we make a decision, we run it by our parents. They are not pushy, so as a result, if they express concern over something, we listen to them, and see what adjustments we can make. This kind of wedding planning involves lots of compromise from everyone. In a sense, no one person is going to get their dream wedding, but we're creating something real and messy and complicated, just like a marriage.

Sometimes I wish we could just make every decision on our own. Our wedding would be somewhat different if we did it that way, probably smaller and more informal. But that wouldn't reflect our parents wishes or really include our extended families, and in the end that wouldn't feel quite right to us. On the other hand, there are days that I wish someone else were paying for and planning the whole day, and I could just sit back and not worry too much. "I'd like the bridesmaids dresses to be dark blue," I'd say in this fantasy, "not light blue. But everything else looks great. Carry on!"

I don't understand why there is so little discussion of this middle ground of (indie) wedding planning. Is it just too complicated to talk about, or too boring? Is anyone else trying to have their cake and eat it too - planning a wedding that is a reflection of both who they are and who their families are, with everyone helping out and paying a bit?

A big happy indie wedding family, via coach_stacy on Flickr

What To Do About Your Big-Day-Dreaming Mother

A few of you have emailed me with that timeless problem: I want one wedding, but my mother (or mother in law) wants another. Except your timeless problem has a twist. You want a simple, practical wedding, and your mother is insisting that it isn't proper to get married without a monogrammed aisle runner, at least five bridesmaids, a unity candle and unity sand, a cathedral length train, and fillet Mignon. What to do?

Well, I'm pleased to say that the answer to this problem couldn't be simpler. You need to go out and buy your mother a copy of Miss Manners On {Painfully Proper} Weddings. Read it yourself first, then wrap it up nicely, and give it to your mother as a sweet gift for helping you plan your wedding. Then, whenever questions come up, say, "Let's look at what Miss Manners says is proper. You know, just to be sure." And your work is done.

My friend Kate once described Miss Manners lovingly as "Our Trojan Horse." By which she meant that at her core Miss Manners is not only practical, she's progressive. But she's wrapped in the armor of etiquette, which translated just means "treating people properly," so not even the most stuck in the mud backwards thinking person can argue with her. When it comes to weddings though, Miss Manners is both my practical icon and my favorite humorist. How can you argue with a woman that said in a recent interview:

"Weddings have become meaningless and, not to say vulgar, and ostentatious. There's a huge industry promoting that. What drives me crazy is that they're always promoting expensive things under the name of, "It's proper to do this," or "People expect it." And they're the very things that are condemned by etiquette, which is not in the business of telling people to go into debt. But the ritual itself, if it could be hacked back to what it's supposed to be, can be very lovely."

So just in time for a holiday weekend I'm telling you, if your mother is stressing you out, go get her this book. And get one for yourself. It's hilarious. And there is not a monogrammed aisle runner in sight.

It's out of the bag now. Now you know my Practical Wedding secret.

A big thank you to Tara, for serendipitously sending me the Miss Manners article. Now go read it, and watch her cut those "weddings are a fantasy" people down to size.