My Fiancé Replaced My Wedding Dress With the One His Mom Chose

Having a good or bad relationship with your future mother-in-law can affect how easy or hard it is to plan a wedding. Jokes about mothers-in-law are common, but there’s a reason—they can sometimes cause problems in marriages. Take this woman, who went dress shopping with her future mother-in-law, and ended in a whole marital nightmare.

The woman shared what happened to her.

“My fiancé M33, and I F28 are getting married in December. His mom is the intrusive type, but she’s nice overall and we somewhat get along. I hate to admit that wedding planning has been an absolute nightmare. His mom wasn’t willing to agree on most things, and my fiancé said that since he’s her only son then I should respect and appreciate this ‘vision’ she has for the wedding and how it should be.

She insisted on coming along for wedding dress shopping. I took her with me and my mom and friends. I was so lucky to have found what I was looking for, but she picked a dress that she liked so much and said that ‘she always pictured her son’s bride in it’, mom and friends thought this line was creepy. I thought the dress was somewhat creepy and totally not my type. I apologized and thanked her for her ‘vision’ but told her that I’d already decided on a dress that I had ‘envisioned’ myself wearing at my wedding!”

“She got all mad because of it apparently, then must’ve told my fiancé because, he came home in the evening ranting about how I made his mom upset and ‘turned down’ her help in choosing the wedding dress and excluded her from the process. I asked, ‘What process?’. It’s just a wedding dress, so I really didn’t get how she should get a say at all! He got upset and said that this attitude of mine isn’t working on him or his mom. He said that I should consider the dress his mom wanted me to buy, especially knowing that ‘both dresses weren’t that much different anyway’ like she said, but I told him they were different.”

“Anyways, we argued about it, then we dropped it. Yesterday, I came home and found out that he had returned my wedding dress and replaced it with the one his mom wanted. I called him, and he was straightforward about what he did and why he did it. I lost it and started screaming at him. He asked me to calm down and really give this dress ‘a chance’. I refused to even listen, I screamed at him without giving him a chance to speak.

He got home and we had an argument. I then went to stay with one of my friends, and he kept calling and calling then texting, saying that I overreacted, and it’s his wedding too so it wasn’t cool how I screamed at him. He insisted I give this dress a chance. He went on and on about how his mom has a ‘vision’ and good intentions and just wants what the best for me as her future daughter-in-law.”

Redditors are all by her side.

• Hand him the ring back. Say, “I hope you get the wedding you and your mom have always hoped for.” Walk away. CaptainPatent / Reddit
• To your mother-in-law you are not a person. You are an accessory that attaches to her son’s arm. If your fiancé isn’t willing to stand up for you and himself, you will have to get used to having her run your lives from here on out. BigRedUglyMan / Reddit
• This dynamic isn’t something that’s going to go away with the wedding. Even if you smooth over the current issue (or simply come to accept her choice) it will not be the end of this.
  Does MIL want grandkids? Because that’s going to be pretty important as soon as you’re married. What are their names going to be? How do you feel about having MIL in the hospital room while you give birth? How are you going to raise them? These are going to be her only grandkids, so be prepared to be eternally compromising in favor of what she wants.
  Your husband has already revealed where he places the relative importance of your opinion compared to his mother’s. Even if you get him to grudgingly compromise on this issue, that order of relative importance won’t change without some serious effort and explicit choice on his part. DogmaticNuance / Reddit

• Maybe his mum could wear it to the wedding and stand in for you. alisong89 / Reddit
• Sane response: call off the wedding, comedy response: take his suit back and exchange it for a clown outfit. RatioNo1114 / Reddit
• Do you plan on having kids? Now imagine your MIL disagreeing with something you want to do for those children, and how your momma’s boy fiancé will side with her instead of you. I’m sorry, but leave while you can. JoshDunkley / Reddit
• I have no idea why you want to marry this man. He clearly has one woman he holds above everyone. And guess what, that’s not you. I am shocked at the audacity of his mother. And even more so of his behavior.
  Please do some soul-searching. And looking at his past behavior, if he has done something similar. Prudent_Border5060 / Reddit

• Do not, under any circumstance, marry this person and his mother, because make no mistake, you’ll be marrying both if you go through with it as things stand. This has so many red flags, it’s not funny. If you come second to mommy on something like this, a piece of clothing that you will be wearing on the supposed most important day of your life, imagine what comes after? And your future husband thinks it’s okay?! You are not overreacting, you’re under-reacting because the wedding needs to be cancelled pronto. Seriously. oddpolyglot / Reddit
• Tell him to marry his mother if he wants to marry someone in her dress. This guy seems like a step beyond a mamma’s boy, and your relationship is always going to include her. Be prepared, it will always be them against you. Does he have friends that can talk some sense into him? I wouldn’t normally suggest getting others involved, but sometimes people don’t listen to those when they should, they have to hear it from an outside source. Wordsmaybeenglish / Reddit
• Girl, for real, you are lucky you’re seeing this before you get married. This is the most absurd controlling behavior, and it’s only going to get worse after you get married. Trust me. He seems to have a really unhealthy relationship with his mother, and his mother seems to have a huge issue with boundaries.
  Guess what’s going to happen when you have kids? You’ll have no say, only his mother. His mother will be their mother because it’s her “vision”. sylance9 / Reddit

Wedding stories can be a riot, but they also stir up a lot of talk and drama in the family, like this dad who said no to his daughter’s dream wedding dress.