Your shrink is right: it is your mother's fault

I have come to a conclusion about weddings and the difficulties that brides usually run into in planning them.

Like most psychiatrists generally diagnose: it is all the Mother's fault.

I had an email conversation with a fellow blogger about the number of people that her mother was strongly suggesting she invite to her wedding. In the end, she (the bride) decided that it was simply not a battle worth fighting, and gave in to her mother's request. She had similar issues over showers, as well.

And this is very much a recurring theme...talk to any girl who was recently or soon will be married, and she will tell you that she did things that she didn't want to because her mother "made her". Mothers of the Groom are no picnic, either...but that is not the point of this post (and mine is a total dream helper:-)).

Now, think about the girls you know who had super low-stress wedding processes...and I can almost guarantee that their mothers were pretty uninvolved in the process. Or, in the case of several of my favorite girls (and me) they didn't have a Mother. My intention is obviously not to gloat about the virtues of losing your parents...but I am becoming convinced that the Mother of the Bride is a very common source for a large part of the stress of planning a wedding.

Example: it is very commonly suggested that "You have to invite entire groups of people. You can't invite just some of your cousins...you have to invite all of them or none of them." This is, in my most humble opinion, absolutely inane. Seriously...how dumb is that? Someone is entitled to be invited to your wedding because you happen to really like someone else who is related to you in the same way? And yes, I completely understand the rationale behind it and the social custom...but when a lot of weddings can cost a couple hundred bucks a person, it is an awful lot to foist on someone in the name of social graces [caveat: if the mother of the bride is paying the bill...well, then this is all moot, she can do whatever she wants:-P]

I had a friend who invited five people that she had never met before because she wanted to invite several or her second cousins that she knew quite well, and was told that she had to observe this rule. Well I have a new rule: if I don't know you, I am not inviting you. I don't want to meet anyone at my wedding for the first time (unless, of course, they are the guest of someone I did invite...in which case, I still didn't invite them: someone else did:-P).

But who enforces these kinds of rules? Usually, I am guessing that it is the Bride's mother. Somehow, there is a feeling that someone might be offended if someone else is invited in favor of them. Call me callous, but "someone" can blow it out of his or her ass...that is a pretty selfish thing to get offended over. I don't have a lot of use for people who can't understand that space and cost concerns, as well as personal preference, might mean that I can't invite them to my wedding even though I may want to.

Anyway, I am off track from my basic point: the stress in planning a wedding is largely a function of the involvement of the Bride's Mother.

Discuss.