Weddingbee Blog

Hi Hive. I’m back from my honeymoon, but unfortunately, I have some hard news to share with you…

My wedding was intentionally sabotaged by Mr. Socks’ mother, father, sister, and one of his cousins.

I haven’t really been very honest about my whole process of planning this wedding. I’ve been blogging with Weddingbee for about 5 months, and I never once wrote a post about the difficulties I faced with my in-laws. I have been hiding a situation that has been much more dire than your typical tensions when two families join together.

Mr. Socks and I have been bullied, threatened, belittled and manipulated by his parents and sister throughout much of our relationship and engagement. I won’t sit here and psychoanalyze the how’s and the why’s of what they do, but I will tell you that it has been extraordinarily difficult on us. I also won’t sit here and tell you that I’ve been perfect throughout the whole process of dealing with their behavior-I didn’t always bite my tongue and rise above the situation, as it is usually my nature to fight fire with fire (though I am trying to overcome that quality).

Regardless of what happened in the past, I was looking forward to being cordial and pleasant with Mr. Socks’ family, and expected the same amount of respect in return.

Unfortunately, that is not what happened.

My sister-in-law found it necessary to pre-game with her cousins before our wedding—getting so drunk that she could barely function. During my father’s welcoming speech before dinner, she and her cousin spoke loudly, contradicting everything my father said (for example, Dad Socks: “Mike and Mandy are a wonderful couple together” Sister-in-law: “Ugh, no they aren’t”).

My sister-in-law and the cousin also schemed to pour drinks on me during the wedding. I’ve been told that a champagne glass was intentionally tipped over on my wedding dress—whether it was full or not, I’m not sure, and I didn’t see or feel it happening. Regardless, I still haven’t quite wrapped my mind around how someone could want to be so cruel to a bride on her wedding day.

When we asked all of our guests to come up to the dance floor for a group photo, my sister-in-law and the cousin started sobbing, causing a scene, yet refused to leave the restaurant or go somewhere more private, instead they opted to remain visible and public.

After this whole fiasco, an extremely drunk aunt of Mr. Socks’ decided that it was a good time to pull him aside for a very long time to tell him all about her son’s marital issues. Without being able to find Mr. Socks, I started to panic.

My family and bridesmaids asked my sister-in-law and the cousin to leave at that point, as they were too drunk to be reasoned with, and when my mother told them that they were not welcome back in the restaurant, the cousin began to lunge at my mother, screaming, cursing, and had to be physically held back by her fiance. My mother and one of my bridesmaids feels certain that this cousin would have physically harmed my mother in that moment.

Let me just interject something in here before I go on: These people are not uneducated, nor ignorant. Mr. Socks’ mother is a doctor, his father is an engineer, his sister is a law student, and his cousin is the manager of a Tiffany’s jewelry store. I find it so difficult to believe that such people can be so unconscionable, yet here I am, writing this post, still mostly in shock after all of this.

At that point, things rolled further and further downhill. My parents tried to confront Mr. Socks’ parents, to tell them that they simply should not be this rude to us on our wedding day, as they were making terrible remarks to us and trying to confront us about these issues. His parents became belligerent at that point, repeatedly blaming us and saying that they had done nothing.

The problem was, that was exactly true: They had done nothing to stop the behavior of his sister or cousin, and we believe his mother even participated with their “pre-gaming” by showing up to the wedding intoxicated. My mother-in-law and father in-law were perfectly happy to sit back and watch the drama unfold while taking no responsibility whatsoever. The fact is, they knew that there could be major issues with the sister and cousin, especially when alcohol was involved, and they did nothing to stop the situation. Instead, they truly felt that their behavior was justified because of our issues in the past.

Mr. Socks had to ask his parents to leave our wedding. With them, many members of his family also left.

We received a lot of support from my family members, and everyone tried to band together to protect me and Mr. Socks from the full force of the issues going on, but the damage was done…Mr. Socks and I both cried very, very unhappy tears at our wedding. Looking back on the day, that is the biggest memory in my mind: holding each other on the dance floor while tears streamed down our faces.

I am angry beyond belief. I am sad and grieving for a day I put so much heart and soul into, yet was ruined by people who should have been there for us. It feels impossible for me to rise above this situation right now, and I believe that my sadness may be a very large part of my recaps, but I also feel that I owe it to myself to not censor these feelings anymore. I held back from commenting on our issues in this very public forum out of respect to the fact that everything put on the internet is permanent. At this point though, I feel that an essential way for me to deal with this is to write about it as honestly as I can, and to be true to the feelings I go through-the good, the bad and the ugly.

No picture I show you will have any evidence of these issues though, as our photographer did not capture the blackest moments of the evening. In many pictures during the reception, I see me smiling, but I know that they were smiles only because a camera was on me and I couldn’t let my sadness be documented. The details of the day were perfect, every piece of my planning came together exactly as I had wished, the food and alcohol was wonderful and abundant, but to me right now, those details are veiled by a curtain of utter shock and devastation.

Hopefully by writing about my experience, some other bride or groom who is going through issues with toxic relatives could gain a little hope in knowing that they are not alone. If anyone can find comfort in the fact that Mr. Socks and I are stronger than ever, and are committed to being loving and kind despite the whirlwind of hate that has surrounded us, I hope that by telling my tale, you may find the strength to keep going in your own relationships.

So thank you, to the Weddingbee community for providing a place for me to write and a place for me to be myself. Thank you for uplifting me and encouraging me throughout my planning process, and thank you for supporting me even though you don’t know me! To someone who didn’t get that kind of support from so many people who should have supported us, it really does mean the world to me.

To leave off on this post, I will show you pictures of my favorite moment of the day:

Photos that my sister snuck in during our first look.

And one more, that was taken at the very end of the night, and I think it sums up just about everything: