Working in the wedding industry would inevitably expose you to all sorts of family drama, but this one is genuinely baffling.

An illustrator who makes personalized wedding portraits thought she was getting a pretty standard Christmas commission from the groom’s mother. Except there was way more to it than she initially could even imagine.

The mother-in-law wanted the bride to look a little “more natural”… But what does that even mean?

But that wasn’t all: the edits kept coming.

The bride’s smile was too big. Her makeup was too much. The dress was too pretty.

Eventually, the mother-in-law asked for something she could not agree with.

By that point, the whole thing was starting to feel a lot less like normal artistic feedback and a lot more like someone trying to deliberately annoy their own daughter-in-law.

Keep reading for the full story.

Mother-in-law intentionally tried to make the bride look ugly in a Christmas gift illustration

I (29F) have been making personalized illustrations for the past 5 years in this wedding industry.

I always get some random requests and commissions!

And just when I thought I’d seen it all, I got this peculiar request from a groom’s mother who’s after an illustration which she’ll giving the couple as their first Christmas gift!

So, a few weeks ago, I received a message from this woman.

She wanted a wedding illustration of 4 people (her + her husband + groom + bride) and gave me a reference picture.

Everything looked normal just like any other orders. I asked her if she had any special requests/instructions before asking her for the payment.

Oh, she did.

She requested if I could make the bride look natural? Not too much makeup like the photo”.

I thought okay, probably the makeup artist did overdo her makeup a bit. And I said “sure! Definitely can do! No problem”.

Later she proceeded with the full payment and I confirmed the order! So far so good!

Then I begin with the illustration and after a few days I completed it.

I sent her a draft to do a review for any possible changes or adjustments. She almost immediately replied with a heaps of changes and that’s all on the bride!

She said that the bride’s smile looked too big and it needed to be softened.

It was all very subtle in the beginning.

Her blushes from the cheeks needed to be removed, eyeliners needed to be thin and so on!

Her accurate words were “her smile needs to be polite not so glamorous like the photo. That’s not her natural smile”.

It seemed really weird to me, so I requested for some additional photos of the bride.

She then sent me a few more pictures of the bride later that night.

And I straightaway noticed that the bride’s smile on the illustration looked very very similar to all the other pictures as well!

So I asked her again if she could clarify what she meant by “polite smile”.

She started getting comfortable.

She then said (her own words) “X’s smile looks too wide in the pictures but she’s not the most smiling type of person in everyday life. Please make it soft along with the specified changes I mentioned earlier”.

And she also asked me to draw a completely different hairstyle and provided a ref photo.

This was a new request which wasn’t previously mentioned.

She said that the bride complained about her hairstyle on the wedding day and wanted something different.

I replied that “okay! I’ll do my best and will send you the revised version tomorrow.”

So, after making all the requested adjustments, I sent her the 2nd draft for a review.

She still complained about how the bride looked but at the end she was okay with it.

And she still wasn’t done.

She then asked me to remove some details from the bride’s dress by saying “the details on the dress look too noisy. Please remove the floral patterns from it and make it plain”.

I was really surprised by that because almost every one of my clients always love the detailings that I do on their dresses.

So I replied “are you sure? It took me a lot of time drawing those details on the dress and usually my clients love it. And I really think your daughter in law would love it too”.

But she still insisted on keeping it plain.

The next day I made the changes again. And at this time I felt bad for the bride because now she just looks like a normal girl with a white gown.

It was getting pretty obvious.

None of her bridal features from the wedding pictures remained on my illustration. But this what the client asked and I obliged till that point.

Anyways I sent this 3rd draft to her and this time she said something which completely shocked me.

She said “everything looks fine. Can you just make the bride chubbier? She’s not that thin in real life.”

Yeah, this had to stop.

And this is when I completely lost it.

Until that point I had some doubts but that time I was 100% certain that she was trying to make her own daughter in law look ugly on purpose.

I straightaway replied to her “Sorry Mam! I won’t be able to make that kind of changes on my illustration.”

“It seems to me that you’re trying to make the bride look ugly on purpose. And I cannot do that. Please show the illustration to your daughter-in-law and send her our details.”

“If she wants to make any changes on it, I’ll be more than happy to do so”.

Some people are shameless and not in an inspiring way.

I could sense that my response made her pretty mad! She immediately asked for a full refund and accused me of ruining her Christmas gift.

I politely told her that there will be no refund on the illustration since I spent hours on perfecting it according to her instructions.

And I stated my previous point again that if her daughter-in-law wants to make any changes, I’ll happily do so.

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Then I emailed her the original illustration (the 1st draft where the bride looked like the ones from the photo) and closed the order.

She later threatened to take me to the small claims court for ruining her Christmas surprise.

I, later showed the illustration to my girl-friends, and they all agreed with me.

My husband also said that this woman is evil and I should focus on the other orders that I have pending.

Was her Christmas surprise disappointing her daughter-in-law?

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a kind man who helped a friend pack up items to donate, then realized she wanted to take back her “payment.”

What did Reddit think?

Sound advice.

Another person suggests fewer edits.

That was awesome.

MIL needed to hear that.

Another reader chimes in.

Exactly.

The mother-in-law was strategic, and her requests were gradual, so naturally she ended up obliging, but our gut feeling doesn’t lie.

The truth is, her strategy and the tiny requests became impossible to ignore the more shameless and comfortable she was getting with it.

Every single change chipped away at something.

She wanted to dim her smile because apparently she doesn’t smile that much normally… So does that mean she can’t smile big at her own wedding? What?!

The makeup got toned down. Even the dress had to be simpler… And it just kept getting more malicious.

At that point, yeah, it really did start sounding like she was trying to humble her daughter-in-law through a Christmas gift of all times.

The artist was a girl’s girl all the way.

Some people would’ve just kept pretending not to notice what was happening. Instead, she called her out.

It was amazing how she stood up for what’s right and didn’t worry about any possible consequences.