Weddings often reveal things about family dynamics that are way easier to ignore on any other day.

Some things are just hard to ignore when emotions are running high.

In this case, a bride knew her relationship with her mother wasn’t ideal, but she still hoped they could get through the wedding without too much drama.

Well, her mom made it difficult for her to feel at ease during the ceremony and before and after.

Keep reading for the full story.

Confronting my mother about her terrible behavior at my wedding and her defence just makes it all worse

Short version: my (f, 35) mother (f, 65) showed up early to my wedding (she lives abroad) despite me asking her not to and insisted on ‘helping’.

Her help included deciding she’d stay at my place (‘I’ll be no trouble’), loosing her luggage, acting like a helpless damsel (‘I need you to book my hair and makeup, what do you mean you don’t have anyone?’).

Also insisting on me planning extra events for other guests (‘you have to do a dinner the night before!’) all while generally introducing chaos.

I booked her into a hotel (because I don’t have a spare room and having her take my room wasn’t happening) but she was upset because ‘I’m family!’ and ‘I’m here to help!’.

She felt uncomfortable with her persistence.

The hotel was on my street so she’d still come to spend time together before the wedding (and had a key to the front door of the building but not my apartment).

The night before the wedding at 9 pm, there’s banging, stomping and excited yelling in the lobby: she brought four guests over to my place uninvited and then realised my apartment door was open so let them all in.

I got them out of the house as politely as possible but I was angry. She texted me right after leaving, ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can help with’.

She didn’t want her help.

I snapped: everything she’d done over the week before I listed out to her and said she’s only caused stress and has ignored my direct requests while doing whatever she wanted.

I said I didn’t want her doing a speech the next day and that she was welcome to attend as a guest but she was not to show up and try to run anything.

This week is the first time I’ve seen her since the wedding.

I flew to visit her to see if there’s any way we can salvage our relationship. (Spoiler: there isn’t. )

She basically doubled down on how I have behaved badly and she has been humiliated.

They talked but didn’t agree on what happened.

I said, ‘at the end of the day, I’m the bride, it’s my wedding day, my comfort and happiness are more important than the mother of the bride’s day’.

I told her multiple guests asked me what was up with her because she glared at me throughout the wedding and the ones who spoke to her were left with a very strange impression.

I also had multiple guests tell me my mum said ‘[Bride] always leaves everything to the last minute’ and ‘[Bride] probably stayed up all night because she didn’t plan things properly’.

My stepsister, Jane, actually apologised for my mum when she left, I asked what she meant and she said ‘I had no idea your mother was so bad, I’m so sorry.’

I didn’t ask.

There’s more.

My mum was angry and refused to believe Jane would have said this.

She said ‘We had a really pleasant conversation and she asked wasn’t I doing a speech and I told her how awful you’d been to me’.

She shared in detail how she’d been slighted and didn’t see anything wrong with it. Seems like she did the same with my aunt and my father-in-law.

She left the wedding without saying goodbye to me but she did say goodbye to the groom.

She said to him, as the last words, ‘I hope you know that I will never come back to this city ever again’… I was shocked.

So her goodbye to the groom was about her feelings and she wanted to try to drag him down.

He didn’t tell me at the time (there are a few other things but this post is now so long) that he thought it was better not to share at the wedding or in the lead-up.

Anyway: when people tell you who they are, listen.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a Lorelai and Rory kind of relationship with their mom.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a young woman who struggles with her new reality after learning her adoption story was a lie.

What did Reddit think?

Looking at the bright side.

Someone wishes her well.

That’s cute.

Another reader chimes in.

Sounds like it.

We don’t know the whole story, but she asked her mom very clearly to not do this or that, and she ignored all of her requests; I mean, they didn’t even discuss them.

That’s one of the details that stand out and make me think there’s probably a lot that happened that led to this moment, after all, a daughter wouldn’t want her mom to skip her wedding for no reason.

It’s unfortunate that they didn’t get to solve and talk about their issues and differences before the big day.

But who knows, maybe someday they’ll get along. There’s always hope.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a high school student whose manager insists on scheduling them during school hours.