Mother Of The Bride Upset After Insisting She Gets Paid To Cook For The Wedding — But The Bride Hires A Caterer Instead
"If you're going to treat me like a caterer then I'll need you to pay me," she said. So her daughter hired one instead.
bloodstone / Getty Images Signature / Canva Pro It's once again wedding season, which means it's, unfortunately, also family conflict season.
The situation described by one mother of the bride on Reddit is a perfect example of the kind of drama that wedding planning can bring out among family members — even when they're just trying to help.
The mother of the bride demanded to be paid for cooking for her daughter's wedding.
The mom is an avid cook and baker. "I've always told my kids if they had a small wedding, I'd be happy to provide the food as a wedding gift," she wrote in her post.
When her daughter Leslie began planning her small wedding for around 50 guests, her mom jumped at the chance, offering to make one of her signature dishes, pepper beef or jambalaya, along with some jalapeño cheese biscuits.
Sounds perfect, right? Not so fast.
The conflict began when her daughter asked her to add to the menu to accommodate her father-in-law's dietary restrictions.
Everything was all squared away until a few days later when Leslie sent her mom some additional recipes, saying they wanted to add a couple of things to the menu to accommodate her fiancé Will's family.
"I know that boy can't eat a pepper or most of my meal without getting red in the face, but I didn't think his whole family was like that," she sniped. Leslie explained that it's because Will's dad has ulcers and has to be very careful about what he eats.
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She refused to alter the menu unless her daughter paid her, so she hired a caterer instead. Now, the mom is furious.
When she pushed back on the request, Leslie told her that "I'm making it about me instead of listening to what the bride and groom want," and things quickly erupted into full-scale family drama.
After the argument escalated, she "finally told her I'd cook the extra dishes, but if she's going to treat me like a caterer, then I'll need her to pay me for all the extra prep and work."
Her daughter understandably protested that wedding gifts are supposed to be, you know… gifts, and said she "might as well hire a caterer if she's going to pay" and hung up on her mom.
"I thought Leslie would cool down and come talk to me about how we'd handle this and reasonable payment for taking on extra cooking," the mom wrote, "but my youngest told me when he went to visit Leslie she and Will were talking with a catering company." Now, she wonders if she handled this all wrong.
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People pretty unanimously agreed that the mom was being completely unreasonable.
Aside from the fact that, as her daughter said, wedding gifts are supposed to be gifts, this whole thing could have been solved if she had just been willing to change the menu, and several Redditors were mystified as to why she was so committed to spicy food.
"Wanting to make sure food is edible/enjoyable for all guests is common courtesy," one person wrote. "If I know a child needs a 4-person car for their family, and I offer to buy them a 2-seater sports car, that would be [expletive] behavior."
And many seemed to feel the way Leslie did — that this whole cooking thing was all about mom, not the wedding party. As one user put it, "I think she's just so entitled it doesn't occur to her to put any consideration before her own ego… What cook wants to make people sick or miserable?"
It's pretty telling that this ultimately came down to "my way or the highway." Surely, the mom was excited to flex her culinary muscles and make some of her signatures for her new in-laws, and that's understandable. Weddings are special moments for every member of the family.
But she's not having them over to her home for a casual dinner. It's a wedding at which even the groom doesn't like spicy food!
It all comes down to a basic fact about weddings that all too many people seem to forget — they are for the bride and groom and no one else. Weddings are incredibly stressful, and with all the myriad moving parts and expenses involved in planning even a small one, everyone—absolutely everyone, including the mother-of-the-bride—needs to stay out of the way.
It's arguably the most "shut up and fall in line" situation we encounter in life. Don't mess with a bride's wedding plans! If she wants turkey sandwiches with chips and dip, then you make turkey sandwiches with chips and dip. It's not about you!
And when you insist on making it about you, don't be surprised when the bride goes in a different direction and hires a caterer—especially when you basically told her to hire a caterer in a fit of pique in the first place.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.