I have not posted in forever. My son got married Saturday.
This is long. Really long. And fucked up. The Cliff's Notes version is that my new daughter in law's blood relations are Extra Special.
Backstory: My son is an idiot. He knocked up his GF last year, and now that the girl has graduated high school and spawned a son, her parents are (apparently grudgingly) allowing her to get married. (From the Legal Department - boy was 19 and in his first year of college, girl was 16 (almost 17, AS IF that makes a difference to anyone but the kids, ugh) which is a legal age of consent in their locality. I'm still furious about my son's idiocy, but beating the stupid out of him isn't an option and never works anyway.) I should also point out that the girl asked her parents for birth control and was refused because "then she'd be sexually active".
Boy does not live with me, Boy lives with his father. In rural Arkansas. Well, I don't actually know that anywhere except Little Rock counts as urban there, anyway, but... you get the idea. Fortunately for EVERYONE'S sanity, dad's mom, Grandma Southern Queen Woman, lives nearby. She's one of those "bless your [the more adjectives, the more she hates you] heart" kinda people.
So the kids got this Saturday. She had a pretty white dress, there's pics up on facebook. They got married in the Community Church, which I had to Google to find the address. Apparently the concept that maybe everyone on the planet doesn't know where the Community Church is had not crossed anyone's mind on their end.
It spoke well of the bride, I think, that her wedding registry was at WalMart, and it was for All Reasonable Things. Towels, kitchen utensils, pots and pans, etc. I think the most outrageous thing she asked for is a $60 minifridge.
Which leads us to the part where my daughter called Grandma SQW asking about the reception. It turns out that when she called her Grandma, Grandma was at the store. Buying food for the reception. Because the bride's family was planning on expressing their disdain for The Boy Who Defiled Their Daughter With His Magic Penis Power (obviously THEIR precious Innocent Pure Snowflake wasn't, yanno, a normal teenage girl), was to serve baloney sandwiches at the wedding reception. Grandma SQW's explanation to my daughter was "That woman is a bitch."
If you happen to not know Southern Queen Type Women, the lack of "bless her heart" is a DEFCON 1 warning.
I did a little digging around. Bride's Father is a shop foreman at an auto dealership, which in that local area makes him a pretty big man, short of being in politics or a member of the sheriff's dept. Grandma confirmed that this is not a budgetary decision. They were seriously planning on serving baloney on white bread for a wedding reception.
So I have to wonder... seriously? Your precious daughter is having, hopefully, her ONLY wedding, and you're going to humiliate her by serving food that is basically a bag lunch for kindergarteners at her wedding reception? How much spite do you have to have to do that to not just that groom you despise and his relatives, but THE REST OF YOUR OWN FAMILY?
So, I was away for the weekend, wearing my "I'm so happy for you, son!" face along with a blue beaded salwar kameez (pics soon). Daughter had decided to tone her Goth Chick stuff way down, and I she wore a skirt long enough to cover the tattoo on her calf. However, not much can change the fact that she looks like Wednesday Addams at 22 years old. Scott and Brian (my brother in law, for those who need a score card) wore their Mafia Men's Wearhouse Suits. I got to meet my grandson, which cannot be sullied by any other pettiness.
And my mother and stepfather made it - although they had to specifically dig for an invitation.
This had multiple levels of fabulous. My mom got to meet her first Great Grandchild, and her new son in law, all at the same time. And mom doesn't take any shit from anyone. Her FuckItAll prescription is up to date, with a shitload of refills.
The bride's family (as demonstrated by the past year of watching the facebook feeds) have absolutely zero informed medical knowledge, no understanding of mental illness at all (my son is bipolar and on Seroquel), and have apparently never been to, or heard of, any place that is culturally diverse. So I got to restrain myself from slapping the living shit out of these people when all the snide bullshit started. These people couldn't buy culture if you gave them a Petri dish and a $500 gift card to Culture.com and a free laptop with a T-mobile connect-anywhere dongle to facilitate the transaction.
I mean, if Grandma SQW called this woman a bitch, it's fucking serious. She never even called *ME* a bitch, and she hates my guts.
... interjection here:
I have a basic life philosophy.
"Don't be an asshole."
It doesn't require me to be nice, or glitter filled, or cupcakey.
Just, don't be an asshole. Shitting all over a wedding is an asshole move. Not accepting reality is an asshole move. Not respecting other people's right to be ignorant and wrong is an asshole move.
She's the mother of my grandson. She's never, ever going away. They may get divorced, or not, and there may be bullshit and drama, or not, but she will always be the mother of my grandson. I choose to not be an asshole to her.
Not only is that stupid and self-limiting, it's an asshole thing to do to my grandson.
So, back to StoryTime:
So, we found out the time of the wedding rehearsal (4-7pm, roughly), from my son at about 3 pm - when me, Jess, Scott, Brian, my mom and stepdad, and Jess's BFF were at lunch. To be fair, I was also waiting on my mom to get here to coordinate plans and stuff, she got in late this morning. So we didn't get good arrangements made until the last minute.
...also my mother ADORES MigraineMan and his brother, and they like my mom and stepdad back. That went very much as well as I expected.
So we got the message from my son at about 4 pm. We all truck on down there and find Grandma SQW, (for the scorecard, that's my son's other grandmother), and two of his aunts, and the bride, decorating the church for the wedding. The best man was there, and I don't remember his name, but he's this awesome redheaded kid who has his shit together.
So Grandma SQW and the two aunts and Jess and I all got to work. We strung tulle down the center aisle of these... steel framed stackable chairs, and crammed white ribbon bows on the stupid things. The guys were up trying to get the... I know them as "photo backdrop stands", with these black drapes, arranged so that they hide the
Wait. This needs its own special mention.
On the BLACK wall up behind the pulpit/stage/dais thingie are stapled these white styrofoam plates. Scott says that they are sound dampening acoustic something something pattern, and that they're not just decorative.
But seriously, the black drapey backdrop things are to hide those. So the guys are getting that and some portable white, clear-Christmas-light-strung, trellis thing up. Then we have these little white paper sacks with a heart silhouette cut into them, that we put cardboard pieces in the bottom of, then little clear glass votive holders and tea lights.
So we got ALL THAT done, and the bride's family showed up around 6 pm.
At no point does anyone from the bride's family make:
1) Any effort to reign in the shrieking children.
2) Any effort to mingle with anyone from the groom's family.
3) Any effort to find out who the fuck these six weird people are who showed up.
I'm assuming they were listening to the wedding planner/church assistant lady (I don't think she's a professional Wedding Planner) as she gave the order we'd all be proceeding down the aisle in. So they probably had some clue at this point.
Oh, they also did not hire a photographer. So my son asked Scott if he could please get a couple of nice shots (that's a quote) of him and the bride.
"Well, sure, but I don't want to get in the photographer's way..."
"There's no photographer."
"OH HAY-ULL NAW!"
We had to take Scott back to the hotel after the rehearsal, for migraine levels of "I'm actively being mauled by a bear".
After that, we went to Grandma SQW's house for the rehearsal dinner. The bride's family was piling into the minivan to leave when we get there. Apparently they ate and left.
Grandma SQW filled me in a bit. Bride's mom was crying because bride "didn't want" her to help with the wedding. Grandma gave the "people do things their own way, and I guess her way isn't my way" type speech. I pointed out that if you want to "do things your own way" you kinda have to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING first, and that tearful bit was passive aggressive "I feel like an asshole" BULLSHIT.
Grandma SQW got a much-needed laugh.
So we hung out for a bit with the baby and got to chat with the bride.
Her mother was apparently unaware that the bride is moving in with my son and his father (and his father, who could use some extra TLC) after their two day hotel honeymoon.
Apparently one of the bride's young nieces managed to give her head lice right before she graduated high school. While you or I might go to the drugstore and buy something for that shit, the bride's mother shaved the poor girl's head. It's grown out a little bit now, and I think they can do something with it.
Further, the bride has a birth control implant now. She melted with relief when I welcomed her to the family. We made it clear that she's One Of Us now, and I did make sure to tell her that after this, she is no longer obligated to speak to her family. I also advised her that holding the baby hostage from her parents was not cool - but she COULD require them to make visit arrangements through another family member.
The wedding reception was being held at a bank.
It was a little meeting room thing that I'll describe a bit later.
There are pictures of us getting ready for the rehearsal. I am walking my son down the aisle. Someone said that 140 people were invited to this thing, and they expected about 100 to show up. I'm not sure how many were actually there, though. One of the bride's sisters changed her mind and wanted to be a bridesmaid - it's a real shame she didn't decide this in time to BE a bridesmaid.
People, this shit was whacked out. I wish you all could have been there; I'd put you right in a consolidated block on the groom's side with some huge ass buckets of popcorn.
OH! Also, apparently the bride's family usually attends the Ft. Smith Community Bible Church campus (and... campus? really?) but they decided to have this wedding at the Greenwood campus, as it's the "inaugural" campus.
Personally, I translate that as "we don't want our friends to know how we're acting".
The bride's mother spent most of the time at the reception complaining about how she didn't have any part in the planning, and didn't know what was going on, and generally trying to get sympathy and pity about how her daughter is just casting her aside.
I wish I had quotes, but the only thing she said to me aside from "Oh, so you're Justin's mom" (after I got up in her face with a big smile and initiated the contact), was to ask how she could get copies of the wedding photos we were able to actually take.
Scott told her he'd be sending a DVD to the couple, and she could ask her daughter.
The bride's father did not speak to any of us at all.
The whole thing was an organizational clusterfuck in terms of the bride's younger family being hyperactive screech owls running about like chickens with no heads, the parents apparently being COMPLETELY HUMILIATED THAT THERE'S A BASTARD IN THE FAMILY NOW since their daughter had the bad taste to get knocked up. *EYE. FUCKING. ROLL* I mean, like I was married when I hatched my two; NOT.
The wedding backdrops were pulled down before we could get formal staged shots. But, we did get some great shots of the actual ceremony. Brian wielded the camera for most of that. Plus my mom and stepdad got some great shots as well.
The baby managed to bite his lip and bleed all over the bridesmaid's dress, and someone managed to cover it with eyeshadow, and then they sort of pinned a flower over it. We'll fix it in post.
The wedding reception was in a reception or meeting hall thing in The Big Central Bank. I have never seen tables crammed in that tight. It was impressive. There was no room to move. Certainly there was no music or dancing.
We skipped all the toasts. Too many screaming kids. The groom's mother's family were clustered up by the table where the wedding party sat. The groom's father's family was down at the other end of the same table, as Papa (who is 81 and not well) was not really able to navigate all that far.
The bride's family just sort of sprawled around the rest of the room, as far from us as they could possibly get, on either side of the room. It was like we were in leper island or something. As far as we can tell, the only good person to come out of the bride's family is the bride, and we are delighted to have her.
There are, naturally, no formal wedding photos from the reception, either. Some snapshots may show up, but there wasn't room for a photographer to fucking move through this entire goddamn thing.
As far as I could tell, we were the only people to bring properly wrapped gifts that merited more than a shiny gift bag. They did get some gift cards. I have no idea why the bride's parents didn't manage to stuff some towels in a box and wrap it, or anything. Maybe that will come later.
Oops. This just in, today: The wedding gift from the bride's parents is that her parents are letting her keep the clothes hangers from her closet.
There were no fistfights. There was lots of passive aggressive bullshit. The bride's mother took over portioning out the cake, and was sort of screeching about how if anyone wants cake to come get some out at the room.
My ex-mother-in-law did a decent job of handling last minute reception food, and apparently the bride's family brought a token - a plate of chocolate things her sister made was their contribution - but I would probably have done better getting a McRib across the street.
The best man had taken to calling me Mom before the end of the reception, and has friended me on Facebook.
My son and his new wife are stopped by briefly to chill out a bit before going on their two day hotel honeymoon. Scott slipped my son some cash as a "father to son" gift, to take his wife somewhere nice.
Seriously, this was one of the biggest generic clusterfucks of a wedding I've ever been to (that didn't have any alcohol, anyway), full of cold shoulders and yelling kids and Fuckery...
...that the bride and groom completely upstaged with joy, love, and class.
The bride actually plans to cut all contact with her family. They have used up all her spoons where they are concerned.
My mom was saying good-bye to the bride after the reception, she noticed the bride's mother standing behind the bride. Okay, this is not even a "thing" at all really, but as my mother told her new granddaughter-in-law the welcome to our family line and then followed up with "You know all that 'obey' and 'submit' shit goes right out the window, right? Don't you ever. And don't you let him do that to you. And if he does, YOU CALL ME."
The bride's mom's eyes apparently grew to the size of saucers.
Now, we're not Southern. We don't bless hearts. What we tend to do is ... we won't hold the olive branch out forever, or even for long periods. But we WILL leave it by the door if you want to pick it up and knock, if that makes sense.
I'm not really holding out a lot of hope they're ever going to pickup that olive branch, though.
Backstory: My son is an idiot. He knocked up his GF last year, and now that the girl has graduated high school and spawned a son, her parents are (apparently grudgingly) allowing her to get married. (From the Legal Department - boy was 19 and in his first year of college, girl was 16 (almost 17, AS IF that makes a difference to anyone but the kids, ugh) which is a legal age of consent in their locality. I'm still furious about my son's idiocy, but beating the stupid out of him isn't an option and never works anyway.) I should also point out that the girl asked her parents for birth control and was refused because "then she'd be sexually active".
Boy does not live with me, Boy lives with his father. In rural Arkansas. Well, I don't actually know that anywhere except Little Rock counts as urban there, anyway, but... you get the idea. Fortunately for EVERYONE'S sanity, dad's mom, Grandma Southern Queen Woman, lives nearby. She's one of those "bless your [the more adjectives, the more she hates you] heart" kinda people.
So the kids got this Saturday. She had a pretty white dress, there's pics up on facebook. They got married in the Community Church, which I had to Google to find the address. Apparently the concept that maybe everyone on the planet doesn't know where the Community Church is had not crossed anyone's mind on their end.
It spoke well of the bride, I think, that her wedding registry was at WalMart, and it was for All Reasonable Things. Towels, kitchen utensils, pots and pans, etc. I think the most outrageous thing she asked for is a $60 minifridge.
Which leads us to the part where my daughter called Grandma SQW asking about the reception. It turns out that when she called her Grandma, Grandma was at the store. Buying food for the reception. Because the bride's family was planning on expressing their disdain for The Boy Who Defiled Their Daughter With His Magic Penis Power (obviously THEIR precious Innocent Pure Snowflake wasn't, yanno, a normal teenage girl), was to serve baloney sandwiches at the wedding reception. Grandma SQW's explanation to my daughter was "That woman is a bitch."
If you happen to not know Southern Queen Type Women, the lack of "bless her heart" is a DEFCON 1 warning.
I did a little digging around. Bride's Father is a shop foreman at an auto dealership, which in that local area makes him a pretty big man, short of being in politics or a member of the sheriff's dept. Grandma confirmed that this is not a budgetary decision. They were seriously planning on serving baloney on white bread for a wedding reception.
So I have to wonder... seriously? Your precious daughter is having, hopefully, her ONLY wedding, and you're going to humiliate her by serving food that is basically a bag lunch for kindergarteners at her wedding reception? How much spite do you have to have to do that to not just that groom you despise and his relatives, but THE REST OF YOUR OWN FAMILY?
So, I was away for the weekend, wearing my "I'm so happy for you, son!" face along with a blue beaded salwar kameez (pics soon). Daughter had decided to tone her Goth Chick stuff way down, and I she wore a skirt long enough to cover the tattoo on her calf. However, not much can change the fact that she looks like Wednesday Addams at 22 years old. Scott and Brian (my brother in law, for those who need a score card) wore their Mafia Men's Wearhouse Suits. I got to meet my grandson, which cannot be sullied by any other pettiness.
And my mother and stepfather made it - although they had to specifically dig for an invitation.
This had multiple levels of fabulous. My mom got to meet her first Great Grandchild, and her new son in law, all at the same time. And mom doesn't take any shit from anyone. Her FuckItAll prescription is up to date, with a shitload of refills.
The bride's family (as demonstrated by the past year of watching the facebook feeds) have absolutely zero informed medical knowledge, no understanding of mental illness at all (my son is bipolar and on Seroquel), and have apparently never been to, or heard of, any place that is culturally diverse. So I got to restrain myself from slapping the living shit out of these people when all the snide bullshit started. These people couldn't buy culture if you gave them a Petri dish and a $500 gift card to Culture.com and a free laptop with a T-mobile connect-anywhere dongle to facilitate the transaction.
I mean, if Grandma SQW called this woman a bitch, it's fucking serious. She never even called *ME* a bitch, and she hates my guts.
... interjection here:
I have a basic life philosophy.
"Don't be an asshole."
It doesn't require me to be nice, or glitter filled, or cupcakey.
Just, don't be an asshole. Shitting all over a wedding is an asshole move. Not accepting reality is an asshole move. Not respecting other people's right to be ignorant and wrong is an asshole move.
She's the mother of my grandson. She's never, ever going away. They may get divorced, or not, and there may be bullshit and drama, or not, but she will always be the mother of my grandson. I choose to not be an asshole to her.
Not only is that stupid and self-limiting, it's an asshole thing to do to my grandson.
So, back to StoryTime:
So, we found out the time of the wedding rehearsal (4-7pm, roughly), from my son at about 3 pm - when me, Jess, Scott, Brian, my mom and stepdad, and Jess's BFF were at lunch. To be fair, I was also waiting on my mom to get here to coordinate plans and stuff, she got in late this morning. So we didn't get good arrangements made until the last minute.
...also my mother ADORES MigraineMan and his brother, and they like my mom and stepdad back. That went very much as well as I expected.
So we got the message from my son at about 4 pm. We all truck on down there and find Grandma SQW, (for the scorecard, that's my son's other grandmother), and two of his aunts, and the bride, decorating the church for the wedding. The best man was there, and I don't remember his name, but he's this awesome redheaded kid who has his shit together.
So Grandma SQW and the two aunts and Jess and I all got to work. We strung tulle down the center aisle of these... steel framed stackable chairs, and crammed white ribbon bows on the stupid things. The guys were up trying to get the... I know them as "photo backdrop stands", with these black drapes, arranged so that they hide the
Wait. This needs its own special mention.
On the BLACK wall up behind the pulpit/stage/dais thingie are stapled these white styrofoam plates. Scott says that they are sound dampening acoustic something something pattern, and that they're not just decorative.
But seriously, the black drapey backdrop things are to hide those. So the guys are getting that and some portable white, clear-Christmas-light-strung, trellis thing up. Then we have these little white paper sacks with a heart silhouette cut into them, that we put cardboard pieces in the bottom of, then little clear glass votive holders and tea lights.
So we got ALL THAT done, and the bride's family showed up around 6 pm.
At no point does anyone from the bride's family make:
1) Any effort to reign in the shrieking children.
2) Any effort to mingle with anyone from the groom's family.
3) Any effort to find out who the fuck these six weird people are who showed up.
I'm assuming they were listening to the wedding planner/church assistant lady (I don't think she's a professional Wedding Planner) as she gave the order we'd all be proceeding down the aisle in. So they probably had some clue at this point.
Oh, they also did not hire a photographer. So my son asked Scott if he could please get a couple of nice shots (that's a quote) of him and the bride.
"Well, sure, but I don't want to get in the photographer's way..."
"There's no photographer."
"OH HAY-ULL NAW!"
We had to take Scott back to the hotel after the rehearsal, for migraine levels of "I'm actively being mauled by a bear".
After that, we went to Grandma SQW's house for the rehearsal dinner. The bride's family was piling into the minivan to leave when we get there. Apparently they ate and left.
Grandma SQW filled me in a bit. Bride's mom was crying because bride "didn't want" her to help with the wedding. Grandma gave the "people do things their own way, and I guess her way isn't my way" type speech. I pointed out that if you want to "do things your own way" you kinda have to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING first, and that tearful bit was passive aggressive "I feel like an asshole" BULLSHIT.
Grandma SQW got a much-needed laugh.
So we hung out for a bit with the baby and got to chat with the bride.
Her mother was apparently unaware that the bride is moving in with my son and his father (and his father, who could use some extra TLC) after their two day hotel honeymoon.
Apparently one of the bride's young nieces managed to give her head lice right before she graduated high school. While you or I might go to the drugstore and buy something for that shit, the bride's mother shaved the poor girl's head. It's grown out a little bit now, and I think they can do something with it.
Further, the bride has a birth control implant now. She melted with relief when I welcomed her to the family. We made it clear that she's One Of Us now, and I did make sure to tell her that after this, she is no longer obligated to speak to her family. I also advised her that holding the baby hostage from her parents was not cool - but she COULD require them to make visit arrangements through another family member.
The wedding reception was being held at a bank.
It was a little meeting room thing that I'll describe a bit later.
There are pictures of us getting ready for the rehearsal. I am walking my son down the aisle. Someone said that 140 people were invited to this thing, and they expected about 100 to show up. I'm not sure how many were actually there, though. One of the bride's sisters changed her mind and wanted to be a bridesmaid - it's a real shame she didn't decide this in time to BE a bridesmaid.
People, this shit was whacked out. I wish you all could have been there; I'd put you right in a consolidated block on the groom's side with some huge ass buckets of popcorn.
OH! Also, apparently the bride's family usually attends the Ft. Smith Community Bible Church campus (and... campus? really?) but they decided to have this wedding at the Greenwood campus, as it's the "inaugural" campus.
Personally, I translate that as "we don't want our friends to know how we're acting".
The bride's mother spent most of the time at the reception complaining about how she didn't have any part in the planning, and didn't know what was going on, and generally trying to get sympathy and pity about how her daughter is just casting her aside.
I wish I had quotes, but the only thing she said to me aside from "Oh, so you're Justin's mom" (after I got up in her face with a big smile and initiated the contact), was to ask how she could get copies of the wedding photos we were able to actually take.
Scott told her he'd be sending a DVD to the couple, and she could ask her daughter.
The bride's father did not speak to any of us at all.
The whole thing was an organizational clusterfuck in terms of the bride's younger family being hyperactive screech owls running about like chickens with no heads, the parents apparently being COMPLETELY HUMILIATED THAT THERE'S A BASTARD IN THE FAMILY NOW since their daughter had the bad taste to get knocked up. *EYE. FUCKING. ROLL* I mean, like I was married when I hatched my two; NOT.
The wedding backdrops were pulled down before we could get formal staged shots. But, we did get some great shots of the actual ceremony. Brian wielded the camera for most of that. Plus my mom and stepdad got some great shots as well.
The baby managed to bite his lip and bleed all over the bridesmaid's dress, and someone managed to cover it with eyeshadow, and then they sort of pinned a flower over it. We'll fix it in post.
The wedding reception was in a reception or meeting hall thing in The Big Central Bank. I have never seen tables crammed in that tight. It was impressive. There was no room to move. Certainly there was no music or dancing.
We skipped all the toasts. Too many screaming kids. The groom's mother's family were clustered up by the table where the wedding party sat. The groom's father's family was down at the other end of the same table, as Papa (who is 81 and not well) was not really able to navigate all that far.
The bride's family just sort of sprawled around the rest of the room, as far from us as they could possibly get, on either side of the room. It was like we were in leper island or something. As far as we can tell, the only good person to come out of the bride's family is the bride, and we are delighted to have her.
There are, naturally, no formal wedding photos from the reception, either. Some snapshots may show up, but there wasn't room for a photographer to fucking move through this entire goddamn thing.
As far as I could tell, we were the only people to bring properly wrapped gifts that merited more than a shiny gift bag. They did get some gift cards. I have no idea why the bride's parents didn't manage to stuff some towels in a box and wrap it, or anything. Maybe that will come later.
Oops. This just in, today: The wedding gift from the bride's parents is that her parents are letting her keep the clothes hangers from her closet.
There were no fistfights. There was lots of passive aggressive bullshit. The bride's mother took over portioning out the cake, and was sort of screeching about how if anyone wants cake to come get some out at the room.
My ex-mother-in-law did a decent job of handling last minute reception food, and apparently the bride's family brought a token - a plate of chocolate things her sister made was their contribution - but I would probably have done better getting a McRib across the street.
The best man had taken to calling me Mom before the end of the reception, and has friended me on Facebook.
My son and his new wife are stopped by briefly to chill out a bit before going on their two day hotel honeymoon. Scott slipped my son some cash as a "father to son" gift, to take his wife somewhere nice.
Seriously, this was one of the biggest generic clusterfucks of a wedding I've ever been to (that didn't have any alcohol, anyway), full of cold shoulders and yelling kids and Fuckery...
...that the bride and groom completely upstaged with joy, love, and class.
The bride actually plans to cut all contact with her family. They have used up all her spoons where they are concerned.
My mom was saying good-bye to the bride after the reception, she noticed the bride's mother standing behind the bride. Okay, this is not even a "thing" at all really, but as my mother told her new granddaughter-in-law the welcome to our family line and then followed up with "You know all that 'obey' and 'submit' shit goes right out the window, right? Don't you ever. And don't you let him do that to you. And if he does, YOU CALL ME."
The bride's mom's eyes apparently grew to the size of saucers.
Now, we're not Southern. We don't bless hearts. What we tend to do is ... we won't hold the olive branch out forever, or even for long periods. But we WILL leave it by the door if you want to pick it up and knock, if that makes sense.
I'm not really holding out a lot of hope they're ever going to pickup that olive branch, though.