My mother-in-law wanted to wear a wedding dress to my wedding, so I made her a “jacket of shame.”
We want everything to go well on our wedding day because it’s a big deal. But some people seem to have a gross plan to destroy it no matter what. One woman had the same thing happen to her, and she wrote about it on Reddit. On her wedding day, her MIL wanted to wear white, but the bride punished her for not listening to any of the many requests to wear a different color.
The woman took her wedding preparations very seriously.
A 23-year-old woman came to Reddit to tell her completely crazy story and asked users for their thoughts. She started her post by saying, “Hi everyone! I’ve been following the pod for a while now, and lately it’s made me wonder if I might have been wrong in this situation, since I’m STILL getting shade from this after a year.” Please let me know!
She writes on, “My husband and I got married in March of last year after dating for three years.” His family has never caused me any trouble, and his mother and I used to get along great. Also, we are the first people from both sides to get married.
She was very responsible about getting ready for the wedding and didn’t want anything to go wrong. “To make a long story short, planning this wedding wasn’t easy. There were many arguments between me and the mothers (his mother and mine) about small details like what kind of table I wanted to use” (no changes made).
But the clothes were the thing that worried her the most. “Even what style dress I wanted to wear, but the cherry on top was my mother-in-law’s outfit she was planning to wear!” she said.
From the start, the OP’s MIL was difficult to work with.
The woman goes on with her story by saying that she had certain ideas about how the guests should dress. It was six months before the wedding, and she said, “I told many times that the only color guests weren’t allowed to wear was white. I even told everyone to go all out with their outfits (prom looks, etc., because who doesn’t love dressing up and looking their best?), but clearly this didn’t include my mother-in-law.”
The mom of her husband wouldn’t even listen to what her DIL had to say. The original post said, “She kept showing me pictures of the clothes she was going to wear, and they were all white.”
So that she wouldn’t cause a scandal, the bride-to-be used all of her diplomatic skills to stay out of it. “I tried different angles with her,” she says. First I tried to steer her toward a different color, and then I brought up the “no white” rule without meaning to. Even my husband and mother were asked to talk to her about not wearing white because telling her straight out not to wear white didn’t seem to work.
The bride knew what she was going to do to discipline her MIL.
Later in her post, the woman writes, “One of her online orders arrived, and I just happened to be there. That’s when I knew I had to make a serious plan quickly.” I finally got to see this outfit, and to be honest, I was ready for the obvious—that it would be white. I even thought about just letting the whole white thing go with her to save myself the mental stress.
But the most shocking news was still to come. This makes the angry woman say, “But I NEVER thought she would order a real wedding dress!” “Thank goodness it was one of those “expectation vs. reality” moments! The dress was awful, so it went straight to the trash!
The OP then thought of a way to get her MIL to listen to her. “Now to what I thought was a great plan,” she said. I told my sister and the other bridesmaids how I felt about the whole thing, and I suggested that guests (like my mother-in-law) should be punished in some way if they showed up in white. That’s how the “jacket of shame” idea came about.
“Jacket of shame” was what the bride gave to everyone who wore white.
“My sister helped me shop for the perfect jacket,” the woman wrote. A yellow jacket that shines in the dark that construction workers often wear. That wasn’t the end of the fun!
They added something very special to this jacket. “To make sure everyone knew what would happen, my sister helped me set up a decorating station at my bridal shower where people could decorate this “Jacket of Shame.” It was a huge hit!” My family and friends liked writing mean things on the jacket with glitter pens and bright Sharpies, like “How dare you show up in white?” and “Are you the bride?” I DO NOT THINK SO.’»
The plan worked better than the OP thought it would.
“Afterwards, I explained what the jacket would be used for. I told them that if someone showed up to our wedding wearing white or anything that could be mistaken for a wedding dress, they would have to put on this jacket as soon as they got there, and they wouldn’t be able to take it off, not even for official wedding or family photos.”
Plus, “Maybe I went too far after someone asked, ‘But won’t that ruin your photos and throw off the whole look?’” I told them straight out, “Not at all!” The picture would be framed and hung in our home as a trophy or reminder.
But what happened was even better than she thought it would be. “Needless to say, I never got that picture, and my mother-in-law showed up to our wedding dressed for a funeral,” the woman said. That made me feel like I had won, but his mother and aunt keep telling me how inappropriate the jacket was and what a bad woman I was for making my guests wear it.
Reddit users were mostly in favor of the woman’s plan.
Most of the comments were made to support and praise the woman.
Someone wrote, “MIL was pouting a lot because she was going to wear a white wedding dress and wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have to wear the jacket of shame.” She lost it, and her daughter-in-law was in charge. The wedding dress was a power move that she missed.
Another user said, “I’m really sick of seeing mothers who are so emotional that they have to look like brides at their son’s wedding.” It was even worse that she chose to dress like she was going to a funeral instead, as if she were sad about ending her relationship with her son’s future bandmate. I will never understand women who hate other women SO much that they think their son getting married will end the world.
Someone else said, “It always seems creepy to me when mothers try to outshine the bride, no matter which of the brides-to-be they popped out or whether they’re doing it in white or any other color.”
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