Planning a wedding can be a challenging time for a couple, especially when an overbearing parent gets involved. If you’ve seen the movie “Monster-in-law,” then surely you know just how bad relatives can be.
Well, one mom is taking the cake when it comes to pushing the limit during her daughter’s wedding. In fact, this may be the worst case of a mom getting involved when she shouldn’t. And it was all caught online when the mother wrote in requesting advice from a columnist about her daughter’s bridal party. Long story short, the mother didn’t think that the daughter should have her best friend as the maid of honor because the best friend, Katie, has a limp due to a defect she was born with. She prefaces the letter by saying that Katie and her daughter have been best friends since they were four-years-old and Katie is like a second daughter to her.
And then it happens…she goes on to say that she doesn’t feel like her daughter’s choice to have Katie as the maid of honor is a good one because Katie’s limp will minimize the beauty of the wedding. She feels that Katie would be better suited to hand out programs or greet guests where she can be sitting down instead of leading her daughter down the aisle. At some point in the letter, she also mentions that she and her daughter have never been close. Gee, I wonder why.
The mother was actually quoted as saying the following…
“I think it will look unsightly if she’s in the wedding procession limping ahead of my daughter.”
She goes on to say that she is afraid that Katie will ruin the aesthetic aspect of the wedding.
Her daughter is no longer speaking to her (shocking) and this mom doesn’t understand why. She goes on to ask the advice columnist if it’s wrong to have her daughter’s best friend sit it out?
As to be expected, Mallory Ortberg, the voice behind the Dear Prudence column, was floored by the question and didn’t hold back from responding bluntly, as she should. While she admitted that she had a hard time wrapping her head around the question, Ortberg answered with the following…
“A limp is not a fly in the ointment; it’s a part of Katie’s life,” Ortberg wrote. “It is not only wrong to have asked your daughter to consider excluding her best friend over this—it is ableist and cruel, and it speaks to a massive failure of empathy, compassion, and grace on your part.”
While Ortberg wanted to say a whole bunch of other harsh things, she told the woman that she needs to apologize to her daughter, (she is guessing that won’t happen though, based on the woman’s heartless attitude.) And then, she ended her response with…
“I encourage you to profoundly reconsider the orientation of your heart.”
This woman is making most mother’s of the bride look like angels. It’s baffling how someone can be so heartless and ignorant to even have the audacity to seek advice about such a situation.
