In honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to do a little “mother of the bride” post. My mom once said that “Mother’s Day” should be every day, and I should think that a wedding is an occasion that a mother would want to feel particularly honored (next to the bride, of course).
Let Mom Walk Down the Aisle in Style
Check out more Mother of the Bride ideas.
Do the Little Things for the Mother of the Bride
Many mothers of the bride want to feel included/special in the wedding plans and on the wedding day. Girls have a habit of feeling catty about their role, and it’s not uncommon for some weddings to have some competing estrogen. Prevent this from happening by already planning ways to make your mom feel included/special before and after.
1. Include her in the hunt for your perfect wedding dress–and her perfect mother of the bride dress.
2. Make your mother of the bride a VIP
Reserve her chair, put extra decorations at her table/chair, etc.
3. Give the mother of the bride a special present.
4. Ask your mother of the bride to contribute “something old.” Some moms might even like to give you a special quote or line of poetry to embroider inside of your dress or on a handkerchief for extra wedding day inspiration.
5. Give your mom a job–maybe to take home your bouquet or to take your wedding dress to get cleaned the next day.
6. Let her get her hair and make-up done with you and your bridal party.
7. Ask for mom’s advice.
8. Give her a card with a personalized letter telling her how much she means to you and how she helped prepare you be a wife and/or mother.
9. Consider letting her walk you down the aisle with your father (or just your mother if there is no father).
Tips for Including the Mother of the Bride in Your Planning
Be honest to yourself about your relationship with your mother. Some bride are totally in sync with their mothers and have the same ideas and style and planning a wedding brings out the best in both of them. Some brides and their mothers are polar opposites and seemed destined to kill each other planning a wedding. Some moms are pushy, other moms are hands off.
When you realize who your mom is and what your relationship with her is like, then you can figure out how to include her in the wedding. Too often I hear about brides who have totally defected to whatever their mom wants in the wedding. Maybe that is a choice they make, or a trade off they settle on, if mom is footing the bill.
You should try to make the day about you and your significant other’s choices. One way to rein in a pushy mother of the bride is to give her a specific assignment in which she has control over. For example, choose an area of the wedding you don’t absolutely have to have control over yourself. Let’s say you don’t care about the guest book, or how you decorate the cake table, etc. Give that to your overbearing mother (if you have one) and let her have fun. Maybe let her host the day after breakfast?
Do you remember the scene in Steel Magnolias where Jackson (Julia Roberts’ husband in the film) has this pushy aunt who makes hideous cakes? They let her do the groom’s cake, and she put together this ugly armadillo cake (red velvet inside, so even more gross when you cut it open!). A groom’s cake vs. the main cake. These are the trade offs you sometimes have to make.
The idea is to plan ahead, contain the potential problem, and avoid unnecessary stress that would undermine you special day.
Moms generally mean well, even if their behavior can sometimes be a little hard to explain or rationalize.
