Bridal shower gifts can be a mixed bag — sometimes, you'll get something off your registry that you really wanted, and other times … well, someone will go rogue with a gift that'll make you cringe. Unfortunately for one woman, the present she received from her stepmother-in-law was firmly in the latter camp. According to the bride's recent Reddit post, her fiancé's stepmom wanted to make her bridal shower extra-special — and wound up giving the bride-to-be the nightgown she wore on her own wedding night (you know, with her fiancé's dad).
The woman's stepmother-in-law has always been a handful, despite her (probably) good intentions.
According to the woman's post, her SMIL often feels like everyone is against her. She is constantly in situations where "things didn’t go her way and it was sooooooo unfair" and will "rant about it for days/months/years," the woman continued. Her SMIL is also a talker, which makes it "impossible to get a word in edge wise," she continued.
Now that the woman is getting married, things have gone from bad to worse.
"Dear Husband and I were having a destination wedding in the Caribbean," she explained. "There were about 50 guests attending so we did not want anyone to have to pay extra, so we said NO to an engagement party, stag and doe, a bridal shower, etc. The only thing I wanted was a bachelorette party (which was in our hometown, one evening of dinner, drinks and dancing, nothing fancy or expensive)."
Both the poster's mom and stepmom asked her multiple times if she really didn't want a bridal shower.
"I pleaded with them not throw me one," she wrote. "They agreed and moved on."
But her stepmother-in-law couldn't let it go — instead, she threw her a bridal shower of her own.
"She made it all about her, parading around like the 'mother of the bride,'" the poster continued.
Her SMIL went wayyy overboard at the party too — even making it lingerie-themed, despite the fact that nighties are not at all something the bride is into.
"So I got 15 different nightgowns as presents," she wrote. "I don't wear/have never worn nightgowns in my life, so I ended up returning all of them for bathing suits (for the wedding)."
She also forgot to invite one of the bride's close friends and caused a scene when the bride didn't respond to her immediately.
"At one point, she was telling a story (obviously monopolizing the conversation) and I was turned the other way talked to my friends," the woman recalled. "She wanted me to hear what she was saying and kept saying, 'OP, hey, OP!!, HEY!!! OP!!' but I kept ignoring her as I was in the middle of a conversation.
"At one point, she turns around, throws her hands in the air and yells, 'Well, I guess OP doesn’t want to hear my story [with an eye roll],'" she shared. "I stopped talking, turned my head, starred at her, and turned back to my conversation."
The real cherry on top was when the poster's SMIL gave her a very ahemquestionable gift.
At one point during the shower, the SMIL gathered the guests together in "a dramatic (and long) fashion," the bride shared.
"She goes on and on about how she has something she wants to give me for my wedding and it’s important to her and blablabla," she recalled. "She has a lot of family heirlooms and antiquities, so I assumed it would be some hair brooch, or a garter or something."
But nope.
"It was a HAND-ME-DOWN NIGHTGOWN," she wrote. "THAT SHE WORE ON HER WEDDING NIGHT. FOR ME TO WEAR ON MY WEDDING NIGHT."
Woah boy.
"She then made a 'joke' about fertility and how she got pregnant 'very soon' after the wedding," she continued. "ISN'T THAT WEIRD?!"
(Answer: Yes; yes it is.)
"It's 1994 Victoria's Secret nightgown," the poster described. "Long almost down to my ankles, lace, and the bra part is completely see through with sequins hahahaha nips galore."
The poster was (understandably) mortified. And even worse, both her mom and her stepmom had to watch as her SMIL threw her the bridal shower that they had wanted to give her in the first place.
"I heard from my sisters that they both cried after," the woman shared. "Broke my heart."
It was unanimous: This was the cringiest gift (and bridal shower) that most people had ever heard of.
"OMG," one commenter wrote. "The cringe-factor is in the stratosphere."
Another person offered the poster a bit of advice:
"I would get future dear husband to return to her it with a 'this is not an appropriate gift, it's actually disturbing to give my future wife something that you obviously had sex with my father in' also if he has a strong enough spine he could also add in that her going against your wishes for a bridal party, hurt a lot of close and important people to OP, and excluded some important people, so maybe she should think about her wants vs what is both appropriate and acceptable behavior."
"She does not mean well, she is not well-intentioned," a third person chimed in. "Her intentions are to make everything about her at the expensive of everyone else, with no regards to how her actions might make others feel."
The OP later explained that she's decided to hang on to the gown but will keep it deep, deep in storage.
"He is disgusted hahaha but I plan on keeping it in the box in my closet, just in case she wants to 'see it' in the future (which would not surprise me)," she explained. "The day she leaves this earth, the gown is going with her."
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