My daughter’s in laws brought their dogs to one of my daughter’s weddings. It was ridiculous.
One of the dogs got loose due to all the chaos. Lots more to the story.
I’ll stop because I get annoyed and they aren’t worth getting worked up about.
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To the actual wedding itself???
I love my dog. He’s a senior now, partially deaf, and meds need to be administered. I’m picky with who I leave him with but you better believe that I’m prioritizing time/travel with my human family.
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The parents live a couple hours away.
The wedding was an intimate affair for 30 people at the wedding couple’s home. Dinner was in a private room at a restaurant but the actual wedding was at their home. There was another wedding but this wedding was so that the brides 3 grandparents could attend because there was no way they could navigate the destination wedding.
They brought their 2 dogs and stayed at the bridal couple’s home. The bridal couple stayed in a hotel.
The story I was given was that the parents were staying at their home to watch the bridal couples dog. The day of the wedding, my husband and I were called to walk our daughter’s dog. We were in a hotel a couple of blocks away with my octogenarian in laws. What the in laws were doing is anyone’s guess.
My husband ran out of the house to help our son and his family find parking for them and their 2 year old. One of their dogs escaped and was running through our daughter’s very urban neighborhood. The neighbors were so nice helping everyone find the dog.
This is only the tip of the crazy iceberg.
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OMG @deb922 ! How terrible to add that stressful situation to already stressful one.
IMO, It is absolutely rude to impose your dogs on the people you visit. We have 3 cats who are not fond of dogs. I make it clear to visitors that any dog dragged into our house will have to stay outside. On a covered patio fully fenced and gated. Or they are welcome to clean the mess the cats would create when they see the dog. The dog owners always choose the patio.
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My sister in law has not been here to visit since I told her many years ago that she was not allowed to bring her (poorly behaved) dog into my house. They took that dog everywhere. Invited…or not.
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I think it’s rude to impose yourself on someone’s wedding to stay at their home and bring your dogs.
We were not given that option, we were told we needed to stay in a hotel.
This isn’t about that but whining about other people’s insistence that they bring their dogs to every event is.
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One of the reasons I hated traveling to where our families lived was this! H’s family is all about the gifts. The few times we did go back we felt the excess was way over the top. Of course we already made everyone mad because we took ourselves out of the the adult gift exchanges. It was stressful for me to have to buy, pack, and ship all that stuff (and then they sent stuff back to be returned!). I did not have the time or bandwidth. Fine if people are all about that, but I hated it.
My parents showed up once for actual Christmas. My kids were older then but you would have thought they had won the lottery. They were so excited! My inlaws - never. Not one time. That still makes me sad for my kids.
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Ah yes. The present opening “tradition” is exactly why we stopped going to my in-laws on Christmas morning. We did this exactly one time when our son was about 3 years old (schlepping the gifts and explaining that Santa knew where he was…). There were about 20 people, including two other preschool kids. In this family ONE person opens a gift, and passes it around for all to see before anyone else opens a gift. Sort of like a baby shower where they pass the gifts around. Needless to say, the waiting for the three preschool kids was inexcusable. Both sets of parents asked if the little kids could open their gifts first and be on their way to play with them. Answer was NO.
Oh…and because it took so long, a full breakfast was served in the middle of this, and all give opening stopped while everyone ate waffles, bacon, eggs, etc. It was a crazy thing for preschoolers to have to do.
So…we never went Christmas morning again.
There were also Christmas Eve rituals…and everyone was expected to comply. Whether they agreed and wanted to as adults…or not.
As adults, our kids are welcome at our home on any holiday…or anytime for that matter. But these “traditions” have morphed over the years.
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My H has always been big on buying tons of gifts for Christmas. It’s not about the things themselves - for him, it’s about picking out gifts for each person that will make them happy. As our kids and parents got older, that became more difficult. They just didn’t want or need so much stuff. I’ve been slowly getting him to scale back in recent years. I’ve redirected him to getting little things to fill stockings. I think it’s been tough for him, because he loved having a room full of brightly wrapped presents by the tree, but our kids are absolutely fine with it. But I have to remind him annually not to go overboard.
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My husband has always done the stockings…and I have to remind him not to go overboard there too!
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My sister always goes WAY overboard. No stopping her in any way! So we’ve learned to just not keep up with her. Feels lopsided but that’s all you can do. It just makes her happy.
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Not a problem in our family because Santa gifts were never wrapped. They were just under the tree waiting. Had to wait to open other gifts with family but Santa gifts were usually something you really wanted and everything else was extra.
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I will say in my H’s defense that we never involved others in our excess, so at least there’s that. We never opened our presents around anyone else. That would have been awful!
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We went overboard when they were little and now I wish we hadn’t. It just sets up expectations as they grew older. I have a friend that did 4 gifts each kid. One from Santa ( the big one), and the rest from mom and dad.
Now, our sons get just a few but they are typically $$$. I think it’s too much. Now we have DIL and I don’t want to spend the same amount of money because then it’s really ridiculous. But I don’t feel I can give DS more than her. I’m not sure how to handle this.
We’re fortunate because our kids told us that we should cut back, so we’ve slowly done that. D asked that we give GD “one toy, one book, one outfit,” so we started off not going overboard with her.
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You could consider implementing a new thing, like 4 presents -
Something you want
Something you need
Something to eat
Something to read
(Or other versions of the same type of thing).
We are taking our kids and SOs on a trip near Christmas, and we are only doing stockings as Christmas presents. We have generally been on the pretty generous side, and our kids have gotten LOTS of presents. This year may be hard for one of them, but we’ve given lots of warning, and we would rather get experiences with them, than more “stuff” they don’t need.
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My kids really want us to cut back.
My sil and bil went way overboard for Christmas. It was so much stuff they had no room for.
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We got everything for the year on Christmas morning - socks, underwear, jeans, a ski jacket, jewelry, etc. It was ridiculous. Five of the six of us had summer birthdays so we got something then, but it was a ‘summer’ thing like a sleeping bag for camp or a tennis racket. I’m sure we got things we needed during the year like shoes or a sweatshirt, but it seemed like everything was at Christmas. It was a zoo.
Now my kids have much more than me and I can’t afford to give them trips or dinning room sets. One just got married and I can give her things off the registry (NO ONE bought things off the registry!) and the other really doesn’t want stuff. She’s going to Australia just after Christmas (and her birthday) so maybe can find an experience for them there.
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We handle this by giving the now married kids and their spouses a family gift. One big one for the adults to share ($$, airline tix, gift cards, stuff for house, etc.) Both adults get socks. Their kids get whatever their parents tell us would make them happy (short of a pony 
, so within reasonable expectations).
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