What Are They Thinking?

This was in Annie's Mailbox on June 2, 2008:
Dear Annie: This is in response to "Snubbed," whose in-laws didn't include the spouses in the family photo at her father-in-law's birthday.

I can do her one better. My in-laws didn't want to include me in my own wedding photo. My husband's parents have all of their other children's wedding photos on their wall, but not one of them includes the in-law grooms or brides. They are only shots of their own children, plus the parents.

I put a stop to that. I made sure I was in my wedding photo, along with my husband, his siblings and parents. — Midwest Wife

Dear Midwest: You're right — not including the spouse in the family wedding photo takes the cake. With all the layers.

What?
They only got one picture of the whole wedding? There was no picture of just the bride and her parents? And the bride with her mother and step-father and the bride with her father and step-mother and the groom only with all the permutations of his family would have ruined the whole day for her?

And the dimwits who write this column agree?

Mom kept a picture of Pam in her bridal gown, me in my bridal gown, and Cheri had no picture of just the bride because it was a newly 'professional' photographer.

What is so horrible about parents wanting a picture of just them and just their child on an important day? The bride poses all over with just herself: looking forward, glancing backwards over the train of her gown, showing off herself and her dress. And somehow this woman is so nasty that she can't allow her husband and his parents one picture without her elbowing her way into it?

Holidays are going to be wonderful for this kind soul. They will revolve only around her. One – okay, this one – can only hope that she has a son or two and gets told on some important day in his life, she isn't permitted to bask in the glow of his contentment as there will be no contentment, only some other person's selfish need to control.

So, when the groom finally tires of this self-centered woman's need to be the star and finally divorces her ass, his parents will remove the picture of the 'wall of fame' parents like to keep. They will have no record of just them and their offspring because this mean and nasty woman could only see the world as it revolves around her and had no idea parents sometimes like to share a moment with just their child.

I certainly hope the woman who wrote this letter learns at some point that even on Bride's Day, she isn't the only person in the world. And I hope her parents-in-law can find it in their hearts to forgive her for being a totally senseless and selfish, mean, nasty, inconsiderate, and vile person.

And I hope the husband will some day come to his senses and explain the universe to his misguided wife. It is NOT all about her.