Okay, I need to know if I/we are BU...
Bit of background first: DH and I got married very recently, spent a bit more money than expected and are now happy but broke trying to be frugal
Now DH's sister is getting married, and DH is invited to the stag do in a UK city. It's going to cost £200 per head before drinks, food and travel. To elaborate a bit, we have pretty average incomes (n.b - much less than SIL & BIL2B), enough to cover mortgage, day to day living and the odd cinema trip / day out / whatever. We deliberately didn't have a holiday this year, and literally a few days ago decided to cancel our planned joint-birthday weekend away in the UK as it was going to cost around the £200 mark.
So putting all of this into consideration, DH replied that he'll go to one of the nights, i.e. half of the stag weekend (£100 is still quite a lot to us at the moment for what is essentially a celebratory piss up, but it's a compromise). However this is apparently not a good enough solution - SIL feels it's unfair because BIL2B went to DH's stag and spent lots of £££s. She phoned up MIL and whipped her up into a state about it, and DH's younger brother is cross with him too as he won't know anyone else there. On top of that, MIL and SIL now think we are actually poor and struggling because of the way DH worded his reply (I hate texting!). In all of this, nothing has been said by the actual stag, who is a very relaxed guy - The sniping is being done behind our backs, and only via MIL and SIL who then feed each others' comments back to us in dribs and drabs of texts.
SIL replied, ignoring DH saying (not asking) he'd go for one night and just said "well the inheritance will be through by then anyway" (DH is due a small inheritance, separate issue). Erm, even if it is, we are not spending it on a stag do. It will go into a proper savings account for our future/babies/house etc.
We do understand that BIL2B spent lots of money on DH's stag and it's lovely that he could afford to do that, but my feeling is he didn't have to, and forcing DH to spend money we don't physically have is unfair.. My DB couldn't afford to go to DH's stag, and he was missed, but neither of us were angry with him.
Anyway I feel like the only way to avoid an all-out family argument here is to just agree that he should go, which means either spending hundreds of pounds of our joint money that we don't have (overdraft I guess), or borrowing money from family, which in my experience never ends well. DH also said he doesn't want to just bend to this pressure and go just because SIL is being bossy.
I want DH to stick to his guns as I think their behaviour is pretty shitty, but I don't want him to be upset by it all, which he is, naturally. I don't want SIL & MIL to be upset with DH/us.
Soooo what's the verdict MNetters?
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AIBU?
A Drag of a Stag! (sorry, v long)
16 replies
TiffanyAtBreakfast · 07/08/2013 12:33
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