Posted on 01/19/2013 7:42:33 AM PST by Badabing Badablonde
DEAR ABBY: My daughter was recently married. My niece -- a talented artist -- hand-painted flowers on wine glasses for the dinner reception following the ceremony. They were intended to be keepsakes for each of the adult guests.
/snip/
The following day, someone mentioned to me that they had seen certain guests leave with four to six glasses each. One woman even had her child, who was loaded down with glasses, make several trips to her car.
We've figured out who the culprits were: some out-of-towners who stayed at the home of one of the groom's relatives. I heard that the glassware covered the entire top of their dining room table. My question: Should we ask these people to return the glasses? Thanks for your input, Abby. -- MOTHER OF THE BRIDE IN MESA, ARIZ.
DEAR MOTHER: By all means ask -- but there is no guarantee they'll be returned. People who take more than their share usually feel an inflated sense of entitlement. Although their manners were atrocious, please don't let this cause in-law problems before the marriage has even begun. Perhaps out of sympathy, the artist will be generous enough to craft another pair of goblets for the bride and groom.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That is trashy! Again with the entitlement mentality... “but I want a complete SET not just one glass”. I can actually top this story: my icky SIL actually took about 95% of the flowers set out by my Mother’s casket. She just kept on taking them, walking out to her car and sticking them in the trunk/backseat/wherever they could fit . She actually said, “I like flowers and everyone knows that... including my MIL”. (not that you have to guess but who do you think she voted for?)
I'd say nothing. I certainly wouldn't accuse someone of stealing.
You have too much time on your hands.
Mom should never invite anyone from the groom’s family to her home, or if she does, she had better lock up the good china, silverware and glasses. Oh, and put jewelry and other valuables in a safe.
Squabbling over a few glasses??? Really? This is what they will walk away from their daughter’s wedding remembering and thinking about??? Get a life!!!
At my wedding reception, I had a co-worker try to walk out with the centerpiece - AND the salt and pepper shakers - AND the tablecloth. I had to tell her to put them back. Another co-worker scolded me for making the thief feel bad. Turns out that the “scolder” had put all the sugar packets she could find, plus TP and paper towels from the ladies’ room into her large purse.
Those two never got an invitation to my house!
I can top that. One of my older relatives hired a moving van to clean out the family home when her mom died. While everyone was at the funeral service. Wake was at another relatives house. When the rest of the family met at their mom’s house the next day to begin dividing stuff up it was empty! Older relative tried to convince everyone they’d been ROBBED. Until a neighbor happened to walk over to express condolences and mentioned the United Van Lines truck. Older relative clammed up and walked out.
I was a kid and at school that day. My mom refused to believe said relative would do something like that. About 3m later I was selling something for a band trip and rang the relatives doorbell. When she answered the door her entire living and dining room was full of...you guessed it..united van lines moving boxes. Stacked to the ceiling. With a tiny little walk path in between. As far as the eye could see there were boxes stacked to the ceiling. And furniture stacked on furniture covered with sheets. Her kids and grandkids visited her when the school year let out and (it’s a small town) neighbors informed us they all arrived with moving vans.
She’d already convinced her mother to give her power of attorney and managed to get all the money too. Needless to say none of her siblings spoke to her again or even went to her funeral. She had 7 siblings and none of them got even so much as a doily. Even things they’d given to their mom. Yes, there was a will. No, she wasn’t the only one mentioned. The will specifically directed the executor (local lawyer) to return to kids what they’d bought (dishwasher to X, dryer to Y, etc). Kind of hard to do that when the house had been emptied.
Well... you definitely did top my story! Can you imagine?! I really think a person’s true colors show at the death of a relative. I really do. I haven’t spoken to my SIL since my Mom’s funeral either (it was more than just the flowers. She demanded the “estate” pay for her parents air travel to the services and cleaned out my Mom’s jewelry as well). Trash gets a lot of light when there is money to be made IMHO.
It’s not the glasses. It’s the disrespect.
And the unanswered question for the bride, what else will they steal? Would they steal the serving pieces from family Christmas dinner? Will any further gathering involve dixie cups and plastic forks because we can’t afford to buy new silverware for the Y family every time we have a get together?
OMG!
first, this is not from the poster. It’s just posting a Dear Abby article, possibly in tribute.
Second, you didn’t read the whole letter at the website. The woman swiped glasses even from behind the MOB. Didn’t ask anyone and just assumed lonely glasses were free to take.
It’s possible that people were uninterested in taking home a single painted glass, and let the other people take theirs.
Well, that small town talked about that for thirty years. One of the older relatives neighbors had noticed the van lines truck at her house the afternoon after the funeral but didn’t really put 2 and 2 together and when she did kept her mouth shut because she wasn’t family.
Older relatives kids have had to live that down for years. It’s only recently that they’ve been included in family gatherings.
My own grandmother had a silver service she could use for big gatherings like Christmas dinner. Which was nice and civilized until one of my first cousins wives took her place setting home and planned to hock it. Fortunately for my grandmother (her pattern was discontinued) my first cousin brought it back with apologies. Henceforth all serving was done with plastic forks. Ostensibly to save time dishwashing. A few of us knew better though.
So my question to the original post is this. Were the extra glasses some others didn’t really care for or were they in fact purloined. The answer could have implications for future family gatherings. Will they be civilized with real plates and silverware or will they be a paper and plastic affair? If the possible miscreants are invited into a home will all the valuables have to be locked up? Does this family have a reputation with the grooms family? I’d hate to have family Christmas dinner at my home and discover i’d been robbed by family.
liberals again!!
My mother died when I was 2 1/2. My sister was 6 weeks old. Everything went to my Dad and maternal grandmother. When my Grandmother died, my aunt and uncle took everything, including my mother’s things set aside for myself and my sister.
My dad remarried and had two more daughters. When he passes, I’m pretty sure every thing he has that is our mothers will go to our half sisters. My dad has never given us anything of our mothers and I’m in my early 50’s now.
Greed is a terrible thing, but has it’s own “rewards”, if you will. My uncle committed suicide and my aunt ended up in a mental ward. I have to remember, everyone else has her things. I have her spirit. Things are only things.
I was at a wedding reception where a fistfight broke out and the cops were called.
Some of the grooms trashy young cousins found, and opened, some bottles of champagne intended for an after-party. They were load and annoying anyway, and some other guests called them out on their behavior. Punches were thrown!
That’s a shame about your mom. But people crazy enough to steal from kids are crazy. No doubt.
I don’t have anything anyone would really want so I’m fairly immune to this behavior.
I’ve got another one. Older relative had 2 daughters. One who lived locally and one who lived about a day away. Older relative had a stroke serious enough that the doctors called the family in. Out of town daughter stayed at the family home with her daughters and took turns with her sister sitting with their dad at the hospital.
Meanwhile, out of town’s daughters were pillaging the family home, with their mothers approval. One daughter worked for UPS and was seen delivering carload after carload of boxes to the local UPS shipper. Cleaned out all the silver, depression glass, handmade quilts and the attic and stuff like that. See, it was the first time they’d visited that their grandfather hadn’t been home. He never allowed them into the attic because ‘that’s your grandmothers stuff’. And they’d been itching to get up there for years. Well, they did.
The old guy managed to pull through in spite of the medical prognosis and when they brought him home he noticed his daddy’s silver watch was missing...and the ____ hit the fan in that family. In town sister hasn’t really spoken to the out of town sister or her daughters in about 15 years now. I can’t blame her. They couldn’t even wait for the body to get cold before they cleaned him out. When he did die and his banking information was available to the rest of the heirs it became obvious that he’d been sending out of town daughter THOUSANDS of dollars every year for her ‘upkeep’. Bought her cars, bought her daughters cars, paid their phone bills, department store CC bills and more. Because she ‘needed it’ more than the other daughter. And this is how they paid him back...
And, they’re all crazy. Both daughters are homewreckers. One of them specifically preys on married men for the ‘challenge’ of things. The other takes handfuls of psych meds. The mom has to, if she can, imagine how it’ll be when she becomes ill and old. Those kids’ll pull the plug on her so fast it’ll make her head spin. She’ll be lucky to be in a home where they even change the residents adult diapers.
The rest of us want to be flies on the wall in that house when it’s the two daughters fighting over stuff. THAT would be entertainment! Cage match!!
Not all families act like that. When my husband’s mom died, everyone was so respectful. She had made her wishes known and the brothers and sisters followed those wishes. No one was greedy. It was kind of strange, but my husband’s family is like that. They are drinkers, but totally respectful of each other.
I wonder, does the crazy create the greed or does the greed create the crazy?
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