My mother.... and her outfit .... vent

Http://fashionoa.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/soulcal01.jpg This is just a dress I found on google, since I dont' have a picture of the one she has. She told me today that it shouldn't matter what she wears because she's not the bride... but I feel that her being the mother of the bride, she's sort of important too and I want her to look good in our pictures. I'm taking her shopping hopefully tonight, I hope I can convince her to buy a nice dress... the other problem is that she HATES to spend money... she got the orange mess from her bf's sister years ago.... what the F?!?! I feel like she just doesn't want to put in any effort

Lol I feel your pain. I have shared this on here a few times. My mother disturbs me sometimes with some of her wardrobe choices. She at least tries but ehhhh sometimes it's just epic fail. We went out a couple of times looking but i ended up finding her dress on my own. She loved it and was tickled pink that I put so much effort into finding something for her. I hope you get it worked out. I just told my mom I wanted her to have something nice. No need to elaborate lol.

I have to say, when I read your post I thought "how bad can it be?" but it's pretty bad...

if money is an issue maybe you can offer to chip in for the dress or if you can afford it, pay for the whole thing?

I don't know what you're going thru but I have to say I'm a very big tomboy and if my daughter was getting married I would look wonderful for her big day. I agree with Ladylee go pick out the dress and hand it to her and say here you go.

If money was the issue I'd pay for it... the thing is she's got more money then she knows what to do with.. but her BF said she can't spend it on my wedding... he "approved" of her giving me $400 towards my wedding dress.... ya... the dress is $1200 with taxes and alterations... she ended up giving me another $1000 on top of the $400 without telling him about it. She has to sneak behind his back to spend her OWN money.. she works and she makes lots of money... He doesn't work, but he's what I would call a "loan shark" he lends money to people and charges them ridiculus interest... SKETCH lol Anyways ... ya so I would totally pay for the dress if I knew she couldn't afford it. But she can, so I wont... if she doesn't get a nicer dress .. I honestly don't know what I will do with her

I think you'd be better off letting her wear a pair of really dressy slacks and a nice sweater/blouse instead of that hot mess. LOL. If she's not comfortable in dresses, that would be my solution. At least a pair of really nice slacks would look less casual and would be more color coordinated than orange with red. I mean really? ORANGE with RED?!?!

I suggested to her that she wear a nice pant suit, I even found one that looked great on her... she didn't like the material or that it cost $100. If I were to buy her something and tell her to wear it, I know she wouldn't pay me back for it and she might not even wear it. She doesn't even seem interested in the wedding

My mom is exactly the same way! She never dresses up so she's actually just kind of clueless when it comes to dressy clothes. I practically had to drag her by her hair to the store just to get her to try on anything. Now my mom wore a dress to my sisters wedding, only because my sister kind of made her, but in all of the pictures from that wedding you can just tell that she was SO uncomfortable. I didn't want to do that to my mom. So we settled on a really nice dress shirt with come black pants and a dress jacket. It looks really nice and shes comfortable. Maybe you could meet her in the middle with something like that?

@ Lisa - If I'm able to get her to the mall today after work (or ever lol) I will definitely look into that. I dont' want her to be uncomfortable, but I want her to look nice.

Lol Yes at least give that a try and see what she does. My FMIL had bought a dress and I honestly think that my mom's outfit looks better than her dress. (not just because I love my mom more lol) But honestly it looks like FMIL is trying too hard to fit in. She will look overly dressed up when all is said and done.

I'm wondering if FMIL will look a little overdone compaired to my bridal party, my BM dress pics are on my IB, so is my dress. FMIL looks great in the dress though.

If I was having my Vegas wedding that I wanted, my mom could wear whatever she wanted cuz it'd be casual, but i dont' think she'd spend the money to go there lol and FH said no to the vegas wedding anyways

That's what I was worried about with my FMIL and my bridesmaids. I got the BM's dresses at DEB. I didn't go through David's Bridal or anything like that so they aren't super formal. But after I thought about it, it's okay for the parents or the bride and groom to be dressed up to. AND they are still more important than the bridal party, they're your parents. Ya know?

I can completely sympathize. My mom keeps picking these tacky, out of style dresses to wear. I've shown her several suits but she doesn't like them because they will be too hot or the material isn't breatheable. We are getting married outside in Nov in the mountains. You would think she could suck it up for a little bit. It's not like it's going to be 90 degrees.

If you don't like the idea of regular dress pants. JCPenney (used to anyway) have these pants that were flowy and very dressy. Hope it works out for you.

I think FMIL's dress will go great with your bridal party... your moms on the other hand... yikes! I was thinking the same thing YAYA was thinking...

I was thinking gifting her a dress and tell her it will be her gift to you to wear it on your wedding day.. but it seems like even that will be hard.

That orange dress is more like a dress someone would wear over a bathing suit pool side...

can she be swayed with the "but what about the pictures we'll take.. how will that look in 10-15-20 years??"

You guys are great, I'm glad none of you think I'm being unreasonable about this. I'm going to do my best to try to convince her to at least try on some nicer dresses or put together some kind of outfit. She doesn't seem to like FMIL at all and thinks she's trying to impress people by dressing so fancy... Obviously she is. .. so am I and everyone else that's going .. duh! I will update later tonight to let you know how the shopping goes... wish me luck!

Eh, keep her out of the pictures... . I'm sorry I have no words of wisdom on this one. For my first wedding, my ex-MIL picked out a cotton June Cleaver looking dress, and then decided she was going to get SHINY SATIN pumps dyed to match it. She looked bad. And honestly, it didn't matter anyway b/c she didn't smile in ANY of the pictures. That was all I could notice about them. Her scowl. Then, my Mom, who has awful taste, decides to buy some prom looking green gown with sequins and what have you. I will say though, that she looked way more classy than ex-MIL that day. Well, maybe if you are shopping with her you two can find something you both approve of! Good luck!