I had written the section below because it provided context and better explained what Gwen was so peeved about: Basically she wanted things her way, but was not willing to spend her own money to make that happen. I've repeated one paragraph to show where this would have gone:
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The next few weeks, Joe was happier, more focused, and had a greater sense of purpose than he'd ever had in his life. Little did we realize that Satan was hard at work 250 miles away. We passed off the faintly flapping warning flags as idiosyncrasies one would expect to encounter when blending with another family.
The first peculiarity I saw was that Gwen wanted to come down to meet us and inspect Miles' house without KatieLyn. I should have paid more attention, because it would have revealed the depth of the dysfunctional codependency much sooner. I dismissed it as her being a mom who was having empty-nest pangs. I certainly did not realize how much internal anger Gwen would stew over during the next two months by not getting her own way. Joe's friends, however, thought that it was bizarre that KatieLyn's mom wanted to come visit here and leave her daughter at home.
My understanding of the way they handled it is that, between Joe talking with KatieLyn and some of the social networking that she was doing with the wives of Joe's friends, KatieLyn, who had wanted to come meet us at the same time as her parents did, decided to tell her mom that it would look weird to go meet Joe without her (KatieLyn) being there. Gwen agreed that Katie could come along, but it now seems that she harbored considerable resentment in her heart over it. It also turned out that Gwen didn't want Joe's sister to come meet KatieLyn then—she had wanted a "private" meeting. Gwen's "parents only" rule was a fact that I was not aware of until after his sister had already been invited to lunch and reorganized her schedule to meet KatieLyn; (we did not un-invite her after she had driven a hundred miles to meet her presumptive sister-in-law.)
Gwen also internalized a lot of anger that arose when the couple had decided to have the wedding in Joe's hometown. I don't know if she secretly blamed me for that or not, but I had nothing to do with that decision.
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I'll pick up here and finish that thought:
Joe and KatieLyn made a very pragmatic decision that would allow them to have the largest, nicest wedding possible without bankrupting either themselves or their guests. Gwen and her husband had told KatieLyn that they would put a total of $1000 (one-thousand) toward the wedding, and that included the lunch for seven at Chili's that they paid for the day they met our family. (Gestimating that left just a bit over $900 for KatieLyn to use.) By having the wedding in Joe's hometown at the church where he was a member, there was no hall rental, only a cleaning deposit. He had a professional photographer friend who would donate her work as a wedding gift; he'd get photos stored digitally and would pay only for prints they wanted. He had another friend who similarly offered his cooking and catering skill labor as a gift; Joe and KatieLyn would pay only for the food, and even most of that would be the wholesale price. Since use of the church's kitchen was included under the cleaning deposit, and because they chose a modest picnic barbecue theme, the price per guest was 'way down there.' An aisle runner, pew bows, candles, and other decorations were donated so that KatieLyn's floral expenditures were $99 for mostly baby's breath. None of these savings would have been possible if they'd chosen to get married in the town where KatieLyn's parents had lived for the past two years.
Notice that her family had lived in that state only two years. It's not like they had tons of life-long friends and relatives nearby. In fact, outside of KatieLyn's immediate family, there were only a couple of her coworkers on her guest list from that city. But Joe has lots, dozens and dozens, of friends and business contacts for whom traveling 250 miles to an out-of-town wedding would have been a hardship. KatieLyn did not even get a bridal shower thrown for her in her parents' town, but she was given a cute country garden shower here with 20 guests who came; none of the twenty, however, were her mother or sisters, and not because they hadn't been invited, but because they said it was too far.
Knowing all this and the solid financial reasons for the couple's decisions, Gwen was still deeply hurt that the wedding was not at "her" church. (Which has a large warehouse-size auditorium with no center aisle; you can put 150 guests in there and it still looks 4/5 empty. I may as well add that the church building where Joe is a member has arching wood beams and a cute country charm. It is not unusual for non-members whose own fellowships meet in super centers, storefronts, or house churches to rent the facility for a mid-size traditional-look wedding venue. )
All about the money...
After KatieLyn ran away in the middle of the night, Gwen's frugal façade fell away. The "thrifty" excuse no longer existed; she was exposed as just plain grubby-selfish tight. On Saturday, the should-have-been wedding day, with out-of-town aunts, uncle, cousins, and siblings still meeting at our house for a bonfire & bratwurst picnic in lieu of a wedding reception, Gwen expected a devastated Joe to stand in line at the local Sam's Club to return "her" baby's breath and get "her" refund. I felt that he should tell her to stuff it and return it on Monday when it would be more convenient for us, but he needed to do what he thought was right.
I soon found that Joe's noble gesture of quality character was not about to be reciprocated! When I asked KatieLyn to take responsibility for returning the wedding gifts that were stored at my house, I received a part-smug and part-scathing retort from her mother. Gwen told me to do it because it was more convenient for me to do it since the gifts were already at my house and that it would cost too much for them to do it*... she said I was being mean because I asked KatieLyn to take responsibility for her own forsaken wedding gifts. Gwen said that my behavior "cemented" KatieLyn's decision. And then Gwen finished with a particularly dramatic flourish— "You might want to remember that for the next time."
Next time? The next time? My behavior of asking KatieLyn to take responsibility for returning some muffin tins, pot holders, and an ice cream maker was so traumatic that it cemented her belief that running back to the slavery of her codependency was the right thing to do?
Apparently so! I was not the one who was unhinged at that point.
Gwen was mad and went on to say that she should "never have given Joe permission" to propose.
The Lesson
Finances tend to expose a person's real motives more clearly than their game-face rhetoric can. Apparently KatieLyn has a deep need for maternal approval, deeper than her need for the Lord's approval at any rate.
When KatieLyn was first getting to know Joe, she told him that she did not like the kind of men that her mother likes. She said that she did not want to marry someone like her father who could be trapped into marrying her by manipulations the way her mother did it. She said she wanted to love someone who loved her for who she is, not because her mother was pushing them together.
She had all that and ran away from it. As long as KatieLyn cannot face the past that she created, as long as she cannot talk to Joe, then she has not fully moved on; she is stuck.
* I don't know what the cost would have been. I did not expect KatieLyn to personally drive down to get the gifts. I wanted her to phone a courier service to have them picked up and taken wherever... It is the only thing, other than one song added to the wedding music playlist, that I ever asked of her. And for that, her mother accused me of "Cementing" the break-up. Sometimes rolling one's eyes is the most polite response possible.
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