Woman Wants to Call Off Her Wedding After Father-in-Law Pulled a Prank at Brother-in-Law’s Nuptials That Left Bride in Tears

A bride-to-be is rethinking her upcoming wedding after realizing her fiancé’s family’s love of “jokes” may not be so funny after all.

In an anonymous letter to Slate’s advice column Dear Prudence, the woman confessed she’s getting cold feet six months before saying “I do.” It isn’t because she doubts her fiancé — whom she described as “great” — but because she’s unsure she wants to join a family that treats pranks as a lifestyle.

“I don’t like pranks, and now I’m looking down the barrel of a married life spent either keeping the peace with my fiancé’s family or being the humorless shrew,” she wrote. “Neither sounds like something I want to deal with.”

The bride said her fiancé’s jokes are mild — like sticking googly eyes on food — but his family’s antics have been “escalating over the years.” She considers herself to have “a fairly good sense of humor,” yet the line was crossed when her soon-to-be father-in-law pulled a prank at another family wedding that left the bride in tears.

“Their dad hired a ‘wide load’ truck to take the bride to the church the day of instead of the limo he’d promised to get,” she recalled. “The bride laughed it off, but in private she was in tears. She just didn’t want them to think she was a ‘bad sport’ or ‘had no sense of humor.’ ”

After witnessing that, the letter writer began to question what life would look like once she officially joined the family. “I’ve seen his mom and sisters do the same thing — when anyone puts their foot down that something isn’t funny, the reaction isn’t bad exactly, but it’s all rolled eyes and ‘Fine, if you’re going to take it that way.’ ”

Her fiancé, meanwhile, found the “wide load” stunt hilarious. She didn’t. “I’m against pranks that ruin an experience or depend on someone being humiliated,” she said. Though she knows her future husband would “back [her] up” if she protested, it would be out of love, “not because he agrees.”

“It would be everyone being indulgent of the humorless sister/daughter-in-law,” she added. “I just don’t see how that’s going to work, no matter how much I love my fiancé.”

Prudence columnist Jenée Desmond-Harris agreed the father-in-law’s prank crossed a line. “It’s not okay to do things that make an important day that requires tons of planning and costs a lot of money worse for someone,” she said.

Desmond-Harris encouraged the bride to set clear boundaries and stop worrying about whether her in-laws will find her “humorless.”

“She has to stop caring about whether people who have a deranged idea of what fun is think she’s humorless,” the columnist advised. “She is either going to have a wedding that makes them happy (because they got to do something disruptive and stupid) or one that makes her happy, and she should choose herself. Abandon the goal of fitting in with this family’s approach to fun.”

Desmond-Harris also noted the bride hadn’t “explicitly” shared her feelings about the pranks. She suggested speaking up before the wedding — “in a very clear way with a side of self-deprecation” — to make it easier for her fiancé’s relatives to hear.

“Their reactions will tell her a lot,” she wrote. “She’ll either feel calm and reassured that nothing will happen on the big day, or she’ll have been argued with and shamed. In which case … let’s think about calling the venue again.”

Lizzie O’Leary, host of Slate’s What Next: TBD podcast, also weighed in, saying she was “enraged” by the prank but wondered if the situation reflected deeper doubts.

“I think the question that is nagging at her is partly whether she ‘fits’ with this family, and partly what primacy the new unit she and her fiancé are creating actually holds,” O’Leary said. “That is a thing about marriage that takes some adjustment! She may really need it spelled out explicitly that she comes first.”