Dear Robin,

Our only child is getting married soon. My husband and I love his fiancé and are fully supportive of this arrangement– last year, my husband and I committed to paying for the wedding.

Here’s the problem: Turns out that both my son and his fiancé have different beliefs about religion than we do. As a consequence, their wedding will not cater to our religious beliefs, which we did our absolute best to instil in him while he was growing up– seriously, we really drummed them into him– but apparently didn’t stick.

My husband and I take this extremely personally, to the point that we perceive our son’s beliefs about religion to be somehow chosen specifically to spite us and our family, which we anticipate to be highly embarrassing to our own respective parents when they come to the wedding. And that’s obviously far more important to us than respecting our son’s identity (or his fiancé’s).

My husband and I would, therefore, like to renege on our agreement to fund this wedding, because we are ourselves incredibly spiteful and petty people who don’t have the faintest clue about the long term ramifications this would have for our relationship with our only child.

Recognizing that advice columns are all about seeking validation from some stranger in a public forum, we decided to write to one and see what reassurance we could get that we’re actually good people. We didn’t, however, understand that given our own situation and feelings, the only person who would’ve actually responded with such validation would’ve been Pat Robertson.

Oops.

Signed,

Future Mother-in-law