u/lawfully93

1. PERSONALIA

• Age: 33
• Education: Bachelor Rechten, maar bezig met avondschool (laatste jaar Master)
• Work experience : 14 jaar
• Civil status: getrouwd
• Dependent people/children: nee

2. EMPLOYER PROFILE

• Sector/Industry: overheid - Justitie
• Amount of employees: >1000

3. CONTRACT & CONDITIONS

• Current job title: dossierbeheerder
• Job description: griffiemedewerker
• Seniority: 6 jaar
• Official hours/week : 40 uur/week
• Average real hours/week incl. overtime: 42 à 45 uur/week
• Shiftwork or 9 to 5 (flexible?): 8 tot 16, met glijtijden (beginnen tussen 7:30 en 9:30 / stoppen tussen 15:30 en 19:00)
• On-call duty: nee
• Vacation days/year: 26 dagen + 12 forfaitaire (ADV)

4. SALARY

• Gross salary/month: 3115 €
• Net salary/month: 2250 €
• Netto compensation: 56 EURO (kantoorvergoeding telewerk)
• Car/bike/... or mobility budget: //
• 13th month (full? partial?): eindejaarspremie (+/- 55 % netto)
• Meal vouchers: 6,3 / dag
• Ecocheques: //
• Group insurance: //
• Other insurances: korting hospitalisatieverzekering
• Other benefits (bonuses, stocks options, ... ): //

5. MOBILITY

• City/region of work: Antwerpen
• Distance home-work: 10 km (35 minuten met auto, 20 met moto)
• How do you commute? Afhankelijk van het weer auto / moto
• How is the travel home-work compensated: // enkel openbaar vervoer wordt vergoed.
• Telework days/week: 1 dag per week

6. OTHER

• How easily can you plan a day off: makkelijk, zelfs de dag zelf kan je de namiddag vrijnemen. Enkel vakanties van een week of meer moeten tijdig aangevraagd worden.
• Is your job stressful? soms
• Responsible for personnel (reports): /

Ik geef toe dat ik veel verlof heb, maar ik denk dat ik met minder dagen zou toekomen en toch veel meer zou kunnen verdienen... Zeker voor het voetvolk is het een ondankbare job, zonder mogelijkheid tot onderhandelingen over loon. Extra legale voordelen zijn niet mogelijk.

I just need to vent because this still bothers me.

Years ago (2018), my boyfriend bought an engagement ring with his mom. He planned to propose during our first Christmas trip to Poland, where his family lives. Unfortunately, the day before we were supposed to leave, our dog unexpectedly died after a routine surgery. We were devastated, cancelled the trip, and obviously the proposal didn’t happen either.

Eventually, my MIL spoiled the whole thing and told me about his original plan. She also told me that whenever we got married, she would pay for my wedding dress. We had just bought and renovated a house and didn’t have much money, so while I repeatedly told her she didn’t have to, she insisted.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend decided the original ring wasn’t “good enough” and wanted to save for another one. + plan the proposal. Fast forward FIVE YEARS. Still no proposal.

In 2024 we were planning another trip to Poland (summer 2025). My MIL assumed he would finally propose there and secretly told me she was organizing an engagement party.

Except… she hadn’t discussed this with him.
I told her she really should because, you know, it was his proposal. Her response? “We’ve waited long enough” and the party would force him to propose.

I knew that would backfire spectacularly, so I warned him. He laughed and said: “Well, I guess we’ll just have to secretly get married before Poland then.”

This was January and our trip was in September, so as a joke I started looking at pretty wedding dates. I showed him 07/07/25.

Somehow, the joke became serious. We chose the date and… that was basically my engagement. No official proposal, no big question. Just, “Okay, apparently we’re getting married now.”

His original idea was not to tell his mom at all and arrive in Poland like: “Surprise Mom, we’re already married!” I was the one who stopped him. He is her only child, and I told him he couldn’t take away her chance to see her only son get married.

So we decided on a tiny wedding with our mothers and my siblings.

Then came the dress…
Remember how MIL had been insisting FOR YEARS that she would buy my wedding dress?
This wasn’t just a vague “I’ll buy your dress someday” comment either. We had actually talked about budget. At one point, I showed her the dress I liked that was €999, and her response was basically: “That’s not much, is it? You can go up to €2,000.”

So naturally, when it was finally time to go wedding dress shopping, I invited her.

She was negative throughout the appointment. When I went to try on the dress I already loved, my sister apparently told her while I was changing: “If she comes out and you can see she loves it, please don’t say anything negative.”

Curtain opens. I love it, My sister cries, I cry.MIL says… absolutely nothing.
Fine, no problem. I found my dress.

The dress, including alterations, came to about €1,350, well below the €2,000 budget she herself had given me.

Then we get to the register.
And the woman who had spent YEARS insisting she was buying my wedding dress, and had literally told me my budget was €2,000, suddenly starts staring at the ceiling.

Nothing. Not “I can’t afford it anymore.” Not “I changed my mind.” Just… ceiling.

So I paid.
And to be clear: I don’t believe she owed me a wedding dress. If she had never offered, I would never have expected a cent from her. But this wasn’t me assuming she would pay. She had repeatedly insisted that she wanted to, had discussed an actual budget with me, and the dress I chose was comfortably within that budget.

If she had changed her mind, that would have been her right. I just wish she had told me before we were standing at the register. Maybe in the car on our way there…

Especially knowing that the only reason she was even there to see her only child get married… was because I insisted she should be.

And there’s one more part that still makes me sad.

After our wedding, I asked my husband if he had actually had his own proposal planned before all of this happened.

He did; I’ve been studying law in evening school while working for years, and I’m now in the final year of my master’s. He had planned to propose at my graduation, as the cherry on top after all those years of working and studying so hard.

And that’s probably the part of all of this that hurts the most…
I love my husband and I’m very happily married. I don’t need a proposal to validate our relationship. But I can’t help feeling that by trying to force him to propose on her timeline, his mother took something away from both of us.

He never got the chance to ask me his way.
And I never got to experience the proposal he had planned for me…

AND then she wanted to plan a weddingparty in september...