Labor Day BBQ at our house: "Everyone bring 1-2 dishes for potluck, and BYOB". MIL: "Here are the 6 things I'm bringing"! Then shows up with a few more things never mentioned, and there is no room left on the counter for everyone else's dishes.

She always has to be the star of the show when it comes to food and it's so frustrating. We had about 25 people coming (mostly couples/families) and in the interest of having a variety of food and enough for everyone, we asked everyone to bring 1-2 things in addition to the burgers, hot dogs, and brats we would be making and the mini-cupcakes I made with my kids.

In our family group text about the BBQ, MIL proceeds to say she is bringing literally 6 different things, despite us asking everyone for just 1-2 things. What could we say without being rude or unappreciative? I make it clear that everyone we invited was asked to bring something, and that we're expecting about 25 people to show so we'd have a lot of food. And honestly, we are kinda sick of her cooking because it's always super heavy and greasy, and the veggies are always cooked with goop making those also heavy. But she enjoys cooking and showing off so we end up with a ridiculous amount of food before any of my friends even show up. She brought the things she mentioned, plus a few other things she didn't mention because she was "experimenting".

I also expressed that we're using all disposable dishes and utensils to minimize clean up - we want to focus on spending quality time with friends and family, not cooking and cleaning. Also, most of the food goes to waste because few people we know ever want to take leftovers, including MIL, who tells us to keep it as if we want to eat her cooking for multiple days in a row. MIL says "don't worry, I'll take all my dishes with when I leave." Bullshit, I just gave her back 8 different serving dishes and utensils I washed because she snuck out early. We ran the dishwasher twice plus washing a ton of things by hand, after throwing out a ton of uneaten food.

I wish I could just appreciate that she makes all this food, but we specifically asked everyone to make 1-2 things for a reason. If she wants to host a party and do all the cooking herself so everyone can fawn over her prowess, more power to her. That is not what we wanted for this party. Our friends showed up with the dishes they bought/prepared and had nowhere to put it because all of her shit took over the counters. It made us look kinda stupid asking our friends to bring food when we would have so much already, but that wasn't the plan.

We need to figure out how to do this differently next time. Maybe they should host their own thing, or we'll do something separate with friends. We love hosting things like this but she always brings an element of frustration, preventing us from doing it our way.