Fiance vs. Mother

My mother and fiance have argued time and again regarding wedding planning. It has recently gotten to the point where my fiance called my mother and they exchanged nasty words, and they are now not on speaking terms. This is such a painful place for me to be, as I love them both. My father, my fiance, and my fiance's family think I need to tell my mother to back out and set boundaries regarding getting involved in my relationship with my fiance. If you want to read all of this lengthy post, please go ahead. If not, here's the question I'm struggling with: Do I take my wife's side? or my mother's side? Some background: my mother and father are divorced. My mother has had conflicts with her own brothers and sisters, to the point where she hadn't spoken to most of them in years. She is the kind of person who relentlessly tries to make you see her side of an argument, and will twist your words and manipulate your feelings to make you see things her way. One thing is for sure, where she goes, conflicts always seem to follow. While I don't want to say she causes everything, the history seems to paint a picture of her being involved in so so many conflicts. As for my fiance and mother, things started out great. They had a very good relationship. While being two very different people, they enjoyed their time spent together. After I proposed to my fiance, and the planning of the wedding began, the issues began to spring up. First, there was the issue of my mother wanting to invite her friends to the wedding, when the list was unfortunately almost full. She is not contributing money to the wedding, and my finance's parents are paying for 90% of it. She refused to offer to pay for her friends she wanted there, saying that since she is the mother of the groom she should be important. This caused more hard feelings, and the phrase "your mother is making this all about her" which continues to resurface. I initially tried to stay out of the middle of these arguments. When I point out the possible errors in my fiance's ways, she feels hurt, unloved, and that I don't take her side. When I try to point out the errors in my mother's ways, she always talks me out of my viewpoint and gets me to feel for her. I guess its a mother thing. Once I set up mediation over a three way phone call and got a temporary truce. But the conflicts continue, and the hard feelings were all still held on to. My mother always wanted to be included. This definitely comes from her past with her own family excluding her. As a result she seems to try to get involved with parts of the wedding that may or may not have included the groom's mother, such as the wedding dress shopping. When my mother was not included, she got more upset. Now there was the issue of the bridal shower. My fiance's mother planned it, my mother wanted to be involved in the planning, but it didn't happen that way. The invitations got sent out, and when my mother saw the date, she raised an issue, saying that she might have another obligation to another wedding's rehearsal dinner that day. That, and the two hour drive is too far for her and some of her family. My mother tried to offer a second bridal shower which she would throw for the people who couldn't come to the initial one. This resulted in my fiance's mother getting extremely insulted, words were exchanged, and they are not talking. My fiance then decided she had to tell my mother how she felt and basically told her she didn't appreciate any of this, she doesn't want to talk about it, and please back out. Here's the wedding date, please be there. Nasty words got exchanged, they aren't talking, and this is where I'm left. Please offer any insight, your experiences, or what is right to do. I really appreciate it.

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