Dear Prudence: My boss thinks she is coming to my wedding. She is not invited.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Prudence,

I’m getting married next year, and my fiancé and I are thrilled for the big day. But there’s one aspect I’m nervous about: my coworkers. I work on a small team, and my boss, who can be mercurial, has mentioned a wedding gift already and expressed excitement for the day. I keep a friendly, professional relationship with my coworkers, but I like to leave it at that; my fiancé and I don’t plan on inviting coworkers at all. How do I respectfully let my boss know the wedding will be just friends and family? Or do I not say anything at all?

—No Work at the Wedding

Dear No Work,

You know what I’m always saying to letter writers who are stressed about their guest lists: Very few people want to come to your wedding as much as you imagine they want to come to your wedding; that is a figment of getting caught up in the hoopla around planning and starting to think of it as your “special day.” Special as it may be to you, to other people it’s an okay-ish party that involves getting more dressed up than they probably want to on a weekend, eating a meal they didn’t really choose, and sitting at a table with strangers. If your boss has just said “I’m so excited, you’re going to be saying your vows in 11 months!” that doesn’t mean he plans to be there. If he has actually said “I cannot wait to do the electric slide on the dance floor at your wedding” well … yeah, I agree that this is awkward. And he is unprofessional.

But here’s what you need to do: Show up at work looking very sad one Monday morning. During “how was your weekend” small talk with the team, say “Awful.” When pressed for details, explain, “My fiancé and I had a long talk and came to terms with what we can afford and how small our wedding is ultimately going to be—just family and we each get to pick a few friends. I’m so upset because I imagined having my high school classmates, and my neighbors, and all of you!” Then sigh. Everyone will say “That’s okay!” and start talking about their own wedding planning or bridal party adventures and hopefully offer to take you out for a drink to celebrate.

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Dear Prudence,

I recently saw a post about how perfect faces and bodies age, but a beautiful soul will remain the same. Well, I’ve been in a relationship with a beautiful soul for six years.

Here’s the issue. He is 28 years my junior; I’m 63, he’s 35. My biggest concern is my more apparent aging as of late. I continue to keep myself in top shape, but I cannot stop the inevitable. I’m seeing big changes in my skin and I’m becoming very self-conscious about it, especially, being with a younger man. My worries are never being able to be comfortable in my own skin, literally, around him. I worry about being in public, as well. I don’t want to live a daily life of being embarrassed of my age because I’m with him. He says none of that matters to him and he loves me and I will always be beautiful.

What if I can’t get over my fear? What if I always feel on guard with my appearance, especially in intimate situations? It scares me and I don’t know what to do.

—Youngish Love

Dear Youngish Love,

What if your boyfriend came to me and said “I’m just so worried that my partner thinks I’m immature! I don’t have any life experience, and she does?” I would tell him “She obviously doesn’t care about that. She chose to be with someone three decades younger than her for a reason.” And I’d say the same thing to you about your appearance: Believe me, if this guy cared about dating someone with a youthful body and face, he would not have sought out a person nearly twice his age. He just wouldn’t have. It sounds like you two do have some issues to deal with, like how to cope with other people’s judgment, but your wrinkles are not anywhere near the top of the list.

Dear Prudence,

My brother is in a committed relationship and owns a home with his partner. I love my brother’s dog, but I don’t love his partner’s high-maintenance cats or the home’s elaborate landscaping.

When my brother asks me to sit at his place for a few days, he pays me and stocks the fridge for me, but I love this dog and would do the job for free. But my brother’s partner doesn’t pay me to follow intricate procedures for the cats or spend 20 minutes every evening with a garden hose watering each plant around the yard. We’re polite to each other but we are not friends; I don’t like them, they don’t like me, but we can keep up a truce because we both love my brother. Also, the partner keeps giving me notes and feedback on top of their complicated but vague instructions, which makes me feel bad because I’m trying my best. I don’t want to bother my brother, but is there a tactful way to ask his partner to (1) pay me for my effort, (2) lower their standards, or (3) hire someone else?

—Just Here for the Dog

Dear Here for the Dog,

Caring for the precious pets and plants of a finicky person who you dislike feels like a bad idea. I’m glad this hasn’t turned disastrous already. But you should get out of the situation before it does. How about this: “Hey guys, I’m realizing I’m really not cut out for giving cat medication and gardening. The instructions are a lot for me to process and I know I’ve been falling a little short. I want you to feel comfortable that everything is done correctly while you’re gone, and I don’t want any mistakes to cause issues between us, so I think it’s best if I just stick to dog-sitting, and maybe you can call on someone else for the other jobs.”

Dear Prudence,

I’ve known my in-laws since I met my now-husband when I was a college freshman. We’ll be together 19 years soon. His mother was initially quite cool towards me, in a no-woman-is-good-enough-for-my-son kind of way. We also had some cultural differences to navigate. I would now say we have a warm relationship, and I’ve always admired her because she raised her children on her own after being widowed extremely young and still managed a high-flying career which she has recently retired early from. The early retirement has meant she has been incredibly helpful when our children came along, and she is wonderful with them. What is not so wonderful is when she helps us out with housework.

We live in a small urban house, which means some creative storage solutions and no dishwasher. We have on many occasions run through where things go; however, whenever she comes to stay to help us out, we spend a few days after she leaves trying to locate things that she has put away. Generally, it has been minor things like our favorite mugs are on the 2nd shelf with the glasses not the 1st with the other mugs, but over the years she has broken 4 of 6 wine glasses that were wedding gifts when doing the dishes. Even after we say, oh that goes in X cupboard, we’ll find it somewhere else. On the last visit she stored my chef’s knife on the magnet rack with the point down—rather than up like all the other knives on the rack—and then knocked it so that it fell and the tip broke off. A replacement cost me several hundred dollars. She has never offered to replace the items she has broken.

I’m confused at her inability to ask where things go or follow the system that is obvious i.e. all the knives point one way, why would you put it the other way? I can’t shake the feeling she is doing this deliberately. She’s not yet 60, so we have no fear of any memory issues. She remarried 15 years ago to a lovely man who loves keeping a neat house and does almost all of the homemaking. Is she just so out of practice? I’m due to have surgery soon and she has offered to come stay to help with the children and around the house while I’m recovering. I trust her with my children, but I am dreading what damage will be done this time and need advice as to how to address this issue in the future.

—Honestly I Do Like My MIL

Dear Honestly,

Try this line “You’re our guest. You’re helping enough with the kids! We really don’t want you to do any housework.” If she pushes back you can add “I’m honestly really fussy about my kitchen stuff and I put it in places that would only make sense to me, so I’d rather do it myself.”

If she won’t stop, surrender. It sounds like she’s providing a really valuable service (probably much more valuable in terms of dollars than anything she damages, including the knife) so you can just consider these annoying habits to be the cost of the live-in childcare you get when she comes to visit.

Catch up on this week’s Prudie.

Our sweet, funny, VERY sensitive just-turned 4-year-old daughter loves animals—and is right on the verge of figuring out where the meat we eat comes from. To be clear, we have never deliberately hidden this from her, but she has never expressly asked about it, and there’s no good way to randomly segue into “By the way, your dinner used to be alive.” She avoids eating chicken and turkey, and we’ve realized this might be because they’re called “chicken” and “turkey.” She does eat (with great joy) meats that don’t have the same name as their source animals, such as bacon, steak, and pot roast, but it’s clear from her comments that she doesn’t have a lock on what they’re made of. (“Dad, wouldn’t it be funny if bacon came from a pig like the ones that oink?!”) At some point soon, the jig will surely be up…