Wedding Planning Help and Advice!
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Wedding Planning Help and Advice!
Written by Rachel Hollis on 1st July 2011
It's set to be the most spectacular day of your life. You've dreamed about it, spent months — maybe even years — planning it. Let's face it — you've been completely and utterly consumed by it since the moment he got down on one knee... So why, oh why, does your meddlesome mother-in-law persist in prying on your pre-nuptial plans...? Avoid an awkward confrontation, and follow our wedding planning help and advice...
There's one particular bride-to-be who certainly won't be seeking wedding planning help and advice from her mother-in-law ...
Whilst fitting in with your future in-laws is considered a priority for most couples preparing to marry, it's possibly the last thing on 29-year-old Heidi Withers's mind in light of recent revelations.
Miss Withers — a PA for a London recruitment firm — was left red-faced last week after an email containing a relentless rant from her future mother-in-law went viral. The message bluntly criticized Heidi's ill-manners and was propagated on websites worldwide. Mother-in-law-to-be Mrs Bourne was even dubbed 'Momzilla' by the US media.
The offensive email — originally sent by the Devon flower breeder — expressed her aversion to Miss Withers's alleged lack of decorum, condemning her "celebrity style behaviour," criticizing her tendency to draw attention to herself, and finding fault in her failure to act with the up-most grace. Hardly what a bride wants to hear in the midst of their wedding planning!
It read;
"It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you.
Unfortunately for Freddie, he has fallen in love with you and Freddie being Freddie, I gather it is not easy to reason with him or yet encourage him to consider how he might be able to help you. It may just be possible to get through to you though. I do hope so.
If you want to be accepted by the wider Bourne family I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste. There are plenty of finishing schools around.
Please, for your own good, for Freddie’s sake and for your future involvement with the Bourne family, do something as soon as possible.
Here are a few examples of your lack of manners:
- When you are a guest in another’s house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat – unless you are positively allergic to something. You do not remark that you do not have enough food. You do not start before everyone else. You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.
- When a guest in another’s house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early – you fall in line with house norms.
- You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public. I gather you passed this off as a joke but the reaction in the pub was one of shock, not laughter.
- You should have hand-written a card to me. You have never written to thank me when you have stayed.
- You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why.
- No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.
I understand your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume they would have saved over the years for their daughters’ marriages.)
If this is the case, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes."
And believe us — if our UKbride members are anything to go by, this kind behavior is by no means uncommon! Our Forum is bursting at the seams with sob stories about family fall-outs and monstrous mother-in-laws — in fact, the majority of our lovely ladies have got a story to tell.
Whilst the latest allegations suggest that the whole incident may have been fabricated as an elaborate publicity stunt — it has been revealed that Freddie Bourne has recently launched a wedding catering and events company —it does not distract from the plain fact that many brides do in fact face a great deal of angst with their in-laws in the run-up to their weddings.
It's a tricky bond to negotiate, but in the run up to your big day, try these handy hints for help with your wedding planning...
Pictured: Heidi Withers and Freddie Bourne — victims of a meddlesome mother-in-law!
Be open to suggestions and keep her sweet by letting your mother-in-law help with the little things!
If needs be — bring the reinforcements in and let your husband-to-be help you out!
Have you suffered with an intervening in-law? Let us know on our Forum!
