Weddings are some of the most stressful events to take place amongst families. But, it’s certainly no help planning a wedding when you’ve got Carolyn Bourne as a mother-in-law. Heidi Withers, the soon-to-be-wed fiance of Freddie Bourne, found out the hard way that this British flower-breeder means business!
After a visit from Withers, Bourne wrote a less than friendly e-mail to her son’s fiance. Shocked, Withers forwarded the e-mail to some friends who, in an effort to expose and embarrass Bourne, decided to keep the forwards going. Soon enough, everyone was buzzing about this scathing e-mail. Rather than bore you with our opinion, read the entire e-mail, below, and be sure to answer our poll on the bottom to let us know what you think!
Subject: Lack of Manners
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.
