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Wedding went viral

283 replies

Xenia · 29/06/2011 16:11

Agree with the step mother but she should not have written it. If you want a sil,y big wedding you are not someone to marry.
www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23965571-in-the-white-corner-the-bride-in-the-pink-the-mother-in-law-from-hell.do

In the white corner, the bride. In the pink, the mother-in-law from hell...
Laura Roberts
29 Jun 2011

The last thing any bride-to-be wants is to fall foul of her future mother-in-law - particularly when her damning criticism of your behaviour goes viral on the internet.

But that is what has happened to Heidi Withers, a PA working in the West End.

She received an email last month from Carolyn Bourne, the stepmother of her fiancé Freddie Bourne.

The 29-year-old forwarded the message to a select group of friends who were so surprised by its tone that they too forwarded it on to others...and then on to thousands.

Mrs Bourne, 60, who is married to Freddie's father Edward, wrote: "It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you."

She went on: "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. Your behaviour on your visit to Devon during April was staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace.

"Unfortunately, this was not the first example of bad manners I have experienced from you. If you want to be accepted by the wider Bourne family I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste."

She even described her future daughter-in-law as "an ideal candidate for the Ladette to Lady television series".

Mrs Bourne, who lives near Dawlish in Devon and is a renowned breeder of pinks and dianthus flowers, went on to list numerous examples of Miss Withers's "lack of manners" - as detailed below.

She concluded by saying: "I pity Freddie."

Her stepson, who runs online bike shop Capital Cycles and lives in Putney, declined to comment. His father Edward Bourne, 63, said: "We have nothing to say."

Miss Withers and Mr Bourne are not the first to suffer acute embarrassment because of out-of-control email round robins. A derogatory email exchange between Harry Fildes, 25, and Sebastian Marsh, 24, about the latter's ex-girlfriend "went viral" in March after Mr Fildes accidentally copied her in. Mr Marsh was later sacked by his company, Miller Insurance.

Holly Leam-Taylor, a graduate trainee at consultants Deloitte quit in December 2009 after sending an email discussing attractive male staff. The email, entitled Deloitte First year analysts Christmas Awards, asked her female colleagues to vote on which men in the office they considered most attractive.

The nine categories included "boy most likely to sleep his way to the top".

An excerpt from their email exchange...

from: Carolyn Bourne
to: heidi withers
subject: your lack of manners

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 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.

One could be accused of thinking that Heidi Withers must be patting herself on the back for having caught a most eligible young man. I pity Freddie.

OP posts:
Wamster · 01/07/2011 18:52

I agree, scottishmummy, at the end of the day, this guy needs to think about who he is going to spend his nights with and who he may probably (only saying probably because most people have children, not saying that they will) have children with.
Leave and cleave. Respect and love your parents but accept that spouse/partner comes first. It's natural and right that people do this.

This guy really must make a stand.

Ponders · 01/07/2011 18:58

\link{http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010314/Carolyn-Bourne-email-Freddies-natural-mother-Penelope-Godfrey-calls-Heidi-Withers-charming.html\Brilliant - his actual mother thinks Heidi is 'charming'}

result Grin

BettySuarez · 01/07/2011 18:58

Does anyone remember the CatBinLady twitter account.

That was bloody hilarious.

Would someone please please do the Carolyn Bourne one? Grin

Aramis · 01/07/2011 19:37

Brilliant - his actual mother thinks Heidi is 'charming'

result grin

all of this has got to be a setup. Got to be. At what point does Jerry Springer walk in and break things up?

totally agree with what Heidi did: the thought of this horrible MIL saying these vile things and getting away with it through some concept of 'privacy'... now everyone will know just what sort of a person she is and that is great

mathanxiety · 01/07/2011 21:13

Wamster and BettySuarez -- my exMIL now has the dubious honour of having won her son back from me, but then he had an unusually low sex drive, where women were concerned anyway. Twas all terribly unBiblical...

Ponders, that DM article is marvelous in a deliciously knife in the back sort of way.

"Although Mrs Bourne appears fastidious about social mores, it emerged yesterday that she may have become pregnant some months before her first marriage in 1974, according to public records. She is now on her third marriage."

And apparently 'Bomber' really is a labrador cross.

You gotta hand it to the DM.

scottishmummy · 01/07/2011 21:37

am i reading it right?low sex drive lassies high sex drive laddies...

Ponders · 01/07/2011 21:40

IS BOMBER FREDDIE'S FATHER OR THE FAMILY DOG?????

(Ponders now utterly Confused)

slhilly · 01/07/2011 21:44

Xenia: "I think it's a matter of learning the culture of the group of people amongst whom you put yourself and that could be ... sitting only with women because men and women don't mix in that religion or culture (I don't just mean some Jews, Muslims here but also women leaving when port is passed etc at those country houses and all those other sexist practices)."

Eh? You what? My cousins are black hat ultraorthodox Jewish. I can assure you that in their house, men and women sit together at the table. Erev Shabbos dinner would be a very weird place if they didn't*. If Heidi Withers were marrying into a haredi (ultraorthodox) family, she'd have a lot more to learn about than the rules of tznius (modesty, which includes conditions under which men and women mix).

[*It is true that my one of my cousins has married someone who's family is so frum that men sit at one end of the table and women at the other, but they all still talk together. It's their family's minhag (custom), not halakha (law)]

BettySuarez · 01/07/2011 21:45

mathsanxiety sounds like you are well rid :)

Xenia · 01/07/2011 23:30

That's what I meant - ultra orthodox - men and women apart, men dancing just with men etc. In other words you learn the culture you are moving into . If it's iniquitous and morally wrong and very sexist then you might well have a moral duty to point that out which ought to trump politeness of course. They are fascinating issues.

OP posts:
DioneTheDiabolist · 01/07/2011 23:37

Anyone else think Freddie looks like Owen Mc Love from Fr. Ted?

Ponders · 01/07/2011 23:43

Xenia, are you prepared to concede at all that the evil S-MIL might have misjudged the situation here?

And was actually - gasp - WRONG???

Aramis · 01/07/2011 23:59

xenia, are you Russian? You sound typical for a middle-aged uber-judgemental rich Russian lady, whose biggest fear is that of her children associating with someone of a lower social standing.

scottishmummy · 02/07/2011 00:49

lol,thats scottish middle class too.scared of scheme weans or lower orders.

edam · 02/07/2011 00:50

oh, there are so many delicious aspects to this very silly row. Not often you see someone hoist with her own petard quite so beautifully.

The fact that's she's only the stepmother is quite funny - she's not even got the excuse of suffering from 'no woman is good enough for my son'. The comments from the bride's father are fab and then the real mother comes along and tops them. Grin

And then the Mail reveals that this real-life Mrs Hyacinth Bucket actually started out on a market stall. More Eliza Doolittle than Elizabeth Regina. Grin

mathanxiety · 02/07/2011 01:59

Aramis, I was thinking American for sure....

'I think it's a matter of learning the culture of the group of people amongst whom you put yourself...' -- this is quite a backtrack from your earlier post, Xenia, where you implied that a woman marries into/joins a family when she marries. Come on, you were not thinking about Ultraorthodox anything when you said that women who join a family through marriage must take on their customs. And you were not saying it as another way of expressing the need to do as the Romans do, as if someone was moving into Stamford Hill or Brighton Beach and still expecting shops to be open on Saturday

Betty -- I haven't looked back.

I think I love the DM.

There. I have said it.

Riveninside · 02/07/2011 08:41

Still chortling

dittany · 02/07/2011 09:17

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

fedupofnamechanging · 02/07/2011 09:26

But dittany, you could argue that she's getting what she deserves. The fact that she intended this to only be seen by her DIL, doesn't make the content any less hurtful. If a person is going to send such an incredibly rude and imo bullying email, they deserve to have the whole world know what a nasty person they are.

Ponders · 02/07/2011 09:55

agree with karma, she deserves it.

& I haven't seen much general MIL-bashing here - a few specifics but that's all.

scottishmummy · 02/07/2011 10:15

mrs bourne is boorish bully,what an odd thing to do.sending email like that to son fiancee.potentially the mum of mrs bourne grandchildren.hardly makes for convivial atmosphere

BettySuarez · 02/07/2011 10:58

I'm afraid that I don't feel sorry for the MIL in the slightest. All joking aside, her email was bullying, intimidating and deeply unkind.

I can't imagine what the DIL has had to endure from this family over the past few months because I very much doubt that this is the first incident. If I were that DIL, I would have been feeling very lonely and unwelcome :(

lachesis · 02/07/2011 11:33

Xenia is English, folks.

lachesis · 02/07/2011 11:36

And, as I told you all, Freddie is incredibly short. Doesn't really make for a 'most eligible man', IMO.

Oh, please, dittany, why feel sorry for this nasty, bullying, unkind snob? She should be a subject of scorn and ridicule, if anything because anyone who wants to keep something private has the bollocks to say what they think face-to-face, not write it all down and send it. So she's stupid as well.

scottishmummy · 02/07/2011 11:36

aye.ken that.probably posh ingerlish too

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