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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:
trixymalixy · 04/07/2011 20:44

Why does the Daily Mail always have to state how much people's houses costs as if it has some kind of bearing on the story?

Ponders · 04/07/2011 21:22

If the step-MIL-to-be hadn't set herself up as an icon of respectability & manners the tabloids wouldn't have felt any need to root around in her underwear, would they?

I fervently dislike tabloid knicker-drawer-rooting in principle, but am happy to make an exception in this case.

Sorry.

duffybeatmetoit · 04/07/2011 21:46

Not read all the thread but is it possible that there was a conversation along the lines of:

DSMIL: Heidi would you like some of my prize winning pinks for your wedding bouquet?

Heidi: Thanks but my theme isn't petrol station chic.

[DSMIL seethes and notes major black mark against DIL and starts to type email....]

mathanxiety · 05/07/2011 02:01

Ponders, me too. This woman had it coming. In fact, if she had her private life splashed all over FB for anyone to split their sides laughing at, well done DM for raking through it too. I must confess to finding all of this hugely entertaining in a very 'guilty secret' sort of way.

BerylStreep · 05/07/2011 17:53

This is literally tragically funny.

How awful for Heidi and Freddy - they both look lovely and normal in the photos I have seen.

I have so many unanswered questions:
I wonder how long Mrs Bourne has been the new Mrs Bourne.
Is Freddy's mother still living?
What did she do to the dog?
What did she say at the pub?

Poor, poor girl.

piprabbit · 05/07/2011 19:27

Beryl - i think Freddy's mother is still alive and seems to approve of Heidi. But then again, she's hardly like to side with SMIL against her DS.

befuzzled · 07/07/2011 09:00

I agree with ponders, she deserves everything she got, glasshouses etc.

And how anyone can set themselves up as the epitome of manners and goof taste when they have any involvement in perpetuating cheap, nasty carnations that most people would refuse to have in their house is beyond me! And when did they get called pinks? To try and make them cool again? My friend is a florist and many people have tried, and failed! Even my DP who is clueless about such matters knows never to buy bouquets with "those naff crinkly ones that you do the ink thing at school with" in.

Am bit worried about the Facebook photos tho. If I insult my mil are drunken pictures of me going to end up in the DM? Or did she just have crap security as well as no manners?

BerylStreep · 22/07/2011 16:26

I wonder how things are in the Bourne household now that things have had a chance to settle for a couple of weeks.

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