I read this story and without having researched it further what do you want to bet that this step Mother in Law is a OW in an affairage situation. Good chance she destroyed her stepson's family and now she's on to ruining his wedding and marriage. Maybe the comments reveal what's really behind this messed up MIL.



Link to Article

[the full text of the actual email is in this article]

Most mothers-in-law are wonderful but it's those few terrible ones that give them all a bad name.
Carolyn Bourne seems to be one of those bad seeds. She has earned herself the title "mother-in-law from hell" in the online world.

Here's why:

Carolyn Bourne, 60, is widely known in England as a grower of pinks and dianthus flowers and owns a plant nursery in Dawlish, Devon, England. She's also the stepmother of Freddie Bourne, who is engaged to Heidi Withers, 29.

The engaged couple recently visited the Bourne family home, and afterward Mrs. Bourne sent a vicious email telling her future daughter-in-law that she acted "like a brash celebrity" and "lacked manners."

The email suggests that Withers attend finishing school and offers up several rules that house guests should follow:

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.

Withers was outraged by her future mother-in-law's email and forwarded it to her friends who sent it onto their friends. Soon the media got their hands on it.

Here's the full email picked up from the Huffington Post, which suggests that you read the letter out loud with your most stuffy British accent:

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.

Withers and Mr. and Mrs. Bourne and their son have declined interviews with the press. But today Wither's father spoke with the Daily Mail. Like Mrs. Bourne, he responded with anger and failed to filter his feelings. "She has her head stuck so far up her own a*** she doesn't know whether to speak or f**t," Alan Withers said.

Mr. Withers continued to demonstrate little class by referring to Miss Bourne as "snotty" and calling her a "Miss Fancy Pants."

Mrs. Bourne's email is obviously overwrought and mean-spirited. Peggy Post would have advised her to not hit send. These sorts of issues should be discussed tactfully in face-to-face conversations.

But Post also would have told Withers to not forward the email--and instead send Mrs. Bourne a hand-written thank-you note. She would have told her to mind her manners at the dinner table.

Is Mrs. Bourne really so bad that she deserves to be tortured by a media circus that's exposing her email all over the Internet?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=92063#ixzz1QoPJnV1B

I know I have never attended finishing school myself but come on.

Let the poor girl sleep in. If there was something that I didn't like, I wouldn't eat it, and now, I would just say that I was allergic to it. Second helpings? Wouldn't that mean that she LIKES the dish? Isn't that a compliment? Geez.

And the way that people are commenting that this is her future MIL? Nope, she's her future STEP MIL. That amounts to about NOTHING.

And I agree, she has a real air of superiority and stuffiness. She most certainly IS a snob, but then, I am just a commoner on Canadian soil.

Actually I disagree. I think the prospective DIL sounds like a nightmare - just my reading of the MIL's letter.

I'm actually siding with the MIL myself - except for the fact that she sent it. I would have been playing a bit more stealth. Since someday I will have a daughter-in-law I hope my son is a better judge of character than this young man who seems to have selected a bit of a little princess who has no clue how much things cost.

I would have died of shame to let my mother-in-law to be wait on me, or do a single dish while I'm visiting in her home. The girls my son dates come up and always ask if they can help with something.

This girl is just beginning to be this poor woman's worst nightmare. Imagine grandchildren!? Let's hope the wedding gets called off!

The DIL was a complete clodhopper. What kind of little snot behaves like that as a guest in her future in-laws home? Announcing what foods are acceptable? My Lord! What a poorly brought up girl.

If my child behaved so poorly as a guest, I would counsel him to apologize to the MIL for acting like a low class clod in her home. AFTER I kicked his butt for shaming me with such poor bad manners!

AGree with Kayla about the MIL sending the email. I might have pulled her aside and said something rather than sending an email.

My first thought on these different perspectives is that you three above have sons and view it from the position of what you would do and think if your son brought home this supposedly rude girl, whereas I have a daughter and wonder what I would immediately think if someone wrote this about my daughter. Might be one the reasons it's a small viral sensation as everyone can take a side in this debate. I still think the future step-MIL is likely the biggest cad and she likely screwed herself (and her husband) out of any relationship with her step grandchildren. I think this is way out of line for a step mom.


I did get a few more details on this story on Friday (I think). I haven't figured out if an affair was involved yet but these details have come out:

1. The wedding is still on
2. The future bride is a diabetic and her food requests related to such
3. The BIOLOGICAL mother in law thinks future daughter in law is lovely (but, who knows, maybe she's the foggy wayward herself)


Here's an article I just found. It's Carolyn's third marriage and it's "rumored" she had affairs. There is also speculation that they whole matter is a publicity stunt for the groom's new wedding planning company.

LINK TO ARTICLE


Mr. W

See, I don't view it that way at all. I view this from the parent of the GIRL perspective and consider how I would feel if my child behaved that way as a guest in someone's home. If someone wrote that about my son, my first reaction would not be to attack the messenger but to ask my son if he acted like white trash in someone's home. THAT would be my first concern. And if he did behave so poorly, I would expect him to man up and apologize. Show some class. No matter what the MIL did, it does not excuse the girl's poor manners.

You're just bitter. lol

...and angry!

No, I'm a biter .....

pep bit my tail

ouch...pep, that willy hurt

OOUUUCCCHHHH...pep*per!!!

pep:[giggle]