Member- eloping
- 10 years ago
- Wedding: May 2010
from my local paper The Australian, gotta admit i laughed at the castle comment
A PIECE of advice for mother-in-laws to be: you may feel the woman your son is marrying is an uncouth, graceless, penniless lout but don’t commit those thoughts to an email.
Carolyn Bourne, a florist from the south of England, will be feeling as red as the roses she sells after her email of hard truths sent to Heidi Withers went viral.
In the email, Mrs Bourne accuses Ms Withers, a personal assistant working in London, of lacking basic etiquette when she visited the family’s home in Devon.
She describes her behaviour as “staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace” and lists examples:
“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.
“Do not take additional helpings without being invited to (and) do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early.”
Ms Bourne describes Ms Withers as an “ideal candidate for the Ladette to Lady television series”. The British reality TV show follows a group of often badly-behaved and crude young women whom a panel of experts attempt to transform into ladies.
Perhaps most brutally, she bemoaned that Withers’ parents had not “saved over the years for their daughters’ marriages” adding that in those circumstances she should perhaps be “ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding”.
The couple are apparently planning to marry in a castle, which Ms Bourne wrote in the email: “No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity-style behavior.”
She ended the email: “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.”
The email was understood to have become public after Withers forwarded it to a select group of friends. Outraged, they forwarded it on and the internet did the rest.
Chatrooms were buzzing with indignation at Ms Bourne’s views although some people have expressed sympathy for her plight and her attempts to “get through” to Ms Withers.
