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

--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.

iice:

Lol i was reading this earlier on.

There must have been some instances that made the MIL refer to the lack of manners.
However, the MIL should have also been less strict about some of the things, like manners. This generation is not the same as hers. Make some allowances for the differences in lifestyle, experience and norms.

Though the last point, i don't know why brides to be have the tendency to want to do beyond their means.
Yes it's your day, but makes some adjustments so that they guy is not going to be totally flatlined before the married life even starts.

Plus, what did the groom to be say about all this?

coogar:

i actually thought the mother-in-law was too harsh. all the points she raised here had no spine. most of the time, it's the groom-to-be that tells his partner to stay back in bed and not act too forward in the house. the food thingy was uncalled for. so a bride to be cannot voice out she doesn't eat some certain food or she needs government's permission to take more food? abeg, women get issues.

the groom-to-be must be pissed but he has not said a thing about the whole issue. as far as i'm concerned, this marriage is doomed.

iice:

Some people have control issues.  Also the authority issue. 
Yes the food own was uncalled for.   It's just food haba.
On some of the other issues, i can understand.  Like the staying back in bed.  Maybe because, i just feel somehow if i'm somewhere and the household wakes up early, i wake up with them and offer whatever services that is needed, no matter what my husband to be says.
Anyway, they can marry and not visit the MIL only if the man is thus inclined.

coogar:

isn't this subjected to whatever activities the couple might have gotten into in the night and the early hours?
technically, the bride-to-be is still a guest. if she gets up early to offer services it's a bonus. if she doesn't, i don't think it matters at all.

Lol i suppose it is. And i was just saying i understood not that it should be what every bride to be should do.
That's why i said making allowances for experience/norms/childhood. Technically as a guest, you aren't supposed to do anything. I on the other hand feel that even if i am one, i have to flow with the household so my activities would be planned around that as well as whatever activities planned for bride to be and groom to be. Not just in a MIL's house but in any house. That's just me and maybe the MIL feels that way

tpia@:

read the story this morning and i think they'd better either laugh it off or end the relationship.

na wa.

obviously the "mil" doesnt want her in that family.

some of the points [eg living within your means] make sense, but a tactful face to face interaction [maybe over tea] might have been better.

iice:

Lol i suppose it is. And i was just saying i understood not that it should be what every bride to be should do.
That's why i said making allowances for experience/norms/childhood. Technically as a guest, you aren't supposed to do anything. I on the other hand feel that even if i am one, i have to flow with the household so my activities would be planned around that as well as whatever activities planned for bride to be and groom to be. Not just in a MIL's house but in any house. That's just me and maybe the MIL feels that way

coogar:

would u laugh this off? 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.

tpia@:


very snobbish no doubt, but some people are like that.

she obviously doesnt consider the girl good enough to marry into her family.

but nothing wrong with the last part about having a modest wedding. The couple dont have to take her advice anyway, if they dont want to.

coogar:

would u laugh this off? 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.


the mil is just evil.

N101:

There was a better way of handling it, and Mrs Bourne handled it badly. She's like Mrs Bucket in "Keeping Up Appearances". Judging from her email she is marginally "better" than Heidi herself, though I think Heidi didn't leave a good impression.

The comments about her family contributing to the wedding was just mean - they were made redundant from their former jobs so naturally have limited means.

Good luck to them.

tpia@:

the girl should either break up with the boyfriend or they should move to another country if they intend to get married.

Outstrip:

I agree. Including the comment about brash celebrity behavior. That is just her opinion but the DIL is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Did her fiance not even warn her.

IyaBasira:


How was she not the sharpest knife in the drawer? Everyone knows that there are times you're trying to make a good impression on people and it turns out badly. For crying out loud you're meeting people who are going to put you under a microscope. And when thats the case wont they over analyze everything you do?  Wouldn't you be nervous? Her fiancée wouldn't have told her anything because he wouldn't want her to be more worked up than she already was.!
Therefore,  he wouldnt have thought of telling the bride ;  "my mother is a perfectionist old hag who will take offence at you not writing a hand written card to say thank you for letting me stay over?! "
Please abeg. You dont know the girl and furthermore you weren't there, so dont jump to conclusions over people you barely know. Everyone knows that meeting the parents is the most difficult part of the whole wedding process. And it is heavily based on background so the DIL might actually have been on her best behaviour but since the MIL is from an upper class snobbish group of people, the DIL was never going to be good enough for her.

Coolgar:

Didn't seem to play her cards right

Perfectionist old hag

Dongorgon5:
cc: funlord

Dongorgon5:
cc: ,rumdeuter,.
coogar is baaaaack like wetiiin

raumdeuter:


Obviously an impostor. Because we spoke about coogar dissing someone earlier this week, Some smart pants thought it was a good idea to mimic his moniker and bump up all old coogar threads

I know about 7 of his villainous monikers, coogar is too smart to come back with this lame modification to his name

sisisioge:


I heard he was a sensation when around. He swept a babe off her feet, took her round the world and married her. Wow! He was a legend, according to grapevine

raumdeuter:


True on all counts. Their kid is attending Pre-K now

sisisioge:


Groovy! May God continue to bless their marriage. That's how someone I know met her husband here too o.

I'm single by the way, are you single too?...in case you are too shy to wonder aloud pls note that I have no money to lend you

sisisioge:


Groovy! May God continue to bless their marriage. That's how someone I know met her husband here too o.

I'm single by the way, are you single too?...in case you are too shy to wonder aloud pls note that I have no money to lend you