My Mother-in-Law Texted The Wrong Group Chat About My Wedding Dress

The message was long. I will give you the short version, because I have read the long version enough times.

It said the dress made me look "like a bag of onions in a curtain". It said my mother had "no taste and no money, which is at least consistent". It said she had already spoken to the dressmaker about "improvements" and would be paying for them herself, so that the family would not be embarrassed.

She sent it to the group chat that contained: me, my mother, her son, and the dressmaker.

There was a silence of about ninety seconds. I have never experienced ninety seconds like it. I watched three people typing and stopping. Typing and stopping.

Then the dressmaker — who is sixty-four and has been sewing since she was fifteen and does not need anybody's business — replied.

She wrote: "I have not spoken to you. I do not take instructions about a bride's dress from anyone but the bride. I have removed your deposit for the alterations, which I did not accept, and which is now returned. Please do not contact me again."

She sent the deposit receipt as an image. The deposit was three hundred pounds. My mother-in-law had gone behind my back with actual money.

My husband — my fiancé, then — wrote two words: "Mum. What."

She replied to the group with, and I am quoting exactly: "This was not meant for this chat."

That is all she said. Not sorry. Not I did not mean it. She was upset about the ADDRESSING.

She came to the wedding. She was perfectly pleasant. She cried during the vows, genuinely, and I believe the tears, and that is the part that has taken me years to make peace with — she meant the cruelty and she meant the tears, both, completely.

I wore the dress unaltered.

At the reception she told me I looked lovely, and I said thank you, and we have never discussed it, and we never will, and I have the screenshot in a folder called "onions" that I look at maybe once a year.