My Mother-in-Law Wore a White Gown to My Wedding

When I got engaged, my future mother-in-law and I had what I thought was a warm relationship. In hindsight, the signs were there. She asked a lot of questions about my dress. She asked what colour my dress was. She asked, more than once, whether I was "really sure" about white.

The week before the wedding she mentioned she had bought something "cream" to wear. I did not think much of it. Cream is fine. Cream is a normal thing for a mother of the groom to wear.

On the day, she arrived a full hour before any other guest, which struck the planner as odd, and swept in wearing a floor-length white gown. Not cream. Not champagne. White, satin, with beading at the bodice and a small train that whispered along the floor behind her. She had done her hair up with a comb that could have held a veil. From across a room, in a photograph, you would have called her the bride.

She positioned herself near the entrance to the aisle for the arriving guests and, I am told by three separate people, greeted several of them with a bright little laugh and the words, "I am the other bride." She meant it as a joke. Nobody heard it as one.

I found out about the dress ten minutes before I was due to walk down the aisle, from a bridesmaid who came in white as a sheet herself. I had a decision to make and about six hundred seconds to make it. I decided I was not going to let her have the day. I walked out, hugged her warmly in front of everyone, complimented her gown loudly and sincerely, and said how sweet it was that she wanted to match me. The photos are what they are. My husband has never quite forgiven her. I married him anyway, in white, as the only bride.