Dear Richard Madeley: I’m not wild about my fiancée’s ex-boyfriend having a key role in our wedding
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Dear Richard,
My girlfriend and I are marrying in the summer – a big, traditional church wedding. She is an only child and her dad is dead, so she’s asked a male friend to give her away. I signed off on this at the time, but since then she has confirmed what I’d suspected, that they had a thing – quite a long and significant thing – at university. I don’t dislike the guy but I’m not wild about him having such a key role in our ceremony; and the fact that she waited until we’d locked him in to the gig to tell me about their relationship has really been weighing on me.
I absolutely don’t think they still have feelings for one another, but weddings are all about the messages we send and I’m not happy about sending this one, not least because loads of her college friends will be there.
Should I make an objection? Talk to the guy? Deputise a friendly ex to serve as my best woman? Or just suck it up?
– B, via telegraph.co.uk
Dear B
Well, I wouldn’t like it one bit. In fact, I think I’d hate it. I suppose there are some sophisticates who can take this sort of thing in their stride, but I’m not one of them and neither are most friends that I can think of.
So I sympathise with you. I also think you’re entitled to feel rather managed, even manipulated, by your fiancée. She should have come clean with you at the outset and explained that the man she wants to give her away is a former paramour. I understand why she didn’t, but a little more openness would at least have given you the chance to make an informed decision before, as you say, he was ‘locked in’.
But is he locked in, B? Really? Is this thing set in stone? Tell your fiancée exactly how unhappy and unsettled this decision is making you. Explain, without shame or embarrassment, that it will make you feel awkward and off-balance on your special day – particularly given that her friends will be aware the man giving the bride away has an intimate ‘past’ with her.
That’s not to say he can’t be one of the honoured guests – even if that means he gets a seat in the front pew. But standing up there at the altar, giving her away? It’s a lot to ask.
Anyway, surely the fundamental point is this: if your fiancée knows it’ll make you upset, she shouldn’t do it. It’s as simple as that.
Has she no relatives to step into the breach? An uncle or aunt, or a cousin? And what about her mother? These days it’s totally acceptable wedding etiquette for the mother or a significant woman in the bride’s life to give her away.
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