After a chance encounter and years of dating, Ryan and Hanna are about to go to the altar and commit to each other. But when the groom’s mother reveals an incriminating video of him with another woman, the bride’s heart is broken. Later, the truth is revealed, along with more deception.
Do parents enjoy dropping bombshells before weddings? When I say before, do I mean 30 minutes before?
Because that’s exactly what Ryan’s mother did.
Ryan and I met two years ago, in one of those chance encounters. I was at the community theater because one of my friends, Mila, was acting in the local musical with her directorial debut.
So there I was, standing outside after the performance, with a bouquet of flowers for Mila. Ryan came out and, because of the crowd, headed straight for me, crushing the flowers.
“I’m so sorry,“ he said, picking up the bouquet.
“I hate crowds,” I said.
He laughed and gestured for us to move away from the door.
“I don’t like them either,“ he said. ‘I’m Ryan.’
“Hanna,” I said, introducing myself.
Barely three months into our romance, Ryan proposed to me in a pub while we drank Guinness and ate crispy potato skins.
Last week we should have sealed that promise with our wedding vows. But our wedding went in the completely opposite direction it should have gone.
At first, my family welcomed Ryan with open arms. As an only child, my parents were delighted that I had met someone who really made me happy.
“This is a different side of you, Hanna,“ my mother said one night when Ryan came to dinner with us.
“He makes her happy,” my father said, smiling. “That’s all a father could wish for.”
Ryan felt welcomed, he felt the warmth they lavished on him, and thanks to that, we too grew stronger as a couple.
For their part, it was more or less the same. The Coles opened their home and their hearts to us, and all they wanted was to have us over as often as possible. Mrs. Cole, Audrey, had also started a routine of going out for coffee and manicures with me.
Everything was going well, until it wasn’t.
During the wedding preparations, I felt as calm as possible. It was a small church wedding, and Ryan and I had planned an intimate event down to the smallest detail. We knew exactly what we wanted and how to make it special for our day.
But on what was to be the happiest day of my life, just before the ceremony, my future mother-in-law took me aside.
“Darling,” she said, ”can we have a word?”
I nodded and told her to wait until my glam team had finished doing my hair and make-up.
Something about her attitude made me feel anxious and nervous. I watched her movements from my reflection in the mirror.
Her eyes moved quickly around the room, often resting on my wedding dress, which was hanging on its hanger.
When I was ready and my mother was buttoning up the dress, I turned to Audrey.
“I’m ready, let’s talk!“ I said, smiling at her.
Her eyes went wide when she saw me in the dress. She had already been to my fittings, but this was the moment when Audrey and my mother would see the full effect of my wedding outfit.
“Hanna,” said Audrey. “This is not easy for me to say.”
My heart was pounding in my chest. As they were doing my hair and I sat looking at her, I knew that nothing good was going to come of our conversation.
“Just say it,” I said. ”Tell me.”
Audrey took the phone out of her bag and handed it to me.
“On this phone there are videos that will explain everything. I’m so sorry, Hanna, but I had to expose Ryan.”
My mind reeled. I couldn’t imagine what I was about to see once I unlocked the phone.
“Here,“ she said, handing me her phone as a woman’s voice echoed in the room.
The videos on Audrey’s phone revealed Ryan with another woman, in a clandestine affair, an undeniable betrayal.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Is it him?”
Audrey closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Well, look at the jacket on the bed,” she said. ‘Isn’t that the one you gave him?”
I pressed play again and looked at the jacket. The hotel room was familiar too; I was sure we had been there before.
“But Ryan’s face isn’t in the frame,’ I said.
I was struggling. I couldn’t believe that my almost mother-in-law was standing in front of me with a video showing her son’s affair.
“Hanna,” she said slowly. ”It’s right in front of you. You can choose to ignore it, but think about the man you would marry if you choose to ignore it. Could you live with yourself knowing that? Could you live with him?”
I shook my head. I felt like crying from how overwhelmed I was.
“Okay,“ I said.
“Are you going to cancel the wedding?” Audrey asked, hope in her voice.
“No,” I said. ”I’m going to walk down the aisle. I’m going to walk towards the man who has been unfaithful to me. And when the time comes for our vows, I’ll break up then.”
“Okay, honey,” said Audrey, putting the phone back in her bag. ”It’s almost time anyway.”
I sat on the lounger and waited for my father to come and get me when it was time to marry Ryan. All I wanted to do was get in a car and drive away somewhere where I could eat my feelings in a mountain of chips.
My heart was beating furiously with rage as I approached the altar on my father’s arm. Ryan, aware of the storm brewing under my skin, smiled tenderly at me. He took my hand and squeezed it.
It would have been absolutely perfect, except for the fact that I had been with someone else.
Our priest continued to quote passages from the Bible about love and marriage. And when it came time for our vows, my heart calmed, finally understanding what was about to happen.
“I don’t want to,“ I said softly, more to the floor than to Ryan.
“Speak up, Hanna,” said the priest.
“I don’t want to!“ I said more confidently, and the words echoed like a shockwave.
Ryan’s shock turned to confusion as I repeated those two words again.
“Hanna? What?” he asked, with deep pain and betrayal in his voice.
“Ask your mother,” I said, pointing to Audrey. ‘Mrs. Cole, please tell everyone what she told me earlier.”
The church fell silent immediately, as if everyone were holding their breath. With trembling hands, she opened her purse and took out her phone. As before, she handed it to me.
“Look,’ I said to Ryan.
Ryan took a step back, almost falling over the wedding arch.
“That’s not me, Hanna!” he said loudly. ”Hanna, you know it’s not me!”
I refused to look him in the eye.
Then he faced his mother.
“Mom, what is all this? What is that? Where did you get that video?”
Audrey shook her head and walked down the aisle, leaving the church in silence.
I couldn’t bear to hear Ryan’s excuses.
“Hanna, please,” he said. ”I need you to believe me.”
And I wanted to. Of course, I wanted to believe the man I loved. But it was clear, the jacket I bought him was lying on the bed in the video. He’d been with someone else.
And if there was a chance that he hadn’t been with someone else, how would he explain the video? And the barely dressed woman? And the sound effects?
“I can’t do it,” I said. ”I won’t do it.”
I ran out the side door, with my parents close behind.
Ryan kept calling me for the rest of the day and, when it got dark, I finally blocked his number.
However, two days later, when I was wrapped in a blanket wondering where everything had gone, Ryan showed up at my parents’ house with takeaway food and flowers.
“Do you expect this to fix everything?” I asked him.
“I need to talk to you,“ he said simply.
Against my better judgment, I listened to him.
What Ryan revealed next sent me into another spiral.
He had confronted Audrey after the wedding.
“I went straight to her house,” he told me. “She was sitting there in her kitchen eating toast and listening to old records as if our wedding hadn’t just been ruined.”
“I think it was you,“ I blurted out.
“Hanna,” she warned. “My mother orchestrated that video. The people in it are her students. And all because she didn’t want us to get married.”
My jaw dropped to the floor.
Audrey was a high school teacher, but she also gave private English lessons to first-year undergraduates. So, when the time came for Ryan and I to get married, he panicked. He called two of his university students, who were only too eager to earn a bit of extra money, to play the part.
“I thought he liked me,” I said as I ate the food Ryan had brought. ”He clearly didn’t, if he made a whole video.”
“He said the sounds were edited,” Ryan laughed nervously. ”But I have to admit that adding my jacket was a nice touch.”
I didn’t understand how I felt. Over the past two days, since walking away from my own wedding, I had convinced myself that Ryan had been the bad guy in my story. That he was the villain who broke my heart, while his mother exposed him for what he was.
However, the reality was much worse.
Here was a woman who had claimed me as the daughter she never had, only to break my heart before marrying her son.
She believed that I was not worthy of Ryan.
I forgave Ryan immediately, and he apologized for accusing me of cheating in front of all our guests.
We’re still together, but I don’t know what the future holds. For now, I feel hurt and betrayed by Audrey. And I know that forgiveness will be difficult for her.
What would you do?
If you liked this story, here’s another one.
My mother-in-law tried to ruin our wedding by turning us against each other
As a wedding planner, Maya is used to crazy weddings. So when her wedding approaches, she thinks she has planned everything down to the last detail. Until her fiancé disappears and her mother-in-law plots the end of their relationship…
As a wedding planner, I’ve had my fair share of crazy weddings. From bridezillas to lazy grooms, to the most outlandish requests. I once had a couple who wanted to say their vows in a hot air balloon, but the bride realized she was afraid of heights.
For my wedding, I was sure Fred and I were ready. That we had finally done everything right. But even so, I wanted my colleague, Jenna, to take care of the wedding logistics. I wanted to have my moment as a bride.
Fred knew I was in my element when it came to our wedding, so he left everything to me: apart from making sure there would be checks at the reception, everything was up to me.
We met Jenna at a restaurant about a year before our wedding, and I told her everything she needed to know about an organizer. It was going to be easy for her: all she had to do was the administration behind the plans. And bring the vision to life.
“Maya,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. ”This is perfect. You’ve planned everything.”
Everything was going perfectly, with every detail meticulously planned and prepared for what was to be the happiest day of our lives.
Until three nights before the wedding, when all hell broke loose.
It must have been around 8 in the evening, and I was relaxing watching a reality show and eating a piece of cake.
The next morning I had a manicure appointment and I was finally starting to feel like a bride. In the last few weeks, Fred and I seemed to find something to fight about. We would argue for no reason, right up until bedtime.
At least this week, Fred was staying with his godfather.
“Just to get him off your hands for a while, Maya,“ he said.
“You won’t complain about me,” I said. “Just keep him out of trouble.”
But it’s never that simple, is it?
No. My doorbell rang, interrupting my night at home.
The person on the other side was a delivery man with a huge bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“They’re beautiful,“ I said. ‘Who are they from?”
“There’s a card, ma’am,’ said the delivery man.
He handed me the bouquet and turned to go down the stairs.
“Oh, Fred,” I said, sniffing the flowers.
Sending me flowers at random was something he would do.
But then I read the card and my heart broke.
The card read I don’t want to.
Suddenly all the air had gone out of my lungs. I sat down on the sofa and cried my heart out.
A few hours later, I called Fred about twenty times. He never picked up.