A bride was reduced to tears after her sister-in-law doused her in black paint over her wedding dress just moments before she was due to walk down the aisle.
Gemma Monk, 35, from Herne Bay, Kent, was forced to change dresses at the last minute after Antonia Eastwood launched the ‘revenge’ attack on May 24, 2024.
According to Mail Online, Antonia carried out the attack after Mrs Monk claimed her relative wrongly accused her of ‘trying to trip her up’ during her own wedding to the victim’s brother, Ashley, in September the year before.
The bride was left in floods of tears as Eastwood fled the scene at Oakwood House, a Victorian mansion in Maidstone.
The mum-of-two was subjected to the attack in front of wedding guests at Oakwood House Register Office in Maidstone.
Antonia Eastwood, who is married to Gemma’s older brother, Ashley, fled the venue after the incident. Gemma, 35, pulled herself together, scrubbed her face and body in a changing cubicle, and borrowed a dress fetched by an usher to marry her partner of more than 20 years.
She said: “We had waited for that day for so long. Nothing was going to stop me. She was determined that the wedding was not going to happen. I did not think twice, I would have walked down the aisle in my knickers and with black paint over my face if I had to.”
Eastwood, 49, who now lives in Manchester, was sentenced at Maidstone Crown Court for two offences of criminal damage. The court was told that the bill for repairs and “loss of revenue” at Oakwood House was believed to exceed £5,000.
The mother-of-two, who is a mental health worker, scrubbed herself clean as the paint covered most of the left side of her face, arm, and chest. She borrowed another dress, fetched by an usher.
Eastwood launched the cruel paint attack after an ongoing family feud, which flared up after her own ceremony the previous year.
Since then, Gemma, a mental health care worker, has suffered depression and been unable to work. She choked back tears as she read her victim impact statement to the court. She said: ”To have paint thrown over me by my brother’s wife changed my outlook on life and made me question whether I had done something really bad, whether I had done something wrong.
“This has had a dramatic impact on my life. Even while I was providing this statement at the police station, I got extremely emotional and started crying while talking about the incident. Since the incident, if it wasn’t for my children or my family, I don’t think I would even get out of bed to care for myself.
“I have lost all my dignity and good habits in life. I have lost who I used to be. This has turned the most special day of my life into the worst memory I will never forget, and neither will my family.”
The couple also called off plans to go on their dream honeymoon to the Maldives because she “wasn’t up to it.”
Recalling the day, she said: “I had a gut feeling, a bad feeling that something was wrong when I got out of the car with my dad. But he said it must be nerves.”
Prosecutor Pietro Matarazzo told the court on Tuesday: “Her wedding dress turned black. It was splattered with paint, as were her eyes, face, and skin.” Gemma, realising it was her sister-in-law who was with her brother, grabbed her by the hair, but she got away.
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