Every wedding has a Thomas Markle

EVERY wedding has family drama, but it’s pretty poor if you haven’t the grace to be polite for the sake of the happy couple on their big day, writes Kerry Parnell.

WHY do people ruin weddings?

Is it really too much to ask to pack your emotional baggage away for one day, for the sake of someone else’s happiness?

Especially if it’s your own daughter.

Thomas Markle, father of Meghan, has managed to turn the sparkle into debacle and suck the joy out of his daughter’s wedding preparations. Can you imagine how upset she is?

Admittedly, a recluse who lives in Mexico isn’t the ideal candidate to walk his daughter down the aisle as she marries a prince, The Queen sitting front row and the whole world watching on TV. Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s wedding drew two billion viewers around the globe.

Add in the fake pap pictures cock-up, plus health problems, I can understand he wants to send his apologies and go back to bed for the next 15 years, but it’s hurtful for the bride. Now he says he is unable to attend due to undergoing heart surgery.

Thomas Markle — pictured with a young Meghan — will not be attending the royal wedding. (Pic: Instagram)

Every wedding has family drama — usually a dodgy uncle (hello Gary Goldsmith, Catherine’s wayward uncle who last year was spared jail for punching his wife after a charity event), or a scene-stealing best mate who can’t cope with the attention being elsewhere.

But it’s pretty poor if you haven’t the grace to be polite for the sake of the happy couple. After all, they did cough up for a chicken dinner and half a bottle of bubbly on your behalf. The least you can do is behave.

My grandmother didn’t attend any of her grandchildren’s weddings, because of my dad, who she had decided she hated. By the end of her life she forgot she disliked him, so we never did find out the reason.

A friend’s father didn’t come to her wedding because he couldn’t face the flight to Sydney from the UK. The one that thousands of other people do daily. She had to pretend she didn’t mind.

A colleague’s father-in-law rearranged the entire seating plan before the reception as he didn’t approve of him or his family and another told me her mother refused to come to her wedding reception and tried to make her bridesmaid go to the pub with her instead.

Following news of their engagement, Prince Harry said Meghan was marrying into the kind of family unit she never had. (Pic: Chris Jackson)

Then there are the friends who go feral, due to, one assumes, deep-seated insecurities over why it’s not them getting wed. So instead they sabotage their buddy’s big day by making it all about them. I’ve seen a maid of honour refuse to wear her bridesmaid’s dress and turn up in white, a best man who would not make a speech for his own brother and attended another mate’s nuptials in a T-shirt and shorts as though he were some kind of wedding activist rather than just an arse.

I know of a groom who had a punch-up with his brother. And then there was the wedding in Toronto, where the bride’s ex gatecrashed and lay out lewd photos of her on the tables, after which a mass brawl erupted with chairs flying and glasses smashed, all kindly posted on YouTube.

With the hoo-ha that’s unfolded before the big day, it’s no wonder Meghan didn’t invite the rest of her family, although sad for us, because this would have been the single best thing ever broadcast on TV and win her a BAFTA to boot.

Always a (solid) silver lining.