A bride was left in tears after her sister-in-law threw black paint over her wedding dress moments before she was set to walk down the aisle.
Gemma Monk, 35, had to scrub her face and change dresses when she became a victim of a “revenge” attack on May 24, 2024.
Antonia Eastwood, who is married to Gemma’s older brother Ashley, was said to have wrongly accused Monk of “trying to trip her up” at her own wedding in September the year before.
The bride, a mental health worker from Herne Bay, Kent, was left crying after the incident as Eastwood fled the scene at Oakwood House, a Victorian mansion in Maidstone.
The mother of two walked down the aisle to marry Ken Monk, her childhood sweetheart of 20 years, two hours after her £1,800 dress was covered in paint.
“We had waited for that day for so long. Nothing was going to stop me,” she told KentOnline.
“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.”
The bride after the attack. She walked down the aisle two hours laterCover Images
Monk was speaking on Wednesday after Eastwood, 49, who now lives in Manchester, was sentenced at Maidstone crown court for two offences of criminal damage.
Eastwood, who had not been invited to the wedding, was given a ten-month sentence, suspended for 12 months, in addition to 160 hours of unpaid work after pleading guilty.
She was also given a ten-year restraining order and told to pay £5,000 compensation — split between £4,000 to Monk and £1,000 to Oakwood House — at a rate of £100 a month.
The court was told that the bill for repairs and “loss of revenue” at Oakwood House was believed to exceed £5,000.
The wedding came at a time when Monk had had a cancer scare during which she lost weight, going down to a size four. She has since been given the all-clear.
The couple on their wedding dayCover Images
Monk said her sister-in-law knew about the medical issue at the time but “still decided to ruin the most important day of my life and put me at risk”.
Since her wedding, Monk has suffered depression and is unable to work.
In a victim impact statement, 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.”
In mitigation, Clement Idowu told the court Eastwood “wished to apologise” to Monk. He said the legal proceedings had “taken a toll” on her own mental well-being and that she had been “very fearful at the prospect of going to prison”.