So gauche: Runaway Bride tale is a story full of etiquette breaches

<p>Now she wants the shower gifts back, too?</p><p>Experts in wedding protocol are tut-tutting _ albeit sympathetically _ over the latest turn in the case of the Runaway Bride, a story rife with breaches of etiquette.</p><p>"I really feel for her," said Rachel Safier, author of "There Goes the Bride," a guidebook for brides who get cold feet. "But unfortunately, I can't think of anything that was done right here."</p><p>Virtually everyone knows the early part of the story: Jennifer Wilbanks ran off four days before her lavish wedding in 2005. The reluctant bride, then 32, turned up in Albuquerque, N.M., claiming she had been abducted and sexually assaulted.</p><p>She later recanted and pleaded no contest to telling police a phony story. She was sentenced to two years' probation and performed community service. The couple finally broke up in May.</p><p>This week came the denouement, or maybe it was just Part 2: Details emerged about a lawsuit, filed by Wilbanks in September against her ex-fiance, John C. Mason. And then Mason countersued on Friday for emotional distress.</p><p>Wilbanks' lawsuit sought $250,000 _ half of the proceeds from the sale of their story _ which the suit said Mason used to buy a house in his name only. Wilbanks is also seeking another $250,000 in punitive damages, accusing her boyfriend of abusing his power of attorney while she was in the hospital, on medication. Perhaps most interesting, letters attached to the lawsuit detail a back-and-forth over a panoply of personal items: a vacuum cleaner, a sofa, a ladder, a comforter set on the master bed.</p><p>And this: "Jennifer would also like to have returned to her the wedding shower and wedding gifts given to her by her family and friends," said a letter from her attorney.</p><p>That part caught the attention of etiquette experts.</p><p>"The proper etiquette, when you cancel a wedding, is to return all the gifts," said Theresa DiMasi, editor-in-chief of Brides.com. "You also need to send a note _ in writing and soon: `The gift is most appreciated but the wedding is canceled.' Especially if you have a lot of gifts, it really looks improper to keep them."</p><p>Safier agreed. Maybe, she offered hopefully, Wilbanks wanted the gifts back so she could return them (a year later)? Shower gifts should go back, she said, "unless of course they're used. You can make the gesture, but no one wants a used frying pan."</p><p>Mason did agree in July, according to the letters, to give back many items _ a washer-dryer, entertainment center, furniture, the comforter and the ladder. (It was not clear which, if any, of those items were shower gifts.) "John is anxious to close this very unfortunate chapter of his life," wrote his lawyer, James Watkins, noting the "humiliation, embarrassment and aggravation" caused by Wilbanks' "rather bizarre behavior."</p><p>It is that behavior, of course, that was the first major etiquette breach. "Lots of people back out," DiMasi noted. But "there's no need to actually flee the state. And then to lie about it, and have all those police officers looking for you, and then to sell your story _ her personal issue became a public issue. That's a violation of ANY etiquette."</p><p>Mason said in his countersuit Friday that Wilbanks' actions "were intentional, malicious and fraudulent." He charged that she "made plans for her disappearance well in advance" of her wedding day.</p><p>And what does Dear Abby think of all this? The advice columnist said it's not up to any of us to judge.</p><p>"I'd think," she said in an interview, "that when a romance fails, you'd want to get rid of reminders and move on. But not everybody thinks the way we do."</p><p>As for the disputed property items, trivial as they may seem, "these items may have assumed a meaning that we don't understand," said Abby, whose real name is Jeanne Phillips. "A vacuum cleaner may symbolize home. There may be something about Daddy's ladder _ you don't want it in the home of a stranger."</p><p>But, she said, one thing is clear. Those wedding and shower gifts? "The rule is they must be returned to the givers."</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2006/10/115257