Gemma Carter* hasn’t been able to bring herself to watch the recording of the tearful speech she made on her wedding day ten years ago.

The tears were not, as you might imagine, happy ones.

In fact, they were the result of her mother having just stormed out of the reception, after insulting her new in-laws and telling her she was making ‘a terrible mistake’.

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A decade later, despite living just streets away from one another in the same Yorkshire village, mother and daughter remain estranged, with Gemma, 39, unable to forgive Sue – who has never apologised – for wrecking her big day.

‘Mum has always been a difficult woman. It’s her way or the highway,’ she tells me. ‘But I still feel like crying every time I think about how she ruined what should have been the happiest day of my life. Most brides can rely on their mothers to put them first on their wedding day, to ease their stress and help make guests feel comfortable, but mine made herself the centre of attention in the most dreadful way imaginable.

‘She left everyone shaking with shock.’

The drama surrounding the upcoming nuptials of Gordon Ramsay’s daughter Holly to Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty has caused memories of Gemma’s own ‘intense pain and shame’ to come flooding back.

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Adam’s mother, Caroline, 59, has reportedly been ‘banned’ from their wedding, at Bath Abbey, and told the Daily Mail that, sadly, although she loves Adam and would welcome him home any time, ‘I know it’s the end’.

What makes this especially sad is the impact it may have on Caroline’s close relationship with grandson George, five, the boy Adam had with his previous partner, artist Eirianedd Munro.

Since her wedding, Gemma has gone on to have three children that her mother has never even met.

Indeed, given how things imploded on her big day, she believes it would have been better for all concerned had she ‘disinvited’ her mother altogether, much as Adam is believed to have done to his mother.

Sue’s outburst, after all, was not completely out of the blue. As with the Ramsay-Peaty coupling, issues arose well in advance of the day itself. However, while Adam’s mum is said to have been upset at not being invited to Holly’s hen do at fashionable Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, Gemma’s mother wanted no part in hers.

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‘I’d been married before, very unhappily, and despite having no religious convictions, Mum was furious when we separated. She told me “marriage is for life” and I needed to make it work.

‘We had two children together and she believed that, despite the fact it was a miserable relationship, it was better for them if we stayed together.’

Gemma listened respectfully to her mother’s advice but did not follow it. Then she met and fell in love with Robert, 41, a computer programmer and colleague of her cousin. She says: ‘Rather than feeling glad that at last I’d found a man who made me happy, and was great with the kids, Mum told me it wouldn’t last.’

The die was clearly cast for poor Robert. ‘After he proposed a year later, she couldn’t have been dismissive, rolling her eyes and saying, “All I’m going to hear now is ‘wedding, wedding, wedding!’ What a waste of time.” ’ As the words catch in Gemma’s throat and she blinks back tears, it’s evident that time has not healed this very deep maternal wound.

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What makes her story poignant is the fact that she bent over backwards for her mum during the wedding preparations. Her choice of hen party venue – a restaurant in a nearby village – was made on the basis that her mother would prefer that to trailing around noisy pubs. Yet her mother threw it back in her face, telling her the whole thing was ‘silly nonsense’ and ultimately refusing to attend.

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Indeed, once thwarted, her mother could not be persuaded that Robert was anything but a bad prospect – not even when he clearly proved himself a devoted stepdad to Gemma’s children Tom and Imogen, who were five and seven when they met.

It wasn’t only her attitude that upset Gemma, however. Her mother actively tried to sabotage the nuptials, claiming that Gemma’s father Paul, an accountant, didn’t want to walk his daughter down the aisle for a second time. She also told Gemma her brother Matt had decided not to come.

None of it was true. When Gemma asked her father why he was boycotting her day, he insisted he was doing no such thing. Likewise, Matt, three years her junior, said he ‘wouldn’t miss it for the world’.

Given her mother’s meddling, Gemma was surprised when she agreed to go dress shopping with her. Perhaps this was a thawing of relations, a sign that her mother was coming round to the idea of the wedding? At last, Gemma thought, she could look forward to sharing the excitement with her mother, enjoying a glass of champagne as they perused a rack of silk gowns.

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Yet even now her mother managed to spoil the atmosphere. Worse, she ‘was critical of every dress I tried’, recalls Gemma. ‘ “That’s not nice. That doesn’t suit you. That washes you out. That will make you look fat.”

‘When, feeling utterly demoralised, I’d just about given up, I spotted another bride-to-be in a lovely ivory silk gown that was £750 – about £200 beyond what I’d budgeted for. Mum insisted I try it on.

‘We both liked it and she offered to pay the difference in price as a wedding gift, even putting down a deposit. I was touched, thinking this was a bonding moment, a turning point for us. However, when the final bill came in, she point blank refused to pay the rest, telling me she didn’t know what I was thinking wanting a “big white church wedding” when I’d been married before.

‘I explained that Robert hadn’t (been married), and I didn’t want to deprive him of a proper wedding. But I knew better than to make a fuss about it, so I cut back on grocery bills for a few weeks to cover the difference.’

Her mother meanwhile said neither she nor Gemma’s father would be contributing a single penny to the rest of the event, despite having paid for a wedding for 70 people at a hotel when Gemma first married.

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Then came the day itself – and her mother began causing offence even before Gemma arrived at the church. Nothing was too trivial to make a fuss about, says Gemma.

As the bridesmaids got out of the car – including her ten-year-old granddaughter Imogen, who was a flower girl – instead of showering them with compliments, her mother gasped: ‘Oh my God, what are you wearing? Those dresses are just hideous.’

Her complaint, Gemma believes, was that Imogen wasn’t wearing the ivory-coloured dress Sue had bought for her weeks earlier without asking Gemma. This dress hadn’t matched the bridesmaids’ blue and white scheme, so Gemma hadn’t put her daughter in it.

‘Mum’s response at the time, typical of her, was, “Well change the colour scheme”, which I wasn’t prepared to do,’ says Gemma. ‘She clearly bore a grudge about this, but it was so unfair to take it out on my lovely bridesmaids.

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‘I could see Imogen was upset as we walked back down the aisle, after the service, and, when I asked her why, she said, “Nanny told me I look ugly.”

‘I was fuming, but I told Imogen to ignore her grandma and did my best to smooth things over.’

Nothing, however, could have prepared Gemma for what happened at the wedding breakfast in a private upstairs room in a nearby restaurant.

After the meal, her mother went to get some fresh air. On her way to the door, she overheard Gemma’s new father-in-law, Malcolm, whom she clearly disliked, telling his own daughter: ‘I can’t believe the next wedding I’ll be at will be yours.’

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Barely breaking stride, Sue remarked: ‘You’re having a joke. Who’d want that?!’

She couldn’t even blame alcohol for her unpleasantness, having only had a small buck’s fizz. Malcolm was understandably appalled and followed Sue outside. ‘Can you please not be so horrid to my family? It’s supposed to be a happy day,’ he said to her.

But instead of taking Malcolm’s pleas on board, and thinking about the impact on her own daughter, his comment seemed to enrage Sue, who, when she returned to the top table, was in an agitated state.

Gemma recalls: ‘She started shouting at him saying, “I don’t even know why she’s marrying into this family. You’re lazy, your wife’s stupid and your daughter’s ugly. As for your son, she’s making a terrible mistake.” She then grabbed her bag and stormed out.

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‘I turned to my dad and said, “Are you going after her?” And he said, “No, I’m staying here with you.” Then I burst into tears, and told Robert I needed to leave.

‘I was so distressed and embarrassed, all I could say was, “She’s ruined my day, I just want to go home and get this dress off.” ’

Luckily, Robert is easy-going, she says, and convinced her to stay. But the fall-out from her mother’s wretched behaviour didn’t end after the big day.

During the week between the wedding and the newlyweds’ honeymoon in Venice, word reached Gemma via a family friend that her mother had packed up the toys her children kept at their grandmother’s house, ready for her to collect.

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Having not been in touch with Gemma since the wedding, Sue had told people that her daughter would no longer let her see her grandchildren.

‘I messaged Mum asking, “Why are you telling people that you can’t see the children? Of course you can,” ’ says Gemma. ‘They had always been close to her, so keeping them apart didn’t seem fair. She replied saying, “I thought you’d be the type of person who would cut me off from my grandchildren too.” ’

It has been ten years since the wedding and, while Gemma and her mother are estranged from one another, the children Imogen and Tom still see their grandmother. In the early days they would do the short walk alone to Sue’s house and, for several years now, since they’ve had mobile phones, Sue has made arrangements with them directly.

However, Sue has never even met the three children, now aged eight, six and four, Gemma has since had with Robert, even though their grandfather, Paul, visits every Sunday. ‘He brings the little three a chocolate bar and a big bag of fresh fruit for us all,’ says Gemma. ‘Then he does little jobs around the house, painting the bathroom, fixing doors, whatever we need.

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‘He and I don’t talk about Mum, though I know they barely even speak to one another these days.

‘I have wondered if her reaction to my second marriage might be rooted in jealousy, because she’s stayed with a man she doesn’t seem to love.’

Gemma does know that her mother thinks of the children she has never met: on their birthdays and at Christmas, her father brings gifts which she can tell have been bought by her mum, even though they are only labelled from ‘grandad’.

There is an element of sadness and even guilt that they wouldn’t recognise their own grandmother if they passed her on the street.

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‘It’s a real shame that they don’t have the close relationship with their grandma that my older ones have always had. However, I don’t want them to think the way she treats people is acceptable. At least Imogen and Tom are old enough to know better.’

Gemma is aware she is likely to outlive her mother, so how, I wonder, might she feel were Sue to die before the rift is healed? ‘Mum has actually told my older kids she wouldn’t want me at her funeral,’ she says, resignedly. ‘So I wouldn’t go.

‘People might judge me for that, but I hope they’ll also remember how she ruined what should have been the happiest day of my life.’

Some rifts, as Adam Peaty and Holly Ramsay may just be discovering, are indeed very difficult to heal.

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* Names and identifying details have been changed.