https://proudstars.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-is-truth-about-round-world-jilted.html
What IS the truth about the round-the-world jilted bride? She says she's had the last laugh but her ex-fiance says she's not the innocent party she seems
- Katy Colins, of Manchester, travelled the world after wedding cancelled
- She kept a blog detailing the experience and has now landed a book deal
- But ex Thom Soutter claims she slept with one of his friends
- The former couple's dispute has become an internet sensation
Quite how much can you claw back from a cancelled wedding? Cash-wise, Katy Colins might yet get a few pounds from her dress — the ‘perfect’ fairy-tale gown with lace detailing and a figure-hugging fishtail cut.
Alas, the dress was never worn because the groom got cold feet — even though every detail of the ceremony had been planned, right down to the correct shade of blue for the bridesmaids’ dresses (in honour of his favourite football team, Manchester City).
Now the dress is for sale on eBay. Katy’s asking £600 for it, even though it cost £1,000. Still, while she may have taken a hit on the dress, Katy, 30, has certainly hit the jackpot in other ways.
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Katy Colins, pictured, sold her house and quit her job to travel the world after her wedding was cancelled
Katy, pictured right, has landed a book deal, left, detailing her experiences since the break-up
This week, the former PR executive from Manchester became the most famous jilted bride in Britain when the story of her cancelled nuptials — and her efforts to get over the heartbreak that followed — became public.
After her fiance dumped her and confessed he was seeing another woman, Katy quit her job, sold her half of the home they shared, her car and ‘everything that wasn’t nailed down, bar the dress’.
She then decided to travel the world to escape the humiliation and pitying looks of friends and neighbours.
The self-confessed homebody, who had never even been on a package holiday on her own, started a blog and posted online a lot of pictures of herself in bikinis, looking considerably happier than your average jilted bride.
A book deal ensued and she’s become a rather unlikely heroine — a poster girl, if you like, for the dumped and the disappointed.
Possibly the only person who didn’t cheer at seeing her posing triumphantly outside the Taj Mahal or doing a fly-past of Mount Everest was the ex who’d done the dumping.
Poor Thom Soutter, her one-time groom, discovered his ex was an internet sensation while planning his next wedding. Awkward!
Ex-fiance Thom Soutter, pictured with new fiancee Alyson Mobey said Miss Colins was not telling the full story
To add to the drama, this week he gave an interview saying Katy was not blameless as she had later had an affair with a friend — and that she had been more interested in her dream wedding itself than she was in him.
Ouch! So who’s really to blame?
Katy, who is currently reclining on a sun‑lounger in the Philippines, insists she is innocent of any betrayal.
Just a few years ago, she had her entire life mapped out. Engaged to her ‘best friend and soul-mate’, she was the proud co-owner of a three-bedroom semi, overlooking a pretty duck pond. It might not sound like the dream life, but at the time, it was.
‘I thought I was the luckiest girl alive,’ she says. ‘I had this amazing man, who had asked me to marry him. Everything had gone according to plan. He’d even asked my dad for permission for my hand.’
The duck pond outside her window was the clincher — and the thing that still makes her well up today.
‘I’d look out, imagining the children we were going to have, and picture us feeding the ducks. It was so vivid. Then it all disappeared.’
Their story had begun at Salford University, where she and Thom met in their first term. She was studying English and journalism; he was hoping for a career in law.
‘We just seemed to click. I thought: “He’s the one,” ’ she remembers.
They lived together throughout university and, after a few years of working, bought a house.
‘Both sets of parents helped,’ says Katy. ‘His dad was going to help him do the place up. It was perfect.’
‘Perfect’ is a word that comes up a lot in conversation with Katy. For example, their home had three bedrooms. The smallest one, the box room, was ‘the perfect nursery’.
She insists Thom shared her dreams: ‘We had exactly the same vision. Obviously I’ve been over and over it in my head, wondering if I misread everything, but we honestly seemed to want the same things. Maybe we merged too much into one person, but at the time it felt right.’
In February 2011, Thom proposed — in the way she’d always dreamed of, producing a ‘perfect’ diamond ring that her best friend had helped him pick.
They set the date — May 26, 2012 (soccer fan Thom wanted it outside the footie season) — and set about planning the big day, complete with church service and a country hotel reception.
Katy visited many famous landmarks including the Taj Mahal in India, and kept a blog on her experiences
Going by the moniker 'notwedordead' she posted images of her travels on Instagram, such as here in France
Katy seems stung by any suggestions she got a little too carried away: ‘I don’t think I was Bridezilla. Well, maybe I was a little, but isn’t everyone?
'I had the wedding magazines and found it hugely exciting, picking all those things you dream of as a child. It all seems insignificant now.’
Three months before their wedding day — at the point where the bill had reached £20,000 and even the cars were confirmed — Thom dropped his bombshell.
‘It was a week night, very ordinary,’ recalls Katy. ‘We were about to watch The Apprentice or something. Then he came into the kitchen, looking awful: pale, sallow-skinned, ill.
‘He said: “I can’t do this; I can’t marry you.”
‘I felt like I’d been punched. We didn’t have a row. I couldn’t get the words out. I couldn’t process it.
‘He packed a bag and went. I couldn’t breathe. I remember sliding down the wall and sitting on the floor, in the foetal position. It was physical pain. My heart actually ached.’
Next morning, after a sleepless night, she went into work, zombie-like. ‘My boss took one look at me and asked what was wrong. I broke down. He sent me home.’
There followed weeks of ‘absolute hell’ during which Thom ‘kind of’ moved back in, and the pair talked (and rowed, yelled, screamed, cried, ‘all of it’, says Katy) about whether or not their ‘marriage’ was over before it had even begun.
‘I went through denial, telling myself it wasn’t happening, then anger, and just searing pain,’ she says.
Painful revelation was piled on painful revelation.
An Instagram post by Katy, pictured, of her visiting Machu Picchu in the Andes mountains in Peru
She spent Christmas in Koh Tao, Thailand, after selling her house to afford the trip of a lifetime
‘One of the most devastating things he said was he didn’t find me attractive any more. That stings, still.
‘Maybe I had let myself go. I’d come home from work and put on comfy, slobby clothes, as you do when you are comfortable with someone.
‘But to hear him say it was devastating, like being stabbed. This was a man I had spent nine years with. He was my right arm.’
There was worse to come. Eventually, she claims, Thom revealed there was someone else and confessed he had been having a relationship with another woman.
‘I don’t know how long it went on for, or even if you could call it an affair. But there was someone else, yes. After that, there was no going back.’
It has to be said that Thom would be horrified to be portrayed as such a cad.
He was understandably mortified when their failed relationship became headline news (not least because he has a new fiancee, Alyson Mobey, 29), and feels events have been somewhat embellished.
In an interview earlier this week, he highlighted the ‘Bridezilla’ factor.
‘The facts of the matter are we got engaged and the wedding took over everything. I felt [Katy] loved the wedding more than me.’
In the aftermath of they split, Katy admits she behaved foolishly.
'I did do something stupid — but later, when it was all over.
‘I’d been drinking and I had a one-night stand with a mutual friend. I’m not proud of it. But I felt worthless.
'If the man I adored could cast me off, then who was I? I couldn’t even say the words: “My wedding has been called off.” Mum took over. She did all the calling round.’
It was agreed that Thom would buy Katy’s share of their house. Once she’d got over the idea of another woman potentially enjoying the view of ‘her’ duck pond, she knew it made sense.
‘I didn’t want the house, but I was still upset. I even cried over this dodgy old temperamental tap we had. It leaked and you had to put a spoon in it to stop the drip. Stupid, really.’
She moved into a rented room nearby. Things were beyond bleak.
