My mother announced in the middle of the dinner: “The cottage from your husband’s family, we’ll just give it to your sister,” my sister burst out laughing: “Oh, it’s just a cottage anyway” – the whole family clapped along… until my groom looked at me, looked at the relatives and slowly opened his mouth, and no one in my family ever dared laugh the same way again.
By the time my mother tapped her champagne flute, the little American flag magnet on our fridge back at the…