My son’s fiancée insisted I wear a pure white dress to their wedding. Convinced she was setting a cruel trap to humiliate me, I decided to walk into it with my head held high, bracing myself for the inevitable whispers and stares from the other guests. But when I walked into the chapel, I was stunned.

When my daughter-in-law, Alice, handed me the neatly wrapped box, I didn’t know what to expect. It was two weeks before her wedding to my son, Michael, and we had just sat down for lunch at a quiet little café she liked. The conversation had been polite, if a bit stiff. Alice and I had never been close. We had what you might call a “cordial distance” — civil on the surface, but always careful not to step on each other’s toes.