A BRIDE who had black paint thrown over her on her wedding day has revealed her ongoing trauma as the family feud is laid bare.

Gemma Monk, 35, was set upon in a revenge attack that saw her sister-in-law hurl black paint over her £1,800 wedding dress at a plush venue in Kent.

Just seconds away from walking down the aisle to tie the knot, the mum-of-two’s special day quickly quickly descended into a nightmare.

Gemma said that if it wasn’t for her family she wouldn’t have been able to “get out of bed” in the morning after the attack, adding she “lost who she used to be”.

She was stood alongside her father, bridesmaids and flower girl at Oakwood House, a Victorian mansion in Maidstone, when someone called out her name.

The bride-to-be initially thought someone had accidentally stepped on her dress before she spotted something out of the corner of her eye.

It was a dress she had hoped to pass down to her daughter but it was ruined after she was suddenly covered in black paint.

Realising it was her sister-in-law she went to grab her by the hair but she got away and fled.

Antonia Eastwood, 49, is married to Gemma’s older brother Ashley and neither had been invited to the ceremony due to an ongoing family feud.

She later pleaded guilty to criminal damage and was slapped with a 10-month suspended sentence at Maidstone Crown Court.

emma, a mental health care worker, told the court the ordeal had turned the “most special day of my life into the worst memory”.

She said: “To have paint thrown over me by my brother’s wife changed my outlook on life and made me question whether I had done something really bad, whether I had done something wrong.

“Since the incident, if it wasn’t for my children or my family, I don’t think I would even get out of bed to care for myself.

“I have lost all my dignity and good habits in life. I have lost who I used to be.

“This has turned the most special day of my life into the worst memory I will never forget, and neither will my family.”

But she told KentOnline that “nothing was going to stop me” on her big day.

“She was determined that the wedding was not going to happen,” she said.

“I would have walked down the aisle in my knickers and with black paint over my face if I had to.”

Following the attack, Gemma quickly cleaned herself up as an usher dashed off to find a replacement dress – two hours later the ceremony went ahead.

Since Gemma’s wedding, her brother Ashely told The Mirror that he had disowned his sister, saying “we don’t want anything to do with her”.

“There’s more to it. But she’s been punished now, she’s suffered more than enough. We want it over and done with,” he said.

Gemma told the court that Eastwood was taking revenge over an incident that occurred at her own wedding.

She said that she had been wrongly accused of “trying to trip up” Eastwood during her wedding to Ashley in 2023, and the paint was a revenge attack.

Meanwhile, the the bill for repairs and “loss of revenue” at Oakwood House was over £5,000 with the venue forced to close in the meantime, the court heard.

Sentencing Eastwood, Judge Oliver Saxby KC said: “This was meant to be a special day for Gemma Monk and her family. Courtesy of your conduct, it turned into a nightmare.

“All this stuff about it being on the spur of the moment – yeah, right. You got it into your head that you wanted to wreck her day.

“And you did, and it was horrid and nasty and mean.”

Gemma and Ken, 39, live with their son Tyler, 18, and daughter Naomi, 11, in Herne Bay, Kent, saved up for years to pay for their big day.

The wedding ordeal came as Gemma also suffered a cancer scare, during which she lost weight, going down to a size four.

Gemma, who has since been given the all-clear, said her sister-in-law knew about the medical issue at the time but “still decided to ruin the most important day of my life and put me at risk.”

The couple also called off plans to go on their dream honeymoon to the Maldives because she “wasn’t up to it.”