Woman who threw black paint over bride moments before she was due to walk down aisle finally breaks silence

A bride’s long-awaited wedding day descended into chaos when her sister-in-law threw black paint over her just moments before she was due to walk down the aisle.

Gemma Monk, 35, had waited almost 20 years to marry childhood sweetheart Ken when Antonia Eastwood, 49, attacked her outside Oakwood House register office in Maidstone, Kent, in May 2024.

The black paint ruined Gemma’s £1,800 dress and also hit two of her eldest bridesmaids, but the mother-of-two managed to clean up, change into a borrowed dress and marry Ken two hours later.

Antonia Eastwood speaks out

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Antonia, known as Toni, said: “I feel ashamed of myself,” adding: “It’s not me. I’ve never been in trouble with the police before. Ever.

“I had a full-blown panic attack on the day I was sentenced. I was petrified I’d go to prison. It has all taken its toll.”

Despite that, Toni said she did not know why she did it, calling it a “spur of the moment thing”.

She claimed the paint was in the car because her daughter Hollie had recently given birth and she had been using it for her new granddaughter’s handprints and footprints.

“My daughter Hollie had just given birth to our first grandchild and I’d been using some black paint to do our new granddaughter’s handprints and footprints,” she said.

“It was child-friendly, watered-down black paint in a tub of around 200ml and it happened to be in the side pocket of the car.

“I saw her [Gemma] get out of her car – she was a few yards away. Then I just shouted to her and threw the paint. It hit the back of her dress.”

A bitter family feud

Toni and her husband Ashley, one of Gemma’s four brothers, had not been invited to the wedding but turned up anyway.

Toni said she wanted to give Gemma “a piece of my mind” and claimed Gemma had tried to sabotage her own wedding the previous year by trying to trip her as she walked down the aisle.

Gemma dismissed the claim as “delusional” and said: “I’m about 5ft tall. My legs aren’t long enough to trip her even if I wanted to,”

“I told them they were ridiculous for accusing me. I’ve since looked back at their wedding video and it shows Toni walking past me without any incident at all.”

Gemma admitted there was “bad blood” between them, saying: “I didn’t warm to her all that much,” and adding, “The first time I met Toni she was telling me how she left her husband and children to be with Ashley, who in turn had left his wife and children too. It was like she was splitting up two families.”

Court ruling and fallout

At Maidstone Crown Court, Toni received a ten-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, after pleading guilty to two offences of criminal damage.

She was also ordered to carry out 160 hours of unpaid work, handed a ten-year restraining order and told to pay £5,000 in compensation, with £4,000 going to Gemma and £1,000 to Oakwood House.

Judge Oliver Saxby KC rejected the idea that the attack was impulsive and said Toni had set out to “wreck” Gemma’s day, calling it “horrid and nasty and mean”.

Gemma said: “We’d waited so long for that day. Nothing was going to stop me,”

“I didn’t think twice. I would have walked down the aisle in my knickers and with black paint over my face if I had to.”

Ash said Toni now regrets the attack, adding: “She regrets what she did and wishes she could turn back time,”

He also said: “It was a family feud and that’s how it should have stayed.”

Featured image credit: Andersen Ross/Getty Images