If you think your in-laws have a dodgy past, spare a thought for Jim Boggis.
His new wife Marisa took over the reins of a mafia gang in Italy when she was just 22 while her dad was in jail for two murders and other crimes.
She eventually served four years behind bars in the UK for money laundering – but has gone straight since.
Now 52, she and Jim, 51, celebrated their marriage at a Georgian country house in Lancashire... and even danced a tarantella, the Italian folk jig beloved of the Mafia. Dad-of-two Jim – who runs an engineering firm – fell for Marisa when he took her son on as an apprentice, despite the subject of her past coming up.
He says: “It wasn’t a shock. Instead it was more, ‘Wow!’ It’s not often you meet someone you really get on with who’s been in the mafia.”
The TV crime show fan adds: “I find all that fascinating – a secret world like the mafia.”
The wedding bash was extra special for Marisa because she could dance with her dad Emilio DiGiovine – who has spent much of his life in jail or dodging bullets.
Emilio, who has also quit crime and is now a chef, was unable to attend her first wedding when she was 21 because he was on a hit list.
But the fact the new Mrs Boggis hails from a Milan crime family fazes neither Jim nor his family. “There has not been one negative comment about her,” he says.
Meanwhile, his relationship with his father-in-law could not be sweeter.
He says: “If he didn’t like me I would know about it! But he’s an incredible man. He is a good judge of character, which he had to be to stay alive. He can see that I love his daughter.”
Marisa says: “I get on very well with Jim’s parents and all his relatives.” After a Lancaster register office ceremony in the summer, the couple had an Italian do in the garden of a villa in Tuscany.
Emilio performed the blessing in Italian and family and friends from England were there.
Marisa’s son Frank, 21, was best man and her two grandchildren and Jim’s two children were bridesmaids and pages.
Finally, round three was the big British wedding party, where Marisa danced happily with her dad.
Marisa, now an author and criminologist, has told her amazing life story in the book Mafia Princess. Her life story is also told in Amazon Prime drama Bang Bang Baby.
Born to an English mum on her nan’s kitchen table in Milan, she came to live in Lancashire aged nine. Unable to speak English and living with her mum on benefits in a council house near Blackpool, she found life hard.
She yearned to be with her big Italian family who treated her like a princess, so she moved there when she was 18. Marisa joined the “family business” – the ’Ndrangheta crime gang, taking money abroad to pay for drugs and weapons. “I wore big Bridget Jones knickers to stuff the cash in,” she says.
She married Bruno Merico when she was 21, but her dad wasn’t there to see it. He knew his rivals were waiting to shoot him,” she says. “It could have been a bloodbath.” Marisa was eventually jailed for money laundering. “I didn’t go looking for that life. I was born into it,” she says. “It was the pull of my Italian family, it was so strong. It wasn’t about the power or the money.”
After spending a total of 22 years behind bars, her dad, now 72, has also gone straight.
She says: “He started collaborating with justice a few years back and he is a qualified chef now.” He also speaks good English. Marisa says: “He was on the run in America in the 1980s so he knows the language well.”
And he was as proud as punch as he watched his daughter marry for a second time – this time with no fear of gunmen waiting in the wings.
