I have been to several weddings in the past few years where friends have taken on alternative roles. If you are a friend-of-the-bride who isn’t comfortable putting on a frilly dress, or can’t commit financially to being a full bridesmaid, here are a few ideas for playing a role in the wedding. Brides, take note!:

 1. Pastor, Priest, Rabbi…or Gay Best Friend?

For the non-religious, having a friend actually marry you is a great personal touch. I’ve been to two weddings in the past few years where a dear friend got their license online to marry their friends. So much fun to watch! I’ve seen this work out particulary well when the bride’s best friend is male, ad doesn’t really fit anywhere else in the wedding party. If you want the traditional church wedding, ask a friend to select a poem or prayer to read during the service.

 2. A Different Type of Flower Girl

Ask your artsy friends to take on a creative role in the weddings. I’ve seen friends do the flower arrangements,  photograph weddings, or decorate the tables.

3. First Dance with Flair

Have a musician friend? While you might want to stick to a DJ or band for the majority of the wedding, having a friend perform the first dance song can be fun! Or, have them perform while people are arriving for the wedding.

4. Guest Book Guru

I just attended a wedding where each guest was asked to pose for a polaroid photo on the way in. One of the brides friends took the role of “Guest Book MC”, snapping photos and directing everyone to sign the photo album before entering the ceremony.

5. Betty Crocker, Better than a Bridesmaid

While you might not be ready to give up complete catering control to your culinary-skilled friend, ask them to make the cake or some type of candy for favors. If you are nervous about the quality of their cookin’, have a test run at the shower or bachelorette party.

Wedding AB, went off with out a hitch due to all of the planning, money and long hours and it was everything the bride and groom hoped for. I couldn’t be happier for them, even though I bitched and moaned for months on here. I feel sweet relief that it is done and that I can have my life back, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have more posts from this one

I don’t have a local tailor and the bridal shop refused to do alterations on the dress (some policy they have).  I did some research, made some calls and found someone. (Believe it or not, no one I knew was able to recommend an alternations person in the area. ) I found someone who seemed to check out. I went in got pinned up and was in high spirits having just lost a couple of pounds. While she was pinning me up and trying to convince me that she wasn’t doing it too tight, she tells me not to gain any weight. Classic. Then she goes on to tell me her bizarre weight loss and maintenance stories. Now I just want to leave. I am all for chatting, but I really don’t want to get to know my tailor that well.

I leave hopeful and plan to return in three weeks. I go in nice and sweaty after a power yoga class to pick it up, so I don’t try it on in the shop. I go home and try it after I shower.  The first thing I notice is that I think the hem is not straight. Then I realize that the armpits are tight, like the dress is resting in my armpit. This is not going to work I think to myself and envision and massive sweat problem during pictures. I give her a call the next day she is open, which is 2-3 days later.  She tells me to bring it in, but that I will have to pay again because it is not one of the original fixes. I become a might pissed. The changes she made caused this new problem I say and that she should have measured properly. Note to self don’t get pissed at the tailor, they can really mess up the dress.

I go in, put on the dress and she tells me it looks fine. I say “I am not concerned with how it looks , I am concerned with how it feels.” I try to move and she tells me how I am moving is not a natural motion…um how do you know how I dance lady? I go back and forth with her for about 15 minutes before she agrees to change it. All the while I am thinking, I am the customer, if I want to have a dress not up my armpits, then remove it from my armpits. I couldn’t figure out why this was such a big deal.

Now to give you an idea of what was already done to the dress, she had to hem it, take in the skirt an inch and a half on each side, take in the top a LOT and cut the straps because the were literally three inches above my shoulder. So my reasoning was that if you cut the straps you should have measured the arm holes before. Now she was going to have to cut the armpits. I got a slight discount from her originally stated re-price, which I should have also protested but just didn’t have the energy.

I picked up my dress in a couple of days and to be perfectly honest have not even tried it on and don’t plan to until the wedding this weekend. Poor form, I know, but I just don’t want to spend another cent on that dress. But when I picked it up, I walked in to her yelling at an elderly lady about her pick up time/when she needed her stuff done. I was appalled, needless to say between what I saw that day, and experienced myself I will not be going back to her.

I’ve heard some other horror stories about tailors, what’s yours?

My Answer:  I haven’t found it yet, but we threw a good one this past weekend. It wasn’t your traditional going out on the town bachelorette, but it was a great girls weekend away. The weekend before the wedding was the perfect time to get the bride away and calm her down. Although a great deal of talk was based around th wedding, I played some interference in directing the conversation to other topics so as not to stress her out. Sometimes nothing beats an evening walk on the beach to calm the nerves. While she has a lot of personal, family and wedding drama going on right now, we were still able to have a good time and I truly think it helped her.

What are some good ones you have been to?

In the last month since I wrote so much has happened by the way of drama, poor decisions, wacky timing and general dysfunction, that I am not sure I will ever have time to write about all of it. Here is a brief list of some things that have happened.  The shower went off well and everyone loved it. Bonus! But then from there it has all been downhill. One break down after another, the bride, her mother, the spoiled sister, and of course the mother in law to be. It has been a circus. The spoiled sister stabbing the bride in the back leading to a very pleasant couple of weeks for the brides main support system, aka, me. While the bridge was caught up in things that really in the end don’t matter, some “real” stuff started happening. Her grandfather got sick, and she herself had a health scare. But still, even with these warnings in perspective, she can’t seem to see the bigger picture and release the small details that don’t matter.  Her type A personality took over as she tried to control things that she couldn’t. PS I am also Type A, but to a point.  Her type A is debilitating to the fact of not being able to move on after tasks are done because of second guessing and over analyzing. Prime example, name cards. While one person was able to tie 60 bows for the name cards, she was only able to write 10 table place cards. This does not make for very productive gatherings.

Another bone in my side has been the general lack of help from the other bridesmaids. To be fair, one was from a distance and two moved away during the past year, but that still leaves two other girls (one of whom is also getting married), myself and the bride. I knew I wasn’t going to get any help, but damn a girl can dream. So in case any of that wasn’t clear, the wedding party broke down like this, 3 girls more than 3000 miles away, one girl planning her own wedding, a spoiled sister and me.

Needless to say, the over dramatization of certain events and items have brought me to the brink. I am a patient person, a yoga teacher who dabbles in Buddhism, and has a general compassion for people with a lack of perspective, but this wedding has brought me so close to the edge of blowing up. It also brought me to a whole new place of apathy about the wedding industry (and I didn’t like it before). The desire and the need to be perfect and have the perfect things to make you whole is a lie that can start a marriage off in debt. Not a great place to be. So many weddings and couples fall victim to this kind of mentality and I can see it spiraling out of control. Honestly people, that new blender does not fill any holes you might find in yourself. And I am pretty sure you can do with 2 full dish sets and don’t need four. And gasp, maybe even keep an item until it is old before getting a new one.  Priorities people, priorities!

And for the last rant of the day, if you make a decision, (bride, groom, bridesmaids or MOH’s)  take responsibility for the outcome. If you made a decision that leads to a negative outcome don’t wallow in woe is me,why is the world so cruel, take responsibility for your role in the decision and its outcome. Each decision has an action and reaction. They are not mutually exclusive, don’t pretend like they are to get sympathy. Basically what I am saying is don’t let things go to your head and cloud your judgement, last time I checked you are an adult and responsible for yourself and your decisions.  Remember that most of the time, you made the bed you have to lie in.

I was on vacation for two weeks and while I was away it seems that the issues and tensions were mounting the whole time. Nothing got resolved and since the bride is not as close to the other bridesmaids, she did not seek counsel from anyone else, leaving a nice platter of  ”I’m having a breakdown” on my doorstep upon return. While I love to help and counsel and ask the right questions that help people find their own answers, most of the time my perspective is so far from the person that if I give straight advice it doesn’t help.

As it turns out, most of the issues that were mounting during my vacation had to do with the mother in law. I sort of had an idea that it would only be a matter of time considering some of her early demands. ( The best part is that she actually likes the bride. I would hate to think what would be going on if she didn’t. ) It turns out that the mother in law doesn’t have enough hobbies because she has made one out of pissing off the bride and groom. She has created drama out of situations that didn’t have any. I swear she must be bored.  It has become particularly bad because the groom can’t stand up to his mother and doesn’t want the bride to either.

The run down is this, she has been making demands of the bride and groom that are unreasonable at this stage in the game (aka the wedding is only 6 weeks away). Asking for more people to be invited (that the bride and groom have never met), complaining that people don’t have guests, throwing an alternate shower because three people who she wanted invited to the shower didn’t make the cut and buying inappropriate gifts for the shower. While I think that a lot of this is normal, it has put the bride over the edge with everything else that is going on in her life.

I went to a fitting with the bride and at dinner afterwards we rehashed all of the above in detail and made sure that I hadn’t missed anything while I was on vacation. What it came down to in my opinion was that this wasn’t the fight. Mother and daughter in-laws will fight. It is a fact of life. At some point in your marriage it will happen.  But I think you can choose your battle and for me I thought this wasn’t it. You have a fight about her telling you how to raise your kids or letting your kids do something that you don’t want them to. Those are the fights, not this. If the couple had put their foot down early and not let her walk on them, then the story would be different, but they didn’t. They wanted to please her which was a big mistake. She has taken that and run with it, and even verbally abused the groom, and acted like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum when she didn’t get her way. While I think her behavior has been outrageous, I also think they enabled her, and that at this point in the process they need to do what they can to get through it without messing up the wedding day. The mother in law even had the audacity to tell the couple that the day was not about them.

I gave my bride this advice ” this is not the fight and every time she is pissing you off or anyone else in the wedding for that matter, focus on what makes you most happy in her relationship, focus on what makes you most happy about your groom.” I think at this point that is the only way she is going to get through it with her sensitive nature and people pleasing streak. Sometimes you just have to show the bride the bigger picture because they can’t see past the in the moment details.

So I’ve decided to share my recent positive (you read that right) dress shopping experience, and some observations for brides and bridesmaids that I made in the process.

I spent this past weekend in NYC with my bride and her younger sister. After a 6:15 wake up to make the two hour bus trip to meet them, we faced the daunting  task of visiting five dress shops…and more importantly, keeping a smile on my face. Note to brides: My bride started the day with coffee and a muffin for us - a full belly and lots of caffeination helped with the smiling. More on feeding of bridesmaids later.

First observation: In a city like NYC, there are a wide range of dress stores. Be ready for all of these experiences. The first stop was a department store, just to check it out – no luck here, but it gave us a chance to look at styles of dresses and get a sense of what the bride liked and didn’t like without a salesperson lingering or a million other bridesmaids fighting to look at the same dresses. (Sidenote: I should say that in preparation for this outing, the bride and I spent a lot of time online analyzing styles and fabrics…this also helped me to help her).

The second stop we, well, for lack of a better term, crashed. We didn’t have an appointment and were placed on a waiting list, but this store had been my brides  first choice in dresses. It was a your traditional dress shop, where you are assigned a consultant and have to parade around for all to see and evaluate. At first we got some attitude for showing up uninvited, but they finally let us at least scan the dresses. Good thing we did – in person, the dresses looked nothing like online and my bride’s first choice quickly dropped out of the running. Glad I didn’t make a second trip up to NYC just for that store!!!

(Break for more food here)

Our next store was quite the experience. Complete chaos, about 10 brides and their bridesmaids in a tiny 9th floor space. Huge dress selection, but almost no place to try them on. After sharing a fitting room with the sister, and trying on approximately 50 dresses, we found one that we thought could be “the one”, simply because it fit us both and didn’t looke THAT bad. However, I knew from the look on my brides face that this decision was more frustration than actually liking the dress.

So, feeling somewhat successful, and with an hour until our next appointment, our bride did what any good friend does: Fed us drinks….we made it an opportunity to test out different drink possibilities for the welcome drinks for the wedding reception. Multitasking and having some fun in the process!

Our next stop was pretty uneventful…I realized that my bride was starting to look a little down…and decided it was time for a bridsemaid peptalk…”We WILL find something, I promise! And your wedding will be wonderful!”…and eventually, we found another dress that replaced the first as “The one”….I was happy because it wasn’t hideous, the bride seemed happy…

But, something still didn’t seem 100%…so we hopped in a cab to our last stop, which, from the website, did not seem at all what the bride wanted. But we went, just in case. It was one of those places where they have about 50 dress styles, but all available in the same colors and fabrics. The sister of the bride and I each grabbed a style that we liked best, and, as if planned, walked out of the dressing rooms at the same time, looked at each other, looked at the bride and said, THIS IS IT!!!! VICTORY!!!!

One thing that we realized in the last step of this process is that we also had to keep the style and color of the brides dress in mind…not so they “matched” but so they had the same general style to them (ie, a super-modern one shoulder hot pink dress might not necessarily work with the traditional lace gown and veil)

So, with the dress selected we were off to….more drinks and snacks!! A real celebration!

The moral of the story is that although rare, dress shopping can be relatively painless. When I looked at some of the other bride/bridesmaid groups, they didn’t seem to be having nearly as much fun as us. We made it a girls day, laughed and took goofy pictures of the horrible dresses, and had plenty of food, drinks and downtime in between stops.

The reason I brought all of this is up is because of the sheer amount of work that bridesmaids do these days. From planning the shower and bachelorette, to the general heavy lifting of support and protection of the bride. I say protection because sometimes it is necessary for the B-maids to be a force field around the bride as protection from her family, both hers and her family to be. It is truly amazing the power struggles that go on. Each family jockeying for position and prestige, and the “glory.” Egos run rampant and the poor bride and groom in some cases get trampled. Case in point, wedding A-B.

Family, is not the only area where power struggles run rampant, between the B-maids, it is also very common. Especially between the MOH and the #1 or#2 B-maid.  This can be for a number of reasons. I’ll list a few here,

1- B-Maid thinks she should have been MOH. (More common than I care to think about)

2- MOH is not doing anything (aka MOH is not a do-er, not organized)

3- B-maid and or MOH has a serious control problem (this manifests in many ways, including but not limited to, itemized emails, to the whole bridal party to make sure they feel important and like they are doing something; ignoring emails and then writing emails regarding the same things, like it is the first time they have come up, again to make themselves feel in control; and any other number of I am important manifestations).

4- Everyone wants to be in charge, and email chains get out of control with everyone trying to have control.

Pretty much the only way to deal with these issues is for everyone to check their ego at the door. This is obviously very hard, but it is one of the only ways that many different personalities can come together to pull off a successful event.  The drama and in-fighting can take over if everyone forgets that it is not about them, but about the bride. I tell everyone that their mantra should be, it’s about the bride/couple, for the duration of their involvement in the wedding. Sometimes this helps, sometimes it doesn’t.  If all else fails it is sometimes necessary to bypass certain members of the wedding party in order to get things done. It is not preferable to anyone to cut others out, but sometimes it just has to be done, (see wedding A-A recap).

My advice here is, that if you are a control person and you can tamp it down a bit, do it because there is always going to be someone who can’t control their control issue and bring it down a notch for the sake of the group. Relinquishing a small amount of control can do a world of good in the bridal party situation.

Of course, every situation is different….so, as is always our disclaimer on this blog, the following is not based on any sort of “proper etiquette” (I believe that 90% of etiquette depends on the situation anyway), but just my feelings…

You should back out of being a bridesmaid if…

-          You hate the groom – and you are pretty sure the bride knows it

-          You like the groom….a little too much maybe?

-          You are technically on the “grooms side”, and don’t feel that close to the bride or the group of bridesmaids (and feel downright uncomfortable being included in her group)

-          You move a thousand miles away

-          You get laid off, fired, or have a drastic change in life circumstances

-          The location of the wedding changes

-          Your best friend decides to get married the same day/weekend (It may seem rude at first to have a “hierarchy of friends”, but obviously your sister or life-long BFF trumps your office mate or the bride who just needed an 8^th bridesmaid because her groom has 8 brothers)

-          You get pregnant and the wedding will be during your 9^th month!

-          Your friendship with the bride changes dramatically due to a fight or some other issue that can’t be worked through

Ultimately, backing out if you need to can actually be a gift to the bride, who should be surrounded by friends who are able to be supportive and can help her throughout the wedding process.

I’d love to hear you weigh in – when is it okay or not okay? Have you ever said no, or changed your mind?