By: Revanche

Announcing Not The Bridal Party

March 15, 2011

After much deliberation, I’ve made my decision.  We’re thinking a small ceremony, very small, followed by a big casual shindiggy foody thing where the formality doesn’t matter so that plays a role in my decision as well. 

PiC has four groomsmen, one of whom is his best man, and I will have a maid of honor. As such, I’m renaming it the Groom’s Party.

He doesn’t want to be imbalanced but I think it’s silly to not have his best friends stand up for him if he’s always known precisely who he wanted just because I’m lame and don’t have the numbers to “balance” them.

Besides, if the bride has 4 attendants and the groom has 1, everyone looks at the bride like she’s a high maintenance such and such.  If the numbers are reversed, it’s suddenly d’awww, and neat, and that’s pretty cool. Whatever.  Grooms get away with almost everything.  Just go with it.  Besides, *evil grin* it’ll be fun to have that weird visual dissonance, won’t it?

And it’s not just because I’m lame.  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking on this.  Too much time, in fact.  And will probably spend more time thinking about it. 

It’s one of those things that seems like it should be a simple choice if it’s right. And if it’s not then I should just make the simplest choice possible because the convoluted one will probably make me and everyone around me unhappy.

For some people, I think the answer is obvious.  For me, it’s just not.  I can’t easily name the two, three or four closest girlfriends and ask them to do this thing *gesticulating wildly* and stand beside me on my wedding day.  I have multiple small circles of friends with whom I’m very close for different reasons.  How do I pick? And if I redefine “closeness” as “my go-to people” which is my practical side coming out, well, those are my dudes. That could be awkward? (Or hilarious… and their girlfriends could be annoyed.)  Also, my go-to people aren’t interested in wedding planning. They’re more like go on missions to aid people/quest for food kind of people. 

So then the typical construction of a bridal party might go something like this: the female siblings on either side are obligatory, cousins may be, childhood or college classmates may be.  A bride may have run out of fingers on one hand and moved on to the next and that’s before she’d gotten to friends she was closest with at that point in life! There are all sorts of expectations and potential for hurt feelings and resentment wrapped up in the convention of picking the bridal party.

And in my experience, after all that spazzing over picking people to stand by your side and support you through a stressful process to get you to the wedding day, it may not quite feel worth it, having seen things from the back stage, as it were.

I’ve played the role of the bridesmaid nearly a dozen times now. My rule is if I’m your bridesmaid, you are my bride. And if you are my bride, I take care of you, along with fellow bridesmaids (is that genderist phrasing?). You are asking for support, probably two parties and maybe a silly-dress-wearing, during a time of great importance and transition in your life.  We are sharing an important time in our friendship and it should be joyful.  And it was awful to see other bridesmaids crap on that.

I have observed some bridesmaids choose to rant and whine behind the brides’ back when they feel inconvenienced; they choose to remain unhappy instead of being honest to resolve conflicts; they choose to be disingenuous and force the bride to try to appease them instead of dealing with whatever stressful situation is at hand. And yes, the brides know when you’re acting a fool behind their backs. They’re not idiots.

Yes, we all know of the ever-vaunted Bridezillas and I’ve backed out of bridesmaiding for Those Brides. What I don’t think people talk or know about are the bridesmaids who fail their task of just being supportive in a reasonable manner. The bridesmaids who are in it to look good in front of an audience, or for a free party and flings.  There are those ‘maids and it’s not as few and far between as the “But It Wouldn’t Happen Here” crowd might think. My brides have been basically reasonable. Stressed, but reasonable. And yet, some of their attendants still found ways and means to crap on them.

I didn’t accept the job if I couldn’t observe my rule.  I’d only ask the same.  But when’s the last time someone was willing to be honest enough to say, “I’m sorry but I don’t think I can be your bridesmaid because I think you’re asking more than I can give?”  Seriously, blunt honesty is the biggest gift you could give me during any time of stress.

While I don’t think that the people I might pick if I could pick freely would be those bridesmaids, I realize that there are other factors at play, including obligatory invites that force an unnatural dynamic and a process of picking, and not picking, that can produce unexpected results.

My conclusion then is that for a very small wedding, I don’t truly need attendants, I need one person to help me with the dress and with some preparations and emotional support, and by keeping it to one person in the actual “party”, I don’t have to juggle the rest of the politics of choice.  It’s choice avoidance, in fact.

There’s a bit of me that’s sad that I won’t have a group of friends to support me throughout but being as far away as I am, perhaps I would not have really benefited from the group dynamic as much as I would have been stressed by having to be the organizer once again.

My choice, then, is to simply ask one friend, my oldest friend that I’ve known for many many years though we’re not daily friends, to be there for me as my maid of honor.

She’s -surprise!- expecting.  I didn’t know this when I picked her so it slightly changes things in that we couldn’t agree on what was more important.

Me:  Uh, no, you and the baby are way more important!  You don’t have time for this!
Her:  Are you kidding? I need something to do that has nothing to do with the baby!  You know I’m going to travel wherever it is no matter what, so don’t even.
Me:  Ok ok ok, we’re just going to do combo everything, then. 

Our agreement is this: I am asking her, as my first choice, to help me with planning the wedding if she feels up to it, as much as she feels able and to be emotional support. If, at any point, she’s overwhelmed or fatigued, she has absolute free pass to back out, she has only to tell me.  She doesn’t have to make a speech if she doesn’t have to, she can wear anything she likes, anything she’s comfortable in. If the wedding is later in the year, she’ll have an infant a few months old so I have no idea how she’ll feel about clothes at that point.

For her part, she’ll help with anything she can, and if I ever feel like she’s either not “doing enough” (her words), or if the above traditionalist pressure causes problems and I have to unask her, she will completely understand and help from the sidelines or backstage. [For the record, no.  Not happening. But that she would consider the possibility and offer it up?  That’s a friend, right there.]

I think that’s the best compromise I could ask for.  And I think I can be at peace with this Groom’s (Groomal? Groomish?) Party.

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