My son’s lovely girlfriend is a bridesmaid in a wedding this
summer. Actually she’s more than a bridesmaid; she’s the maid of honor. Being
asked to be in someone’s wedding party is supposed to be an honor, but in
reality it’s always filled drama and mounting expenditures.
While attempting to give my son’s girlfriend counsel on the
latest bridesmaid clash, I recalled I was a bridesmaid – not once, but four
times. My freshman year at college, I was in the wedding party of Candy, a high
school friend. While still in college, I was in the weddings of Beth and Carol
Ann, two of my college friends. A couple of years out of grad school, I was in
Amanda’s wedding. Of the four marriages, only Carol Ann’s made it.
Depending how you feel about chick flicks and graphic body
functions, you either love the movie Bridesmaid’s
or you dislike it. Like everybody else, I laughed at the food poisoning
scene, but overall felt bad because of all the old rotten memories the film
dredged up for me.
Candy’s wedding, and I’ve changed all the brides names here
for libel’s sake, was a big bawdy affair held at a popular catering hall in
South Jersey. The bride’s father, now deceased, was a celebrity. He was a
professional wrestler and later an actor who appeared in David Lee Roth music
videos. When Candy was getting married, her dad was a big pro wrestling star. The
wedding of his eldest daughter, who was all of 19, was meant to be a showcase. Because
I was away at college, I missed the big pow wow at the bridal salon, and had to
wear a dress they all picked without me. I completely missed the bachelorette
party which took place during exam week, which made the bride upset. At the wedding, I had to walk down the aisle
with the jerkiest and most despicable of the groom’s men, and sit beside him at
the wedding party table while he spent the whole evening trying to stick his
hand up my dress.
For Beth’s wedding, which took place on a beach on a beach
in Cape Cod, as to not upstage the bride, we were told to wear sun dresses and flip
flops. Beth and her fiancé fought like cats and dogs; on the afternoon of the
wedding, she marched towards the altar with her tiny hands clenched in fists.
During the ceremony, one of the groom’s best friends, already inebriated, threw
up. Beth’s mother, who was against the marriage, cried noisily from the start.
Carol Ann’s wedding was an eye opener because of her
religion. Her family and the groom’s were Salvation Army. Until I met Carol
Ann, I thought the Salvation Army to be a band of bell ringers for charity; I
didn’t yet understand the organization to be a Christian denomination whose
thrust and focus is offering salvation to the poor, the destitute, and the
hungry. Their theology is mainstream Methodist, although the Army has its own
distinctive practices. Carol Ann’s wedding was proscribed going in. There was
no conversation regarding what the wedding party would wear. Someone in the
Army made our dresses; hooded, voluminous, long sleeved slate blue tunics that dropped
to the floor, tied at the waist with braided rope. And I do mean rope. It was
hemp. The dress was really hard to walk in, as there weren’t even side slits.
Another bridesmaid joked we looked like monks. There was no liquor at the
wedding which peeved me since I’d just turned 21, and no dancing either. The
Salvation Army band played songs, but they were all hymns.
Amanda’s wedding in San Francisco was a class act. The
wedding was held in The Sir Francis Drake Hotel, which is gorgeous. Because I
was working in New York City slaving away at a magazine, once again I missed
out on the dress selection and most of the fittings. Three days before the
wedding, I flew out to the coast to be immersed in a whirlwind of pre-wedding
activities, including an outing to Fisherman’s Wharf. We also had tea at The
Ritz and rode a cable car. In between manicure and hair appointments, I was
given the job of individually wrapping 250 handmade chocolate truffles to be
used as place settings, and bullying Amanda’s cleaning person into ironing
Amanda’s honeymoon wardrobe and packing it. The woman, who clearly disliked
Amanda, was loath to do it. Amanda yelled at me. “Evie,” she said. “You just
don’t know how to talk to servants.”
The piece de resistance to being in Amanda’s wedding was the
expensive, ugly bridesmaid’s dress, which was apricot silk with puffed sleeves
and a high neck. In 1982, it cost me over $500. At the reception afterwards, I
inadvertently let it slip to Amanda’s very WASP-y new sister- in-law a piece of
information of which the family was not aware. “Amanda is Jewish?” she said. “How
curious. She never said a word.” I was so freaked out by this exchange that my
stomach turned to knots. The minute the reception was over, I rushed upstairs
to my hotel room and tore off the dress, which I deposited in the trash. In the
morning I was on the first flight out. Amanda and I didn’t speak again until a
few years later when she told me she was divorcing.
Let that be a lesson to all you future bridesmaids. Being in
a wedding sounds fun. Until it isn’t.
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