Bad Bridesmaid Page 11

  None of the bridesmaids wanted to be the first in the chamber, but The Bride refused to lead the charge. If anyone was going to be blinded, burned, or drowned in beet juice, it was not going to be her. Eventually, she ordered her younger sister to take the plunge. Youth before beauty, they say. After what felt like hours, the teenager emerged and the women inspected her for signs of streaks or posttraumatic stress. She appeared to be uniformly tanned and relatively unscathed, so bridesmaid number two took her turn.

  Nina was still nervous, convinced that the machine would malfunction while she was inside, choking her slowly with a thickening mist of orange dye. She stripped down to her birthday suit, rubbed another mystery liquid on her fingernails to prevent them from staining, and took a deep breath.

  “I was terrified I was going to come out looking like some streaky orange monster,” she said.

  Inside the booth things went relatively smoothly. She remembered to turn when the red light flashed and only momentarily felt like she had been lured into a B horror flick or government-sponsored chemical experiment. Finally, with all three bridesmaids a pleasant shade of peach, The Bride at last took her turn, satisfied that nothing could go wrong.

  The next morning, Nina got in the shower early to get ready for the wedding and noticed that the water running down the drain was a deep shade of brown. She thought the city’s water supply had been contaminated until she realized that the residue from her tan was being rinsed away.

  The Bride, meanwhile, made the same discovery in a more traumatizing way. In the wedding photographs, large peach-colored stains were visible on the sides of her dress.

  Big M.A.C. Attack

  Orange is still a better color to be seeing on your wedding day than red. Giselle W.’s bridal party started to crumble along with The Bride’s nerves as the group got their hair and makeup done on the morning of the wedding. The Bride, a friend of Giselle’s from university, had “pre-approved” the two-time bridesmaid’s hairstyle, a dramatic upsweep modeled on the one worn by Julia Roberts when she won her Oscar for Erin Brockovich. But when Giselle’s hair was finished, The Bride decided it looked similar to her own and ordered her to have it redone.

  His ego clearly damaged, the hairdresser reassembled Giselle’s hair into a less fetching updo, adding to his already hefty fee of ninety-five dollars, and the wedding party headed for the mall to get their faces painted before the ceremony. To save time and the cost of having a makeup artist make a house call, each of them was booked at a different department store kiosk.

  “So I was at M.A.C., one was at Christian Dior—we were all at different places,” Giselle said. “And the bride sort of floated from one to the next, checking up on us, because she was having hers done later at the hotel.”

  The bridal party was decked out in red velvet dresses, a material usually reserved for vampire costumes or the curtains in a brothel. It was an October wedding, so the makeup artists began applying rich, earthy tones to complement the autumn theme.

  Giselle had a shadow of dark red brushed on her eyelids, and another bridesmaid, Penny, wore deep red lipstick. When the girls’ looks were complete, The Bride decided she did not approve.

  “She came over and she said, ‘Giselle, you can’t have red eyes, and, Penny, your lipstick is too dark,’ So we all went back and had our makeup redone.”

  The second time around, the wise young bridesmaids offered up their chosen lipstick and eye shadows for approval before they were applied. Penny’s new lipstick was given the green light, and she returned to her station for round two. Once her second makeover was done, The Bride suddenly appeared, rushing to the bridesmaid’s side and saying, “No, no, I changed my mind. Change it again.”

  Each of the four bridesmaids had their cosmetics reapplied three times in slightly different shades, the makeup artists losing patience and silently reappraising their fifty-dollar flat rate, and still The Bride rejected the final product. Finally, Giselle said, Penny snapped and asked what the hell was going on.

  The question was too much for the obviously frazzled bride. She screamed at her bridesmaids that it was her wedding and they would do as they were told, and they reciprocated her rage by detailing how awful their entire bridesmaid experience had been, from the boring shower to the blasé bachelorette. Soon, one of the other bridesmaids burst into tears, sending Deep Rose blush and Charcoal Rain mascara running all over her face, and The Bride sprinted off through the store. Her veil was already in place, and Giselle remembers seeing it trail behind her as she dashed into the purse section, her made-up maids in hot pursuit.

  They cornered her near the Louis Vuittons and tried to calm her down—to no avail. Like a trapped fugitive going out in a blaze of gunfire, The Bride attacked, shooting off insults and saying she no longer wanted them in her wedding.

  “This is the morning of. My hair is done, her veil is on, and we’re standing in the middle of the mall yelling at each other,” Giselle said. The Saturday shoppers stopped and stared, and the bridesmaids heard people whispering to one another, “Oh my God, they’ve been kicked out of a wedding.”

  As the cosmetics girls pointed and whispered and a bemused security guard looked on, The Bride repeated her decision that two of the four bridesmaids were no longer welcome at her wedding. The other two had bitten their tongues when their makeovers were undermined, and were spared The Bride’s wrath.

  Giselle and Penny left the mall and returned home, their precious hair and makeup still in place, wondering what the hell had just transpired.

  Months later, Giselle found a photograph taken of the bridal party in the department store as they were getting their first round of makeup applied. They had gathered together for a quick snapshot, The Bride in the middle with her veil in place, their formal hairstyles illuminated by the glowing bulbs of the department store mirrors.

  “We’re sitting at the makeup counter together all lovey-dovey,” Giselle said. “And five minutes later, drama unfolded.”

  The Big Day

  I was promised sex. Everybody said it. You’ll be a bridesmaid, you’ll get sex, you’ll be fighting em off. But not so much as a tongue in sight.

  —Lydia, Four Weddings and a Funeral

  There is exactly one photo of me from the wedding in which I was meant to be a bridesmaid. It is a beautiful scene, taken on the cobblestone terrace of an exclusive lakefront golf and country club. The table where I’m seated is surrounded by flowers, and in the background the grass rolls off into water and sunset like a lush green infinity pool.

  I had thought about pulling the photographer aside when I arrived and asking her to avoid getting me in any of the official photographs, certain that the last thing The Bride would want floating on the periphery of her wedding memories was my grumpy face. I decided that was a bit melodramatic, though, so instead I spent the evening with one eye trained on the photographer, careful not to position myself between her and The Bride, the bridesmaids, or any other important relative or guest on whom she may have been training her lens. But in the end, she got one by me.

  A couple of months after the wedding, another bridesmaid e-mailed me the happy couples online photo album, and I spent two hours at work clicking my way through it, praying that I wouldn’t be in any of the shots and wishing The Bride didn’t look so damn good in all of them. I stopped only briefly on the one of me, in which I sit hunched over, my black dress a blight against the fresh summer scene. I have since tried to expel thoughts of the photo’s content from my mind, along with all memories of regrettable hookups and the fact that I wore overalls past the age of twenty. In the picture, I look like an angel of doom, an evil apparition sent to harvest the souls of unsuspecting wedding guests as they nibbled their shrimp from paper napkins—the Grim Reaper of Romanticism. I am sitting with my boyfriend and a bridesmaid, resplendent in her green silk dress, a cigarette in one of my hands and a drink in front of me, my mouth open in what appears to be mid-slur. I’m pretty sure it was the exact moment I was offering
them money to let me go home.

  I doubt the photo made it into the real album—unless they had a bloopers page—and in the long run I am proud of the fact that ultimately I did minimal damage to my former friend’s wedding day. Let’s face it, if I had succeeded in serving my full term as bridesmaid, I’d have giggled during the vows and almost certainly made an off-color remark during the bridesmaid speech, although she’d told me from the beginning there was no way I was getting my hands on a microphone. Who knows how many bridal party poses I would have tarnished with my half-closed eyes or haphazardly shaved legs? In the end, I ruined only one photograph at her wedding. Other women, I would like to point out, have done way more damage.

  For Better or for Much, Much Worse

  Sherri L. was posing for one last photograph with the bridal party when she left an indelible mark on her friend’s wedding day. They were in the bridal room of the synagogue waiting to do the processional when the photographer declared he wanted one more premarital shot. There was a chaise longue in the corner, and he directed The Bride to recline on it with her dress and her bridesmaids arrayed at her side—a sort of Last Supper for the Single Girl. As the other women perched awkwardly on the edge of the furniture or crouched low in the foreground, Sherri was told to position herself behind the chair, crammed between it and the wall and hidden among layers of puffy white fabric.

  “I kneeled down and I don’t know what I did, but I sat on her veil,” the five-timer remembered.

  Somehow she became tangled in the long piece of gauzy material and caused it to rip our of the headpiece that attached to The Bride’s hair. The netting was too fine to repair and The Bride ended up walking down the aisle with a large hole running down the back of her veil and an even larger tear in the fabric of her mental health.

  “She was distraught,” Sherri said. “It was awful. I felt so bad.”

  There are a million tiny things that can go wrong with any wedding and in the organized chaos of bringing together a church full of tradition, tulle, personalities, and perfectionists. Every participant runs the risk of screwing up her individual role, but the bridesmaids face the additional pressure of having to move en masse on the big day, pulling off their duties in tandem like so many Russian synchronized swimmers, minus the nose plugs and testosterone-induced facial hair. And if bridesmaids think their aesthetic calisthenics during the engagement period are grueling, the day of the ceremony is like an obstacle course that they must execute perfectly or risk sullying their friend’s dream day.

  Fiona H. had missed the rehearsal for her sister’s wedding when she got stuck in traffic, and was unprepared for the elaborate Catholic service that had been organized to satisfy the wishes of the groom’s family. The sisters had not grown up religious and did not know their way around a church, so Fiona was told to simply follow her sister through each part of the service, straightening her train and taking whatever was handed to her. Everything was going alright until the couple headed up to light the unity candle halfway through the ceremony. Fiona missed her cue and stumbled, dropping the train and almost causing her sister to trip, and loudly whispered, “Shit,” as she recovered.

  “No,” said the priest. “It’s ‘Holy shit.’”

  The Bride laughed at the time, as did the first few pews of guests who had heard the exchange, but the new couple’s extended family was less than impressed when they discovered that the wedding video had recorded the obscenity for posterity.

  At Lauren B.’s wedding, one of her attendants realized immediately before the ceremony that she had forgotten to bring her bouquet. Another quick-thinking bridesmaid came to her rescue by taking a few stems from each of the young flower girls’ bouquets and fashioning them into an ad hoc bunch for the bridesmaid.

  “Well, the little flower girls didn’t appreciate it and their mothers certainly didn’t appreciate it,” Lauren said. “She was nearly shot.”

  The music had begun and the groomsmen had already taken their positions at the front of the synagogue, but when the women saw their daughters’ bouquets being pillaged, they rushed from the pews and started berating the bridesmaids, screaming at them in full earshot of the congregation for having the gall to disrupt their little girls’ finest moment.

  “They started screaming, ‘No, you may not take them,’ and Are you insane, trying to take a flower from a child?’” Lauren said. ‘So one of my bridesmaids walked without flowers.” It appears that “something borrowed” refers only to the money needed to pay for the reception.

  Holding up the processional while trying to rob a small child is only a minor inconvenience compared with the drama that can ensue if a bridesmaid gets too caught up in the moment.

  Denise T. was in a wedding where one bridesmaid was paired with the grooms best man for the walk down the aisle, and the maid felt that their little stroll was leading somewhere other than just the reception.

  “I guess everyone just gets overcome with emotion during weddings,” Denise said. “And going through the motions with this guy convinced her that they were having some sort of connection.”

  The bridesmaid in question had a boyfriend of six years whom she’d left at home, and the best man had attended the wedding with his wife—their son was the ring bearer. She was nonetheless so sure they had experienced a romantic vibe during the ceremony—a belief pickled in white wine as the evening wore on—that she cornered the best man after dinner and propositioned him.

  “He was like, ‘Listen, I have a wife, and that’s my kid,’” recounted Denise, who watched in dismay with The Bride as the scene unfolded. “She was like, ‘It’ll be fine. Come on.’”

  Shot down, dead drunk, and utterly humiliated, the bridesmaid returned to the reception and screamed nonsense at the other members of the wedding parry, including The Bride’s father. After being asked to leave the reception, she was kicked out of the hotel where it was being held for being unruly in the halls, and was eventually placed in a cab and sent packing.

  “The Bride was embarrassed because the girl had just thrown herself at her husband’s married friend,” Denise said. “She was a bit annoyed, but I think she just felt bad for her.”

  At the brunch the next day, the disgraced bridesmaid hid inside while the object of her Wedding Goggles ate breakfast with his wife and the other guests on the terrace. “She wouldn’t say anything to anyone, she was so embarrassed,” Denise said. “Then she jumped in a cab to the airport and went back home.”

  To Have and to Hold In

  Being caught up in the romance of a wedding is a bridesmaid’s occupational hazard. You are there, after all, to celebrate the fact that your friend has found the man of her dreams, when perhaps you have not. But there are more humiliating elements of a girl’s character than desperation that can be exposed during a ceremony.

  Amy O. attended a wedding where a bridesmaid’s worst fears were realized as her best assets were exposed. The dress she was wearing had been accidentally delivered a size too small, but The Bride told her there was no time to get a new one and assured her that they would make it fit—or else.

  On the day of the ceremony, the other bridesmaids squeezed her into the strapless gown, two of them holding the panels together while a third zipped it up like some fleshy piece of periwinkle blue luggage.

  “Halfway through the ceremony, the couple was in the middle of their vows and the zipper just popped,” Amy remembered. “It wasn’t boned or anything, so the dress just flopped down.”

  Luckily, the bridesmaid was wearing a strapless bra and had a very large bouquet of flowers that she immediately lifted in front of her chest. She stood there, half naked, as the couple continued their vows, unaware that they were no longer the most interesting pair at the altar. Another bridesmaid tried to lift the woman’s dress back up, but she couldn’t hold it in place with one hand without dropping her own bouquet, an act she must have decided would be too much of a disruption. Ironically, being a good bridesmaid often requires women to leave thei
r humanity at home and their hands firmly at their sides.

  “Of course it’s already a big scene because there’s a girl standing on the platform with her tits hanging out,” Amy said. “Nobody’s really listening to the bride and groom anymore. And they’re wondering why everyone’s hysterical with laughter and all the bridesmaids are bright red.”

  As the ceremony came to an end, two other bridesmaids lifted the disgraced girl’s dress up and held it in place as they marched her out of the church.

  “They safety-pinned her into the dress for the dinner because she had to make a speech,” Amy said. “She didn’t stay for the dance, though—she was too mortified.”

  Think about the celebrities you have seen on the pages of magazines in red-carpet don’ts or blunders. Their outfits are baggy or way too tight, their hair looks terrible, or they accidentally flash a shot of their crotch at the paparazzi and around the world. And these people travel with stylists, publicists, and bodyguards to ensure that nothing goes wrong during their public outings. So what chance does a bridesmaid stand of pulling it all off gracefully?

  For her friend’s nuptials, Emily R. was wearing a pair of heels that matched her champagne-colored bridesmaid dress and made her feet feel like they were slowly being gnawed from her body by tiny razor-toothed animals.

  “They really, really hurt,” said the three-time bridesmaid. “So in the middle of the ceremony, because my dress was floor-length, I took them off and stood in my bare feet.”

  The church full of flowers may have masked the odor of the bridesmaid’s sweaty tootsies, but at the end of the ceremony, Emily suddenly realized she would have to put the shoes back on before she could walk back down the aisle. She began moving her feet around under the train of her dress, desperately trying to locate the sandals, shuffling and swaying like a drunken uncle on the dance floor. As the rest of the bridal party stood calmly, trying not to react to Emily’s contortionist vibrating, she ignored the “I dos” and the “You may kiss the bride” and focused on her slingbacks.