Sunday, April 19, 2009

Ultimate Wedding: Duties of the Bridesmaids, Best Man, Maid of Honor

Chief Duties of the Maid or Matron of Honor
1. Continues to act as the bride's best friend to the extent of listening to confidences and helping with tasks even when driven to distraction by the repetition of petty worries and details.
2. Attends all wedding-related functions and becomes spontaneously moved to gather bridesmaids and other intimates of the bride for a shower.
3. Fusses over the bride on the day of the wedding, helping her dress, telling her that her doubts about the bridegroom are only traditional bridal jitters, taking charge of the bride's bouquet during the ceremony, gracefully straightening her train, and producing the bridegroom's ring at the appropriate moment.

Chief Duties of the Best Man
1. Delivers the bridegroom to the ceremony at the proper time, correctly dressed, and in a suitable frame of mind—which is induced by (a.) sending him home early the night before and (b.) reminding him that he adores the bride and is not making a mistake.
2. Supervises the ushers, checking out their clothing, encouraging them to ask the bridesmaids, and especially the junior bridesmaids, to dance, and vetoing any ideas for jokes that would shock guests or disable the going-away vehicle.
3. Offers a flattering toast to the bride, omitting any details about the courtship or the bridegroom's character that the bride's grandparents might not want to know.
4. Produces the bride's ring during the ceremony, either from his pocket or by nudging the ring-bearer, and the tickets for the wedding trip at the conclusion of the reception.

Chief Duties of the Bridesmaids
1. Be good sports about the bride's taste in their dresses, jollying her into a compromise that they can both stomach and afford, and then putting up with the results.
2. Keep smiling charmingly, not only while marching up the aisle together, but while marching back down it on the arms of ushers they may not fancy, while standing in the receiving line, and while going around the reception accepting silly compliments.
Chief Duties of the Ushers
1. Keep their right arms bent before the ceremony to seat the lady wedding guests, while the gentlemen follow behind; and again at the ceremony's conclusion, to escort the bridesmaids down the aisle. 2. Be good sports about restraining their sense of fun on the grounds that the occasion may seem a complete joke to them, but apparently has a serious element for their friend the bridegroom.

Bridesmaid Abuse
"Would you be so kind as to abolish the institution of bridesmaid?"
Miss Ultimate Wedding was startled at the request, but only for a moment. It was no accident that it came from a meticulously polite young lady who also happens to have lots of friends and looks wonderful in pastel dresses, even ones with bows on the backside.
Bridesmaid abuse has become rampant, and it isn't the groomsmen who are inflicting it. At least such is not the thrust of the complaints addressed to Miss Ultimate Wedding. The outrages she hears about result either from tyranny on the part of the bride, or from the observance of an unwieldy accumulation of unauthorized but persistent customs that have made what ought to be a pleasurable duty of friendship into a social and financial burden.

Before absolutely abolishing the post of bridesmaid, Miss Ultimate Wedding will attempt to return some perspective to it and to restore humane working conditions. If this doesn't work, she will find herself in support of those who resolve to decline politely any such honors that may be proposed to them.

The original point of having bridesmaids was that the bride would wish, at this momentous occasion in her life, to be surrounded by her closest friends. That a group of young ladies might add a decorative element to the ceremony, and that they might want to fuss over the bride a bit because their fondness for her filled them with vicarious happiness, were merely delightful but incidental advantages.
These two factors have now come to overwhelm the intention of the institution. Things have come to the point where bridesmaids' appearance is as strictly mandated and inspected as if they were in boot camp and their kindnesses are no more optional than if they had been conscripted.

The attributes of prettiness and willingness to perform extra services may be considered so important by the bride that the mere fact that someone has been her lifelong friend may no longer be enough to qualify her for brides-maidhood. Miss Ultimate Wedding is always hearing of cases where the bride wants to eliminate from her entourage a friend who doesn't have the right look, or doesn't make herself available for chores, in favor of a comparative stranger who looks the part or is willing to enter service.

Thus the institution of bridesmaidhood may abolish itself without Miss Ultimate Wedding's intervention. The time cannot be far away when some entrepreneur puts forth the advantages of hiring professionals for the occasion, rather than having to depend on mere friends.

The fact is that the only real duty of a bridesmaid is to hang around the altar during the ceremony, paying attention and looking pleased or moved (both, if she can manage it without getting so carried away that she stands on the bride's train). Being chief bridesmaid, known as maid or matron of honor, does carry light duties in addition to witnessing the ceremony—holding the bride's bouquet as she receives her wedding ring, producing the bridegroom's wedding ring when it is needed, and keeping an eye out in case the bridal finery needs straightening or the bride's new mother-in-law has left lipstick on her cheek.

That's it. Contrary to rumor, bridesmaids are not obliged to entertain in honor of the bride, nor to wear clothes that they cannot afford and that make them look stupid. Because bridesmaids are supposed to be such good friends of the bride, they often do get together to give a shower or a luncheon in her honor. It is charming, and even usual, for them to be so moved, but it is not obligatory. From the same wish to please their friend, the bridesmaids should listen tolerantly to her ideas of what dresses might be pretty on them for the occasion. Personally, Miss Ultimate Wedding prefers to see bridesmaids dressed similarly rather than identically, but the specifics of either should be arrived at by a consensus among those most concerned.
What a bride needs in order to ensure their cooperation with her plans is exactly what ought to form her basis for asking these ladies to honor her with their presence: affection. If she spent her energies cultivating that, rather than issuing orders, she would be more successful, not to mention more bridal.

The "Best Person"
Q. I am to be involved in a wedding in which two of my dearest friends will marry each other. In lieu of a best man, the groom has asked me, a female, to act as "best person." This is an honor and I am touched as well as proud of my friend's openmindedness.

It has come to my attention that some of the other women in the bridal party are apprehensive in regard to my role in the wedding, a formal church ceremony. I wish to be sensitive to the feelings of those who may be uncomfortable with this break with tradition, as well as being correct in my behavior.

A. It troubles Miss Ultimate Wedding to think what those bridesmaids might be apprehensive about. Do they imagine that one of them will have to dance with you at the reception? Do they think of the recessional as a parade of pseudo-romantic couples?
All this would be silly. Traditionally, the bridegroom is attended by his best friend, friendship being the chief factor, not gender. Of course you will dress as a lady and dance with gendemen. You will not offer any lady your arm, but merely march at the maid of honor's side as paired bridesmaids do in a processional. But if the bride's honor attendant is a gentleman, he may offer you his arm.

Mother as Matron of Honor
Q. I have asked my mother to be my matron of honor. I have no close female friends and my mother and I have a close relationship. Despite these facts, she fears that it would be incorrect. She promised to abide by your advice.
A. Miss Ultimate Wedding wishes her great happiness in the role. How odd it is that there has long been the custom of bridegrooms selecting their fathers for the best-friend role of "best man," but not for brides' selecting their mothers.

Sister
Q. I am considering getting married again. The time before, my sister was my matron of honor. I would dearly love her to fill that role again, but in discussing it, we thought that this might be frowned on or socially unacceptable.

A. What, pray, is your reasoning? That when changing husbands, it looks backward to retain the same sister?

Pregnant Bridesmaid
Q. My granddaughter is being married and among her bridesmaids will be a lady who will be nine months pregnant, walking along with the other bridesmaids. My opinion is that she would be out of place among them. Would it be in good taste? I am eighty-three years old, and my children believe I'm old-fashioned.

A. Indeed, pregnancy was once considered to be in poor taste and signs of it best concealed. This was a tremendous inconvenience to ladies who got pregnant anyway and is a fashion that Miss Ultimate Wedding is delighted to see gone.
Presuming there is no question of physical difficulty for the lady in question, she should properly take her place as a bridesmaid by virtue of being one of the bride's friends. Her own family situation is irrelevant to the occasion.

Widow
Q. I am a widow and my friend has asked me to be her honor attendant in her wedding. Would I be called the matron or maid of honor?

A. Miss Ultimate Wedding does not want to be the one to break the news to you that maidenhood is not renewable. So she will confine herself to saying that a widow would have to be a matron of honor.

Ring Bearers and Flower Girls
Q. My fiance and I are trying to finalize the members of the wedding party. Should the ring bearer and the flower girl be a certain age, or is it up to each couple to decide?

A. The ring bearer and the flower girl are supposed to be of an age to make everyone smile and nudge one another and say "Awwwww, looooooook" during the processional. A mere "Don't they look cute?" with no extra letters in the pronunciation means that the young people are old enough to be a junior bridesmaid and usher. What age produces the desired effect is something that the bridal couple may decide.
Whatever their ages, Miss Ultimate Wedding urges you to fuss a bit over the younger members of your bridal party. Children in weddings usually treat their roles with great seriousness and share the bridal couple's sense of the importance of the occasion. They also frequently retain vivid memories of such events, which they trot out a decade or two later when they want "a wedding just like Cousin Adelaide's."

A Mother's Wedding
Q. My twenty-eight-year-old daughter will be marrying for the second time and she would like her seven-year-old daughter to be a flower girl. But she feels that her eight-year-old son is a little old to be a ring bearer, and would like him to come in from the side, as is the custom in our church, with the groom and groomsmen, and stand next to the best man at the altar. Do you agree that he is too old to be a ring bearer, and if so, is this a viable alternative? In either case, what would be the proper attire? Neither of us cares for tuxes on little boys, but we feel he is too big for short pants.

A. Miss Ultimate Wedding finds herself amused at how you managed, with one question, to arouse both what is rigid about etiquette and what is flexible. She is in the peculiar position of wanting to back you up and to lighten you up at the same time. Absolutely, miniature versions of gentleman's evening clothes should not be worn by boys under the age of eighteen. Miss Ultimate Wedding is even more firm about that than you are. But she would never, never try to explain to a child that the one-year age difference between him and his sister means that she will have a role in the wedding party and he will not. No rule of etiquette draws such a fine line, which is likely to arouse such hurt feelings. It is to deal with precisely this kind of problem that the positions of junior groomsman and junior bridesmaid were created.
However, in this case, Miss Ultimate Wedding would prefer to have both children standing at the altar witnessing the ceremony at close hand, since it affects them so directly. She is not, frankly, enamored of the idea of having one's children as bridal attendants. But given the choice, she would choose an inclusive arrangement over an exclusive one any time.

Bridesmaid's Tattoo
Q. I am to be a bridesmaid and the bride let us pick out our own dresses, as long as they were velvet and not strapless. Wheee, I found this elegant off-the-shoulder dress.

I have a tattoo on my right shoulder that shows. I don't know if I should cover it with special makeup (the bride's sister thinks I should) or leave it alone. The tattoo is now a part of me and they should accept me the way I am. I am a middle-class woman, well groomed, clean, not the biker type.

The bride really doesn't care if I cover it or not, but I feel as if she's not telling me her real feelings about the matter from not wanting to hurt my feelings. She's a really good friend. I feel if everyone at this wedding is so offended by my tattoo and not more interested in the wedding day, then they have a problem.

A.Okay, what's the tattoo look like?
Never mind. Unless it is positively nauseating or obscene, Miss Ultimate Wedding is going to surprise you by defending it. Wheee! (as you would say).

It is silly enough that bridesmaids are required to wear the same dress, without their subjecting their bodies or hair to criticism. The notion that the bride can make them restyle their hair or change their weight in the hopes of standardizing them into a matching set is as insulting as it is silly. This bride has done nothing of the kind. She has been fauldessly polite—and yet you are goading her to tell you her true feelings. Miss Ultimate Wedding feels that if you are not more interested in your friend's wedding than in her opinion of your tattoo, it is you who have a problem.

Never, Ever Black
Q. Our sister is having an evening July wedding at which the five girls in our family, all over the age of twenty-eight, will be attendants. We are all on a limited budget and would like to purchase a dress we could wear again. We have suggested black, but the groom's mother feels black is inappropriate. I have read that it is acceptable for bridesmaids to wear black in an evening wedding.

A. Not here, you didn't. Miss Ultimate Wedding has never understood, much less espoused, the Oh-Well-Who-Really-Cares? School of Etiquette.
That is not to say that customs do not sometimes change and that etiquette should not embrace changes that are for the good. But that a keeper of manners should succumb to thoughtless change, just because it is tiring to try to point out the difference between good change and bad, strikes her as outrageous. Black is the traditional color of mourning, and confusing the symbolism of marriage and death is a particularly unfortunate idea. While formal mourning has gone out of practice (a change with both good and bad aspects, but we'll leave that argument for another time), the symbolism remains for many people, including, in this case, the bridegroom's very own mother. To these people, the wedding would not look chic but sad.

Negotiating
Q. Although I was honored when I was asked to be a bridesmaid, I am having second thoughts. We had already been fitted for gowns and I had paid for a fitting. Now the couple wants to suit the entire bridal party in tuxedos! I won't wear a tuxedo. I think it's silly. My fiance is to be best man and I don't wish to look like his brother. Should I decline and hurt my friend's feelings? What should I say?

A. My, what fun everyone will have trying to tell the sheep from the goats. And won't the bride look adorable? Friendship may require fulfilling a lot of difficult but legitimate demands, but making a fool of oneself in public is not one of them.
Miss Ultimate Wedding doesn't usually recommend that bridal attendants organize job actions and set non-negotiable working conditions, but desperate measures are called for. She suggests that you, as a friend of the bride, and your fiance, as the bridegroom's best friend, have a serious talk with these people. If they do not listen to reason, bring in the other bridesmaids. Miss Ultimate Wedding is confident that they will be willing to help bring these people to their senses—if not for reasons of taste, perhaps because they have already made an investment in other clothes.

"Take this job and..."
Q. A friend I used to work with asked me to be in her wedding party a year later. Reluctantly, I gave in and said okay.

All this time, there has been no talk of wedding plans or any kind of get-together among the attendants, who don't know one another. This friend and I are not as chummy as we were five years ago; in fact, I spoke to her only a handful of times since she called me. I've had two very, very last-minute invitations to her apartment for some kind of parties. (I thought it was inconsiderate of her to call me at 7:30 and expect me and my date to be over at her place by 8, so I never promised I'd be there and went about what I had planned in the first place.)

When I call her I get:
1. The answering machine, and my message is never returned.
2. "I've got company" or "Can I talk to you later?" and she never calls back.
3. The Call Waiting modality where she puts our conversation on hold, and when we are disconnected, she never even calls back to say "sorry" or "good-bye."
I'm totally baffled by her actions and the whole situation. At this point, I can't continue to plan around some wedding I'm supposed to be in, while screwing up my life, my vacation plans and possibly my own wedding. My mom is on my case to call the bride-to-be and find out the details of the wedding. I say no—let her call me to say what's going on. After all, she asked me to be in her wedding.
What is the proper way to get some information without putting her on the spot? I'm beginning to believe she forgot she asked me to be in her wedding, or she changed her mind and thought she told me but really didn't. I'd like to tell her I've changed my mind, or something suddenly came up. Is it right for me to do that?

A. Miss Ultimate Wedding joins your mother to the extent of insisting that you get this cleared up before you make other plans, and of believing that you must take the initiative, as the bride has lamentably failed to do so.

You make a convincing case that the friendship is no longer one in which it would be appropriate for you to be her bridesmaid. If the wedding were imminent, you would have to go ahead with it to avoid disrupting her plans. A year-old invitation to a far-distant wedding, without the reinforcement of continued discussion, is not that binding.

Just avoid blaming her or offering trivial excuses. To say that you find you are going to be married at about the same time is a legitimate excuse, if true, but to seem to value a vacation above something as important as a wedding is offensive. Write her a letter saying how honored you were to have been chosen, how sorry you are that you find you cannot be in her wedding after all, and how much happiness you wish her.

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