Too many bridesmaids are having issues with brides nowadays, especially in days nearing the wedding day. The situation is vice versa. Too many brides are having problems with bridesmaids lately, with meddling mothers-in-law, fiances who do not want to take part of the wedding planning, flakey sisters who says they'd help but always unable to do so.
Oh, the wedding planning problems extend beyond people problems. It goes towards staying within the budget, working with vendors who have problems understanding the bride (although some brides are having problems explaining what they want and sometimes, they don't even know what they want!). It goes towards choosing which locations she'd like and making quick decisions in case someone else snaps it before her. It goes towards choosing the right attendants, bands, music, flower girls, wedding favors, wedding colors and 1001 other things. By the time she gets to have to choose honeymoon locations, she just wants to just go some deserted beach and stay in a cottage for a week with her new husband.
But it is her day! Over the years she had been a bridesmaids for at least 5 times and a Maid of Honor 2 times. She had arranged 6 bridal showers, 5 bachelorette parties and went to countless wedding rehearsals. She had chosen and bought countless bridal shower gifts, paid for travel tickets and accomodations for her friends' weddings in Atlanta, Florida, NYC and Boston, bought silverware and crystal bowls from her friends' registries. She has spent numerous hours accompanying the brides to bridal salons, pouring energies into choosing the right flower arrangements and even baked a wedding cake for her friend once. So expert she is in this wedding tasks, she has become an unpaid wedding planner among her friends.
She had taken numerous days off work to accommodate Friday gatherings before her friends' wedding, which means she needed to take off the whole day off because the gathering almost always means having full spa service of manicure, pedicure and the whole she-bang. She has half a closet of bridesmaid dresses and satin shoes to match, which she never wears anymore because she can never trust herself to keep the satin shoes clean, but keeps them nevertheless because they are reminiscents of her family members' and friends' happiest days, which she was a big part of.
Every year during the summer months, she finds herself spending every last cent of her salary for other's weddings. She cannot help it because she comes from a big family of 7 siblings and is popular among her several circles of friends. During the months of May until August, she receives on average 2 wedding invitations per month and because she's too kind not to attend the big day of people she loves, she becomes a regular of travel websites to surf for the best deals she can get. She begins to regret her decision to take a job in a small town in Tennessee, which means she lives far away from her friends and family, and must travel for everyone's wedding.
But enough of that, since this year is her wedding. For once, she wants everything she does to be for herself. She wants other people to be as helpful and as considerate as she had been during planning their wedding. She wants her ideas and possibilities realized; she wants to be a beautiful bride in a beautiful wedding ceremony, dancing with her handsome husband.
She would pour her total energy for planning her own big day. She would do a better job at this than she ever had, for this one is for the beginning of her married life. She would give the honor of being maid of honor to her sister, the closest best friend, because isn't being a maid of honor is, well, an honor? She would ask her closest family members and friends for help as well, and she hopes that they'd be happy to help, because hadn't she been greatly helping them during their wedding these past years?
So imagine her disappointment when her sister announces that she and her husband are trying to have a baby. Am I selfish to be disappointed, she asks herself. She truthfully wants them to wait at least a few months, so that her sister won't have to be fitted many times to accommodate the bulging belly.
Imagine how hurtful she feels when her good friend tells her that she cannot come because she's trying to save to buy a new car, but I'll send a nice gift, she said. This is her friend for whom she spent $1000 for 2 years ago to attend her wedding in the country. This is her friend for whom she arranged a nice bridal shower and spent weeks organizing for it.
Imagine her fury when her future sister-in-law, albeit not knowing the rules or just doesn't care, chooses a white gown to wear at her wedding reception.
Imagine how she feels when her fiance's mother insists that she book this band she swears is really good, although the bride-to-be knows that the reason her future-in-law makes her book the band is because she likes the band's lead singer for her daughter.
Imagine how helpless she feels when her seamstress accidentally trims her $3000 wedding gown skirt 2 inches too short.
So is it her fault that one day she blows up? She told her sister to please postpone getting pregnant at least for a few more months, since her wedding is less than 6 months away anyway. She tells her future mother-in-law that she's getting the band she wants, and that's end of story. The bride firmly informs her future sister-in-law that she is forbidden to wear white and if she wants to date the singer of a band, she's to do it outside her wedding.
She tells her ungrateful friend to not bother coming, since if she chooses a new car over an old friend, she doesn't want to become her friend anymore. She fires her seamstress and gets a new one, who tells her that the only way to save the wedding gown is to lose the puff of the skirt, so that the dress would seem longer.
She knows that a few people have labeled her as bridezilla, but she doesn't care. She has sacrificed so much and now she does not want to anymore.
Ms. Pang is the writer for www.AbsoluteWeddingStore.com.
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