Weddings - Final

A bride’s behaviour on the day of the weddings I have been in has been very varied. They seriously change. They become neurotic; hung up on shades of nail polish, “what do you think of my Santorini sunset?” precious, fixated on panty hose and look a little disturbed throughout the morning of the wedding day.


Usually I am bowled over at the performance of the bride on the day. They suddenly turn into people I don’t know very well. They are like Charlotte from Sex and the City. Sometimes I think I just don’t get it. I know it is all very important and that all the carefully planned pieces need to come together on the day like a carefully crafted jigsaw, but really who gives a fuck if there is one flower out of a whole bouquet that is orange instead of yellow. How is that going to matter? Who will even notice? Will this impair the future happiness of the marriage? Something like this actually happened prior to a wedding ceremony that again I was bridesmaid in. I had no idea what was going on (not unusual), just that there were tears.

Let me set the scene.

Bride naturally, four bridesmaids, faces made up, dressed, hair bouffon pomped, glasses of French champagne in our hands (thank bloody God), wedding ready to go. Flowers arrived; we all did the obligatory, “wow aren’t they gorgeous,” and each took our posies. Right then there was a shriek of horror I had never heard before, even spilled my Champers. The frocked up bride in waiting was quivering over a box of flowers with mascara tears commencing their flow.

“Make-up,” someone called, could have been me I don’t know. It’s something I’d do. Something was apparently wrong with the bride’s floral arrangement.

“Jesus, is that all,” I mumbled reaching for the champagne bottle and re-filling my glass very carefully. It would have been suicide at that point to spill any on my dress.

“Top up?” I asked the others.

The thing is, and this is where I’m confused, the other three bridesmaids were all peering over the flower box too, shaking their heads and patting the weepy bride on her back in commiseration. They got it. They understood. Then I remembered two of these were married women too and another planning to take that amble down the aisle themselves very shortly. Imagine if something really serious happened? I still do not know to this day, what the hell was amiss with those flowers. I felt at that point it was best to fag up and go outside with the dog and my glass of bubbles.

After months of wedding talk, most of which I have tuned off from because hours upon hours of wedding talk drives me a bit fucking nuts and really I am more interested in the honeymoon destination than anything else, means that on the day I am just as surprised as anyone else at how everything has turned out.

“We’re going in a what?” I asked once loudly, dressed in my apricot bridesmaid dress.

“A horse and buggy to the church,” the bride said exasperatedly to me.

“Well why didn’t you say so?”

“I did. A million times.”

“Oh. Whoops a fucking daisy.”

While looking like cloned princesses on the day (the bridesmaids that is, the bride is clearly the Queen), it’s a bloody effort getting to that place. There’s the four am rise no matter what time you got to bed the night before or what time the wedding is that day, and lots of sitting around with weird shit in your hair. For some reason being engaged makes someone an expert on other people’s best hairstyles and optimum fingernail length. The bride tells you months before the wedding day how long your hair length will be and exactly what will happen to it.

“I want all you girls to have your hair up so you’ll all need to grow it out.”

“Oh right, well I was just thinking about going short actually.”

“Naa uttt. Not til after my wedding, Noooooo way.”

“Right of course, what was I thinking? Your day and all.” And it always seems to be the girls wedding. Never ‘our wedding.’ For months it has been, ‘at my wedding this, at my wedding that’.

“What does that other person think?” I ask.

“Who?”

“You know that guy who will be standing next to you at the end of the aisle? The one you’ll be spending the rest of your natural life with? What does he think?”

“I don’t know. I never asked or “He’s glad I’m doing it all.” Yeah, sure he is. But there’s that dawning on them right then and there look like, Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s actually the purpose of all this fan fare. I’m going to be with another person forever. Wow -

Oh my God.

Truth be known he probably really doesn’t care. He just wants to get through the whole thing so he can drink beers at the end of it with his mates and cuss about his life with his ball and chain (that he secretly loves).

A close friend of mine’s constant worry on her wedding day was that people would be looking at her. While many brides seem to indulge in that idea, this friend of mine was very anxious about it. In the end I don’t know why she worried, she was gorgeous and it was all very natural but I kinda see what she means. It’s a big focus.

The bride apparently should look her best ever. People are looking at everything, taking detailed notes of it all like journalists at some trial, especially the dress. The bride should look happy and radiant. Well at least happy, radiant can wait til pregnancy. It’s too much pressure otherwise and too much rouge.

Another wedding I was in was very cool because the bride was cool and unruffled about anything. She was relaxed and laid back. She told me up front I would not have to wear an upside down bowl of spaghetti on my head (traditional wedding hair) which I was incredibly pleased about because I don’t see the point in sitting for hours with heated rollers in my hair when I have naturally curly hair. I don’t feel the need to conform just because every other bridesmaid on the day has them. The point is I don’t need them. At the end of the day, to have hair that gives the impression of having an upside down bowl of spaghetti on your head is just not natural, at all.

She amused me greatly because she was so chilled out and frequently mumbled during photographs and between stubbies of VB, “Oh God, where’s my hat gone now?”

She meant her veil. I just loved that day.

Probably the most trying wedding, even though I think the world of the bride, was when we, as bridesmaids were told every few minutes to ‘fluff’ the brides dress. I didn’t even know what that meant and just followed what the maid of honour (her best friend) did a couple of times, making sure I kept the cig that was hanging from my mouth well away from the flammable tulle. It was bad enough when the horse stepped on her dress before the reception. I got sick of that fluffing early in and simply made myself scarce, along with my best friend who was also in the wedding, as soon as fluffing time neared.

“Quick,” I’d say, “It’s nearly time to fluff, let’s nick off.”

“Absolutely,” she’d say, “I’ll get the supplies,” and grabbed the alcohol and cigarettes. Besides if you need fluffing at anytime and your best friend is there, it’s her job and after the ceremony it is clearly the husbands. It is a tough job being bridesmaid. It is air traffic controller pressure.

Most people though look very happy on the day of their wedding and for the days, months and even years that follow and this is lovely. It gives me hope. I’m a great believer in love and finding ‘the one’ and spending your life with someone that ‘rocks your world.’ It’s what life is about. When people are in love they care about everyone else. They are nice to be with and want others to be in love too, which is where the classic blind date set ups come in. Ugh!

Happily marrieds set up house, plan children, do domestic stuff together hand in hand like gardening, wandering around home shows at pavilions and eat picnics in parks. They don’t even care if a bird shits on their head while eating a picnic in a park because they are so in love.

And then years down the track or sometimes it is just a few years, you sit in the same happy couple’s house while they are angrily heaving furniture at each other and you protectively hold your rum and coke to your chest and glance to the mantle piece where the mandatory wedding portrait sits and you say to yourself (rather than to them because you don’t want to break up their fight, it’s the most entertaining thing a single girl has seen in a while) “Ahh, aint marriage grand.”

Anyway, after careful consideration of all of this I knew I just couldn’t say yes about being bridesmaid again to my new friend. I would rather eat razor blades on Jatz. The one only incentive I came up with for being bridesmaid at all was perhaps I might meet somebody nice, being single and all back then. I even considered getting out my wrinkled partner checklist to remind me that I was single and I looking. Life is tricky shit.

Oops a fucking daisy!