Always a Bridesmaid (for Hire) Read online

  When I was a wee bit older, a few years before becoming a serial bridesmaid for my soon-to-be-engaged posse of best friends, an older girl in my sorority took me out for coffee one morning and ended up telling me a story about her first time as a bridesmaid, topping it off by saying that she solemnly vowed to never do it again.

  “Never ever again?” I asked, trying to get her to concede to the reality that she probably would have to do it again eventually. Our sorority had 167 sisters in it, and a good chunk of them would probably walk off the stage at graduation and sashay right down the aisle. “What if your best friend or your real sister gets married? You’d say no?”

  “Yeah, no,” she said firmly, as if this was a well-thought-out and inarguable decision. “I had the worst experience ever.”

  “Well, my old babysitter told me that one time she saw a bridesmaid pass out during the ceremony. Can you beat that?”

  Bridesmaid horror stories were like random cards dealt at a poker table, each person trying to see who had the best hand, folding only when they heard a story more interesting, more unbelievable, and more absurdly laughable than their own.

  “Easily,” she went on, confident that her cards trumped the ones I was holding. “When I was a bridesmaid, the bride spilled Diet Coke all over her dress. Before the ceremony.”

  I figured in a situation like that, the bridesmaids would step in and grab a white napkin to twist and tie over the spot, or empty as many Tide to Go sticks as they could onto the offending stain. But at this wedding, nobody did anything.

  “A couple of bridesmaids offered to go to CVS, but we were walking down the aisle in two minutes. There was nothing we could do.”

  Nothing they could do? Why wasn’t there some kind of golden rule that bridesmaids shouldn’t allow the bride to walk down the aisle in a freshly stained dress, even if the string quartet is well into Mendelssohn’s Wedding March? Or that brides shouldn’t leave their bridesmaids passed out beside an empty church confessional booth? Was it unreasonable for all of us to agree that the people involved in the wedding were more important than the wedding itself?

  “The bride tried to blame this all on us, and she actually thought about calling the whole thing off just because of a little Diet Coke stain on her $3,000 dress.”

  I hoped that an accidental splash of soda on a sparkling organza wedding dress, like the unwanted presence of rain on one’s wedding day, was good luck in some weird, superstitious way.

  “What did she end up doing?”

  “The only thing she could do: she held her waterfall bouquet of red roses over it and walked down the aisle in complete and utterly unhappy tears.”

  I felt a sudden episode of acid reflux kick in, knowing that when I was tapped to be a bridesmaid for my friends, I would have to be prepared. Being a bridesmaid meant that you were an ironclad warrior, equipped for sudden emotional turmoil that could strike at any time, at any moment, whether it be over a soggy salad, a no-show photographer, or a synthetic eyelash that was glued a little too far left on the bride’s epicanthical fold. There was solid statistical evidence that when I finally became a bridesmaid, I would leave with bloody battle scars and emotional bruises after spending twelve hours in a war zone of temporarily chemically imbalanced family members, flaky vendors who showed up late, and the ultimate wedding crasher: Murphy’s law.

  I started prepping years before I ever zipped on my first polyester regalia. Most people collect minisoaps and hair conditioners for their next stay at an Airbnb, but I began hoarding tiny bottles of moisturizer, sample packets of Advil, spare bobby pins from hair salons, and tissues from the waiting room at doctors’ offices for my debut as a bridesmaid, as if I was gathering supplies for an underground bomb shelter fit for a bridal party of ten.

  After the first time I was asked to be a bridesmaid, I became a traveling toiletry section of CVS combined with the snack aisle of 7/11, my tote bags stuffed with individual packs of salted peanuts, fun-size Snickers bars, and Sara Lee muffins. I’ve learned, over the years, that the only way to handle being perpetually clumsy is to be painfully overprepared. At weddings, my survival kit became my plus-one, which wasn’t all that different from a human plus-one, since I’d have to carry both out of the reception hall at the end of the night.

  But my survival kit finally came in handy the third time I walked down the aisle, this time for my childhood friend Clarissa, when I found myself locked inside a hotel room closet with a hyperventilating, excessively sweaty bridesmaid who was speaking to me in gibberish.

  “I—” she said, huffing and puffing, “can’t—” she continued, her eyeballs darting around frantically, “find,” she grabbed the lapels of my champagne satin bridesmaid robe, “my—” she shook me hard, “bridesmaid dress!”

  I had figured out the problem long before she finished the sentence. I reached into my handy-dandy survival kit and pulled out a candy cane, asking her to nibble on it in hopes of calming her down just a smidge.

  “Let’s start from the beginning, Beverly,” I said, switching from seasoned bridesmaid to CSI detective. This was my third time as a bridesmaid and the other girl’s first. I was the other bridesmaids’ go-to guru, solving problems and answering questions they feared would set the bride’s Victoria Secret lace panties on fire. Jen, can I wear this necklace to the wedding? Can I paint my nails Ballet Slippers pink with one surprise nail painted in gold glitter? Do you think it’s okay if I ask my new hookup, Jonathan, to come at the end of the wedding once everyone is already drunk and loopy?

  I would answer text messages, respond to email chains, flag Facebook chats with the same answer: No, no, and NO.

  But this situation was different. I was inside a hotel room closet, eyeing an empty safe and sitting on top of a luggage rack, watching a bridesmaid bar the door with her derriere, asking me to pull her missing bridesmaid dress out of my suitcase, like only a well-trained and highly paid magician probably could.

  “Where did you see it last?” I asked, pulling out a waiter’s pad and a Holiday Inn pen to take notes for my search later on.

  “The bellman took it and said he’d drop it off in the bridal suite. But it’s not here and nobody at the front desk knows anything about it.” She blew her nose hard, the tissue barely containing the force of her snot rockets. “Clarissa is going to flip out when she finds out I lost my dress, and now I have to walk down the aisle naked.”

  “You’re not going to walk down the aisle naked,” I reassured her, grabbing the pile of mucus-filled tissues that were now surrounding our feet and tossing them into the safe—a treasure locked up tight for the next group of panicked bridesmaids to find.

  “You’re right, Jen,” she said, sniffling. “I’ll have to walk out in just my Spanx.”

  I handed her a People magazine with Channing Tatum on the cover and told her not to move from this spot until I came back. The last thing I needed was for her to be on the loose, rallying up more bridesmaids to embark on her FIND MY DRESS mission. I didn’t want a flustered bride discovering the problem and taking revenge on the hotel concierge staff with a can of hairspray to the eyes.

  I was going to handle this. I was going to somehow find the dress or make one for her, in two hours or less.

  I pinned back my freshly curled hair and fanned my heavily made-up face, pulling off my nude Guess stilettos and lacing up my Asics. I might have looked like I was ready for a Black Friday shopping trip to Target, but I felt like I was ready for combat.

  Right as I snuck out of the bridal suite and went to make a mad dash to the elevator so I could go down and question my first set of witnesses—the hotel lobby staff—I was intercepted by the mother of the bride, whose bum was parked on the carpet, her head against the door of room 413.

  “Martha, are you okay?” I bent down, taking a closer look at the mascara-tinted tears sliding down her face. I thought about handing her a candy cane as well.

  “The limo isn’t coming. I booked it for the wrong day. Next Saturday, not
this Saturday.”

  “Okay, okay. No problem. We can fix this.” I didn’t know how in that moment, but I was willing to try anything to get momma back on her feet before the bride was off of hers.

  “It’s not going to be okay.” She slung her flip phone across the patterned hotel carpet, showing the first warning signs of an adult-sized temper tantrum. “We’re going to have to walk to the wedding.”

  “No, we aren’t,” I said, shaking my head, unwrapping a candy cane for her. I had a plan B that might’ve been too ripe to say out loud at the moment, but it was a viable option: my dad could drive us. It wasn’t the most romantic way to roll up to a wedding, but it was better than going on foot. I figured I’d tell her when the time was right, after I called the sixty-five local limo companies and got laughed off the phone.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  Look at us, making progress, I thought happily.

  “My daughter’s going to kick our butts there with her Manolo Blahniks.”

  I pulled out my notebook and pen and jotted down an official list of things I needed to do in the next two hours.

  1. Find missing bridesmaid dress.

  2. Hire a new limo.

  3. Make sure bridesmaid stays locked in the closet and mother of the bride avoids the bride until #1 and #2 are taken care of.

  4. Find coffee. Lots of coffee.

  I put my sneakers to the test and jogged toward the elevator, but before I could press the Down button, I saw something no bridesmaid ever wants to see 120 minutes before a wedding ceremony: a hysterically crying groom.

  “Jon? What are you doing on this floor? Why are you still in sweatpants?”

  “I’m in trouble. Lots of trouble,” he said, sliding backward away from me until he hit the wall—literally and figuratively.

  It took two bridesmaid horror stories and three times as a bridesmaid myself to realize that weddings were a lot like Disney World. Weddings are supposed to be the happiest day of the couple’s life, just like Disney is supposed to be the happiest place on earth. Yet neither truly is. Both are bursting with expectations, extreme emotional setbacks, and the occasional unidentified heat rash.

  “Two of my groomsmen are hungover. Like, really hungover. They can’t stand up straight.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, trying to rectify this problem so I could start crossing things off my bridesmaid emergency to-do list. “I have Advil and animal crackers in my suitcase. I’ll bring them up to your room, and we can nurse them back to health.”

  “I’m telling you, Jen, they’re not going to be able to walk down the aisle.”

  “Don’t say that.” I checked the pockets of my robe for a third candy cane to give to the teary-eyed groom, but all I found was one of those gel silica packets that keep new clothing dry and are boldly labeled DO NOT EAT. I figured now was not the time to ignore a warning label. “I’ll get them to walk a straight line in no time.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” he said, drying his eyes and stepping away from the wall. “You could walk down the aisle with both of them, one on each arm.”

  I whipped out my trusty pen and paper and wrote down another point.

  5. Bring two rum-drunk groomsmen back to life and get them down the aisle.

  My hair had completely fallen flat, the curls packing up their bags and skipping town, uneager to be a part of this wedding anymore. My makeup wasn’t getting along with my sweat glands and was slowly slipping off my face. I watched my airbrushed tan slide ever so gently down my arm. It was as if my super-bridesmaid costume was coming off, and with it my superpowers. But I had less than two hours now to find a dress, get a limo, and babysit two groomsmen.

  So when I found myself eye-to-eye with the receptionist at the front desk and asked her about a periwinkle bridesmaid dress on the loose, I had no time to process her squinty facial expressions that made her look like Bozo the Clown.

  “Well, lookie here,” she said, in a thick-as-gravy accent, as if I was at the front desk of a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, and not within spitting distance of Miami Beach.

  “I need to find this missing dress, book a limo, and pray for a miracle that will hydrate two hungover groomsmen,” I said, cutting off whatever excuse she was about to give me. I detailed all of my problems for her, and surprisingly, she heard me out. I guess helping me was easier than addressing another guest’s complaints about someone who was playing Justin Bieber songs too loudly, on repeat.

  She offered to help, but after a few minutes, she emerged from a back room with nothing more than a small package clutched inside of her hand instead of the garment bag I was expecting. She wasn’t the saint I thought she would be.

  “Can’t find the dress, but I do have a number for our in-house limo service. They can show up in an hour.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said, pulling out my notebook and crossing the task off my list, as if I were shopping for groceries and just found the cantaloupes.

  I snuck back inside the bridal suite and knocked twice on the closet door, hoping the bucked-up bridesmaid would let me in so I could gather supplies from my suitcase and head to the groomsmen’s suite.

  She did, greeting me ever so sweetly.

  “Dress or no dress?” I guess she only wanted to let me in if it was the former, not the latter.

  “I’m working on it, Beverly,” I said, pushing open the door and biting my tongue so I wouldn’t blurt out what I desperately wanted to say: Why can’t you pull your twenty-seven-year-old self together and help me look!

  I popped my head out, noticing the bride in a chair in the corner of the room, her back to me. She had no idea one of her bridesmaids, her mother, and her husband-to-be were all simultaneously, hysterically, having a meltdown and about to make this day memorable for all the wrong reasons.

  I decided to write a new list, one that was more practical than a list of things I wouldn’t have time to do:

  How to Save a Wedding in under 30 Minutes

  1. Missing dress:

  • Cut pieces of fabric off the other bridesmaid dresses and use a needle and thread to sew something together.

  • Run to a fabric store. Find anything periwinkle. Wrap it around the bridesmaid like it’s a toga. Tell the bride the alternative was her walking down the aisle in just Spanx. The kind that go all the way up to your neck.

  • Give the bridesmaid my dress and I’ll wear my flower-patterned, champagne-colored robe and Asics down the aisle. So much for finding a guy to smooch me at this wedding.

  I left the bridal suite and went to the groomsmen suite, which smelled like ashy cigars and stale whiskey spilled out of a tumbler and left to soak into the carpet. Two of the groomsmen were alive and well, on the couch playing video games. The groom was behind them, pacing back and forth, clinking together the wedding rings nervously, perhaps wondering if they would make it to their rightful destinations that day.

  But in the bathroom, next to the trash can and the toilet seat, were my two helpless victims, in need of a quick pick-me-up and a gallon of water. I dropped a bag of crackers, a pack of Advil, and a candy cane beside each of them, instructing them to eat it all up and then take a warm shower and a power nap.

  As I went to leave and begin my duties as a seamstress, making something out of nothing for the bridesmaid with no dress, one of the groomsmen paused from playing Call of Duty, looked me in the eyes, and spoke up.

  “You kind of look like the Tasmanian devil right now.”

  The groom broke out of his pout session long enough to smile, and the drunken groomsmen on the floor snorted in laughter. Even I started to tingle with the urge to laugh or cry; in my experience, both sensations originate from the same area of your twisted gut anyway.

  Maybe the older girl in my sorority was right when she told me that being a bridesmaid was something you did only once and never again. Maybe doing it over and over again caused premature wrinkles, bouts of acid reflux, and the inability to sleep at night without waking up in
cold sweats, screaming, We need a limo! We need a limo!

  It was just then, in the middle of that thought, that I saw something I never thought I would find in the hotel room of a pack of groomsmen lounging around in their boxer shorts, smelling like burps.

  Scrunched up beneath the butts of the two innocent boys jamming their thumbs against the buttons of their Xbox controllers was a twinkle of periwinkle. I rushed over to them like I was a linebacker ready to tackle a running back, pushed them off the couch, and grabbed the dress out from underneath them.

  “I found it!!!” I screamed so loud I was sure the front desk would get a noise complaint. I was filled with extreme joy and anger all at the same time.

  The groomsmen scratched their heads, unsure of how the dress ended up on the couch or why I was so out of breath, body shaking as if I had just crossed the finish line at an Ironman competition. But they gave up trying to figure it out and instead went back to their video game, and I went back to the bridal suite.

  “Put this on and smile,” I said to Beverly, handing off her loot. “And never tell anybody about this, at least not until tomorrow. Okay?”

  She hugged me so tightly that the only curl I had left on my head unwound itself and tiptoed out of the closet before I had the chance to.

  The bride caught us hugging, and jerked me aside by my pinky. I had just saved the day, and now I was in trouble.