BRIDESMAIDS AND BEASTMEN
The "tortured" and the "torturees"
1999 Archive
I am getting married in 3 weeks. I had to have my two sisters and best friend
as attendants, and my groom only had two close friends to ask, so we were looking for a
third male. I thought of my close friend from high school, whom I've known 11 years, whom
I've visited several times since graduating college. He recently got married himself last
year in a private ceremony in Greece, and his spouse has lots of money, so I thought they
could surely afford to travel out to our wedding. His response, when I asked him in
November to be in an August wedding was, "Can I tell you in May? I don't know what my
summer travel plans are yet." Like, "if I don't have anything better to do,
maybe we can make it out to your little wedding there"!! I was very insulted and
hurt, and considered not inviting him at all. When I did decide to rise above it all and
just send him an invitation, they of course responded 0 people would attend; no note, no
card nothing. Some friend.
Call me a wimp or whatever, but I had to share this story of my wedding day
with you. My sister..we'll call her Carolyn, was my maid of honor. My husband's
sister...we'll call her Laura was a bridesmaid. You would have thought it was their
wedding!
A couple of weeks before the wedding, we decided at the last minute that a limo
would be nice to ride to the reception after the ceremony. The reception was about 15
minutes away. They only had one limo left for that day. Carolyn thought that the wedding
party should be brought by limo as well...SO....after the ceremony, the wedding party
hopped into the limo and my husband and I were standing out front of the church waiting
for the limo to come back. It was windy, and the priest had another event to attend and
had to lock up the church!
When we finally arrived to the reception hall...I had the seating at the head
table arranged so that the bridesmaids were on one side of the table and the groomsmen
were on the other side. Laura decided she didn't like that arrangement, and proceeded to
switch all of the placecards around after we were all announced. Now come on! How long do
they actually have to sit there and eat? She couldn't live for a minute without sitting
next to her husband. Give me a break.
I'm sure there's lots more, but those are the two biggies of etiquette from
hell that I can remember.
Thank you so much for your site. It's provided me with hours of entertainment
and taught me to think carefully about my guests' feelings while planning my own wedding.
But I didn't see any rude groomsmen stories, so I thought I should share this one with
you. At a friend's wedding a year ago there were six groomsmen. Before the wedding they
stood in front of the church not talking to anyone and getting snotty with people who
mistook them for ushers.
During the wedding they kept giggling and whispering to each other. At the
reception they refused to mingle with the guests, they refused to talk to any of the
wedding party except the bride and the groom, and they were openly rude to the guests.
They all sat at a table together drinking and snubbing anyone who attempted to have a
conversation with them. Their behavior during the reception was just deplorable.
Afterwards the bride discovered that all the groomsmen went to a bar together
after the reception and proceeded to mock and roast everyone who attended the wedding!
Their bad behavior has cast a taint on her memories of what should have been the happiest
day of her life. In fact, she has spent the past year apologizing to people who went to
her wedding for the groomsmen's' behavior!
I just got married six weeks ago and, thankfully, just about everything went
perfectly. Our engagement was over a year long, and I had asked my bridesmaids to
participate just after I got engaged. One of the bridesmaids grudgingly accepted. I told
her at the time that if for any reason she did not want to be a 'maid, I would totally
understand and not be hurt at all. After all, I did know that she had already been in four
previous weddings. I told her I was aware of this and that I would not be offended if this
time she just wanted to be a guest, and that I merely wanted her to have the honor of
being asked.
Even after all of this discussion, she said she "supposed" she could
do it. Because she lived in another state, she was not at any of the parties or showers
but was invited. She bought her dress, I bought her shoes and mailed them to her, and
about a month before the wedding, she called and told me she had her hotel reservations
and plane ticket. We also talked about how she had just started working for her father and
how much she liked her new job. As far as I knew, everything was on track.
Then about two weeks before the wedding, she called and told me that she
couldn't attend because she had to have her tonsils taken out! Not only that, but that the
surgery was scheduled for the day of the wedding (Saturday) and she could get no other
time off work because her boss said she had already requested that weekend and she wasn't
allowed any more time off until she earned it. But her boss was her FATHER! I doubt he
wouldn't give her the extra time to have the tonsils out on another date. Here's what I
think the real reason was: She told me previously that she had gained a lot of weight, and
I think she didn't like the way she looked in the dress. Plus, about two years ago, she
had a one night stand with the Best Man and I think she was also embarrassed to see him
after she had gained weight.
At least she was nice enough to mail me the dress so I could try to find
someone else. (Luckily, I did and the wedding was beautiful!)
I have been rolling on the floor reading your site.
My best friend was getting married (Faith). MOTB had arranged for a
professional dressmaker to make the dresses for the bridesmaids. The bride had her
dress specially made at a huge cost. Imagine my surprise when I saw her gown, it was
the exact image of the dress I described to her as my ideal wedding dress.
Anyway her cousin, hastily invited to be in the bridal party to make up
numbers decided the dressmaker wasn't to be trusted and her friend would make hers.
Weeks go by, no one hears anything about the dress, except everything was fine. Day of the
wedding, no dress, went and had hair and makeup done, no dress. As the bridal cars pull
up, so does the friend with the dress. At least six sizes too big. The waistline,
supposedly under the breasts was round the hips, wrist length sleeves were half way down
the dress. Completely wrong trim, falling off the shoulders. Cousin is hastily pinned into
dress, complaining all the time about our comments on the quality. Even the material is
the wring shade, the nap of the velvet is upside down, you couldn't pick one nice thing
about it.
Wedding itself goes off without a hitch. While cousin is dancing, trips on her
own dress and rips it completely off. Unfortunately no video camera, it's busy taping
Faith and new husband canoodling. Cousin goes and changes dress. Not another word heard
from cousin. I could go on, but I won't.
What a great site! I can't resist adding my own story: a few years ago, I was
MOH for a dear friend from college. One of the other bridesmaids, I'll call her
"Deb", was a friend of the bride's from high school who I had never met. The
wedding was being held halfway between the bride & groom's hometown to make the trip
shorter for everyone, which I thought was very considerate. The bride had already arranged
to stay with me the night before the wedding, and I had also offered to "house"
a bridesmaid that was also a friend from college.
The day before the wedding, the bride called and said she couldn't pick up Deb
at the train station and asked if we (the other bridesmaid and I) could do it. So in the
torrential rain, we drove into the city to pick up a girl neither one of us had met. We
somehow managed to find her, and then picked up the bride to go to lunch, where it's
discovered that Deb wants a manicure but did not get one before she left home, still needs
to buy pantyhose, and is not 100 percent positive that her uncle (who she was supposed to
stay with) is even in town! The bride was shocked and urged her to go ahead and call her
uncle from the pay phone. When she came back to the table, sure enough, her uncle's
answering machine had been on and she didn't think he was home at all. Deb turned to the
bride and said, "I guess I'm staying with you now". The bride kind of looked at
me with a guilty expression on her face and I immediately said that "Deb" could
stay at my apartment with the rest of us, but I was out of beds so she'd have to sleep on
the couch. She said, "well, I guess that will have to be OK".
When we got to my place that afternoon, Deb started whining about how she still
needed a manicure, and she wanted to get her hair done, too. I had made appointments for
the rest of us weeks ago (the bride had told everyone to let me know by X date if they
wanted an appointment but of course Deb didn't call me), so I called the salon to see if
they could fit her in at the same time. Luckily, they could. Saturday afternoon, I dropped
the bride and the other bridesmaid at the salon while I took Deb to a nearby mall so she
could run in and pick up pantyhose.
Everything was fine until Deb got her hair done. She started yelling at the
hairdresser in the middle of the salon about how her hair looked like a rat's nest, she
wasn't paying, and the stylist should not be allowed to do hair. (Mind you, her hair was
all one length -- she didn't want it up, so there's not a lot that can be done with it.)
The bride was getting her makeup applied at that time and I could see the stress starting
to cross her face. Another stylist offered to re-do Deb's hair just to shut her up, but by
the time that was all finished, we didn't have time for Deb to get her manicure. Deb
started complaining on the way back to my apartment, but I pointed out that we were
already late, and told her that I had a French manicure kit at home and that she could use
that in the car on the way to the hotel if she wanted. We jumped in the chauffeured car
and Deb starts doing her nails, and makes a big deal out the fact that my nail polish base
is so low! How dare I not be more prepared for her demands!
After that, the only major incident was when Deb went downstairs and got some
handyman or cleaning guy in the building where the reception was being held and brought
him up to the reception as her "date" -- he was wearing jeans and a tee shirt --
and then he proceeded to get drunk, catch the garter (thereby appearing in the wedding
photos), and grab the behinds of some of the female guests! The groom asked Deb to get rid
of him, but she said, "I don't know him, he's not my responsibility", and
started to cry! Oh, yeah, and she never even thanked me for putting her up at the last
minute or any of the other hassles. The groom, to this day, won't even speak to her, and
thinks she was purposely a pain because she's jealous of the bride. How sad.
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