Choosing Bridesmaids

I’ve chosen the wedding date and the wedding location. The next job was to choose my bridesmaids. By tradition, my bridesmaids should be my closest friends and confidants, and also females. That is where my problem lies. I have a few close female friends that I’ve had since I was young, but I’ve never had a ton of female friends. I HATE dealing with female drama. I am really not a tomboy, but for some reason, I tend to enjoy hanging out with guys more than girls. In my days at SAU I bonded very closely with a group of seven or so females. Still, we decided a long time ago that we would not have each other in our bridal parties because there was no way we could have all seven plus our friends from home, and we didn’t want to have to choose certain girls over others. Also, we have sadly drifted apart quite a bit since college. I will always love these girls, but they’re not as involved in the details of my life as they used to be.

When it came down to it, my closest friends are guys. Obviously, our relationships changed once I started dating Carl, but I love them dearly and really want them to be a part of my wedding. The question was: how? I went to a friend’s wedding last summer where the groom had his sister as a “groomsmaid.” She wore the same dress as the bridesmaids, just in black and she stood on her brother’s side. Then I saw the chic flic, Made of Honor, where the bride asks her best male friend to be her maid of honor. So, it would seem to me that the face of the traditional bridesmaid is changing. I discussed this idea with my friend, Adam. I told him that I wanted to have male “bridesmaids.” He was not a huge fan of the idea and said something along the lines of, “Please don’t do that to us Steph. If you want us to be involved, make us ushers” (I think maybe he was afraid he would lose a corner of his “man card” if he was called a bridesmaid). So, out of respect for his desire to keep a man card with all corners intact, I opted for the usher route.

The problem is, in most weddings I’ve been to, the role of usher is given to the people who you aren’t quite as close to as the other members of the bridal party. But that isn’t the case for me. So, when I asked them to be in my wedding, I told them their position was “bridesmaids disguised as ushers” and I want to put something in the program to that effect.

Blogger gives me a difficult time when I attempt to put more than one picture in a post, so I’ll just introduce my 4 ushers in separate posts.