Always a Bridesmaid...

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.  You've heard that funny, yet insulting expression meant to humiliate you for constantly watching your friends getting married while you stand by and applaud them, while no one appears to want to marry you. All I can say is, that sucks if this is you, because I'm happy to announce I've been a bride WAY more times than I've been a bridesmaid.  Now, as usual, I could be full of shit, and you know I like to leave you guessing.  So maybe I got married and didn't tell anyone.  Or, perhaps, maybe that best friend I had for 12 years, you know, the whore, got married and asked me to be a bridesmaid and I declined. So that would subtract from the number of times I'd been a bridesmaid till that point, which would be zero, which then equals -1. Therefore, being a bride more times than a bridesmaid. Am I teasing? Maybe, you decide. 

So your "friend" is getting married. And as a gift to you she wants to make you suffer by making you spend money on a new dress that you'll never wear again, and as an extra "fuck you" she's making you buy the dress in lime green or some other color that accentuates every ugly feature you never knew you had.  Why do these silly brides still insist on trying to make the bridesmaids look ugly? Isn't it bad enough for them that you're the one getting married and they have to be your personal assistants till the day after you're officially a wife? We already know the trick, we know this and we still accept it. Well I don't - not all of it anyway.

As a bride, you should be proud of how beautiful you will look on your wedding day no matter how ugly you are, and proud at how much you'll be beaming from ear-to-ear, regardless of whether or not one or two bridesmaids are prettier than you are.  I mean, if you're going to look gorgeous anyway and the attention is all on you, why do you insist on making your bridesmaids wear something hideous? You really want to be the "obviously insecure" bride who's trying to make her friends look like something you'd find in a Far Side comic? Well, there is something to this.

I've never been in this situation, so I can't speak for myself. However, making some observations over the years (or pretending to for sake of writing this) I've noticed that some brides just want to pick colors they know may never actually look good on anyone, but they just happen to love that color and this is the only time they can see that color and enjoy it, while they themselves don't have to be caught dead in it. You know, that color you love but you could never paint your walls with because it would have looked terrible or your parents wouldn't let you? And you couldn't find a shirt that color because no designer would have been THAT daring or stupid.  I would think other brides have a different approach, however. But what matters is that I like this one, as it makes the most sense to me. I am however, very much in favor of your bridesmaids acting like your personal assistants until the day after your wedding. In fact, I hope mine stay that way forever, but that probably won't happen. And I'm not implying I will not be getting married, I just probably won't have any friends to be bridesmaids after they read that.

But back to the dresses. You see, I tend to make decisions based on how I think I would react in a situation. For example, if you want to make me wear a grape colored purple dress so I look like one of the Fruit of the Loom guys, don't you think I will retaliate when you are my bridesmaid? Think about this, I can retaliate and make you wear a color - that I will search high and low for until I find - the exact color of your colon. That's right, the same colon you're thinking of.  Then I'll pay a designer to surround each dress with fluorescent lighting. But instead I put myself in your bridesmaid/personal assistant shoes.  And the truth is, I just want you to match my flowers, and my flowers will not resemble any organs or intestines. So hopefully you'll be happy with the dresses I pick for you.

Many brides are going with black bridesmaids dresses these days. I applaud you for that. Why are you choosing black? Several reasons. 1) You realize that you're the star of this show anyway so you're getting the attention; 2) you just can't go wrong with black as it makes other color schemes for your big day easy to match with; 3) your bridesmaids appreciate it because they and you realize that they can get continued use of the dress even after your wedding; and 4) some of you have no imagination whatsoever and/or don't know any better.

I happen to really like the idea of a nice brown or black dress for my slaves. I mean bridesmaids.  This is because I know that they will match my crazy color schemes, and my flowers. Or at least they won't ruin them. The truth is though, I'm not sure there are too many people out there who still try to embarrass their bridesmaids.  I know that some of these horrible brides definitely exist, and here's where my thoughts get interesting.  This posting was designed specifically to embarrass and humiliate YOU horrible brides - you, that bride who tries to embarrass her friend, for a change.  We smart girls know that we're not going to try to humiliate our friends, and most other brides with like-minded thinking are changing their attitudes and reversing customs as well - for the sake of NOT looking like they're jealous that their friend can look better in a bridesmaid dress or even a giant soup can, for that matter, than those brides will look in their wedding dress. 

So ladies, big ladies, small ladies, ugly ladies, skinny ladies, fat ladies, and gorgeous ladies: Remember this. You will be a bridesmaid one day whether you like it or not. You will be forced to wear a dress that you want to at least look good in even if you don't feel good in it. So don't punish your girlfriends for not being the bride.  Reward them for not making that dreadfully traditional, dangerous, typical, scary, expected, last resort and potentially devastating decision to get married in the first place.