Adventures of a Professional Bridesmaid: Minnesota Wedding (Part 2) Written by Jen Glantz of Bridesmaid for Hire

 

It’s 6:30am and the sun begins to wave at me through the cracks of the window shade.

It’s Saturday. I’m in Minnesota. Today is Ashley’s wedding.

All of this hits me before I’m able to fully open both of my eyes at the very same time. Ashley’s alarm clock is set to wiggle and sing at 7:15 and the plan is to be out the door by 8. I have 30 minutes for myself, before her world wakes up. I shower, reorganize my bags and double check that I have everything I need close by: my bridesmaid survival kit, my phone charger, my folder of itineraries.

At 7:20, I notice that the lights are still off in Ashley’s room, so I knock on the door and when she tells me to come in, I find her snuggled up in her bed.

“Ashley,” I start to say, like a teacher about to convince their student of all the fun things they are about to experience on their first day of Kindergarten. “It’s time to wake up. You’re getting married today!”

Before we head over to the church – where the wedding party will begin getting ready – we swing by the Starbucks drive-thru. Neither of us are caffeine drinkers, but Ashley loves their hot chocolate. So she orders one and I order a handful of straws, to stick in my bridesmaid fanny pack (so that once the wedding party has their makeup on, they can still drink without worrying about smearing their lipstick all over their face.)

Ashley speaks into the intercom to order her drink and before we pull around to the next window, she asks the mysterious lady behind the speaker to write “Bride” on her cup.

The lady sighs, giggles, and says, “Wow, you’re high maintenance today.”

As Ashley rolls up her window and presses down on the gas, I scream out from the backseat: “She’s allowed to be, today is her wedding day!”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

 

 

By 9:30am, girls will have a full face of makeup on for a wedding that doesn’t start until 5pm. At 10:30 am, girls will have 32 bobby pins and a half a bottle of hairspray holding together the curls and the twists of their wedding hairstyle. This happens for a few reasons: there are typically only one or two hair and makeup people for the entire wedding party, plus, even though the ceremony won’t start until the sun begins to fidget, there’s a whole schedule of photos that are taken beforehand. There’s also an hour or two buffer thrown in there, in case people are running late – and they always are. I’ve only been to one wedding where we had extra time. There was a 2-hour downtime period where the bridesmaids got to nap – except it was exceptionally hard to nap with a beehive of hair on your head and airbrush make-up sparkling on your cheeks.

From 9am to 11am, as the girls are getting ready, I’m there to help Ashley with whatever she needs. If I wasn’t there, these tasks would interrupt her, or her other bridesmaids, who are all having a good time getting ready. By having me around as her professional bridesmaid and personal assistant, she could tell me directly what needs to get done, and i’ll do it for her.

During this time, I did tasks like: find out when her little sister would be arriving, put the right decorations (like the unity candle, programs, and the wedding lasso rosary) where they belonged in the church, introduced myself to the ushers and told them some of the important messages Ashley mentioned to me last night,  made sure the bride was periodically taking bites of her food and sipping on some water, steamed her veil and dress, and handed her marriage license over to the priest.

I also found myself front and center dealing with pop-up problems like: a broken bracelet that the bride was going to wear and finding a solution for the lack of outlets and mirrors in the church.

After the bride has her hair and makeup set, it’s time to prepare her for the first big moment of her wedding day: the first look. So we help her get inside her dress, and make sure her cathedral length veil trails perfectly behind her. I walk her to the side entrance of the church, where her groom is standing halfway down the aisle, waiting to see her for the very first time today.

Before she enters, before she taps him on the shoulder to show how him how marvelously beautiful she looks, I take the soft edge of white tissue and clear away the formation of a tiny tear drop living in crease of her eye.

“So, this is where I leave you,” I say to her, since often brides are pretty strict about who accompanies them during this delicate moment. “What are you talking about?” she says.  “You’re coming with me.”

 

I fluff her veil, wipe off any excess eye make up, and stand way in the back of the church – so that her and her groom could share this moment as close together and as far apart from anyone else.

After a wave of flashes begin to go off, I start collecting other members of the wedding party to get together for their photo opps. There are three moments in the wedding day where organized photos tend to take place: before the ceremony, after the ceremony, and during the party.

My fanny pack has come in handy about 18 times in the last hour. The tissues were the first to go, followed by the breath spray and the hand wipes and the safety pins and of course – the band aids. People are no longer calling me a profesional bridesmaid – they are not even calling me Jen – around here, today, I’m known as purple fanny pack.

Ashley’s dress is large and it makes having to pee a very long, arduous procress – especially right before she walks down the aisle. There’s no easy trick to peeing in a wedding dress, except having 2-3 people lift up the sides of your dress while you try to go to the bathroom – which makes the bride become a nervous “pee-er “and before you know it, as a bridesmaid, you’re singing showtunes and Disney songs and running water from every single sink, channeling a local Niagra falls, just to make them feel comfortable enough to pee in front of you.

And all of that water and all of that talk about going to the bathroom, makes you, of course, have to go to the bathroom – but you can’t. You physically can’t becuase you’re up to your knees in fabric and tool and the hoop of the dress and the lace of the viel and if you even move an inch backward, some part of the dress is at risk of dangling in the toilet water.

I’m wish Ashley right up until she takes her first step down the aisle. Once again, I’m fluffing her veil and doing anything she needs. She’s nervous – as are all brides before they take this step. This is the first step inside of a day that’s lived in their minds for years.

I often wonder what’s scarier: taking the first step down the aisle or off a platform to bungee jump? I’d like to say walking down the aisle, but i haven’t done either – yet. I’ve just held the hands of many brides right before they did.

She’s begging to shake a little. “The hard part is over,” I say pushing a loose piece of hair behind her ear. I’m mostly referring to the 3-hours of hair and makeup she just endured, but I’m also talking about the process of meeting the man of her dreams – which we all know takes an extraordinary amount of guts, vulnerability, and time.

Right before a bride walks down the aisle, she’s  worrying about many different kinds of things:

– Will I make it down the aisle without tripping?

– Do I look as beautiful as the people who are sitting in the church hoped I would?

– Will my Uncle Dan make it to the ceremony, because he told me he’d be late and I don’t want him to walk in and shuffle around right as we’re about to say our “I do’s”.

– Is anyone going to actually be inside of the church?

– I think I may have to pee again – even though I peed five minutes ago.

– What if i forget how to speak and when the priest asks me, “Do you take this person’s hand in marriage?” I jumble around my words andsound like a Ke$ha song saying in response: “Blah, blah, blah.”

There’s no one left to walk forward down the aisle except for Ashley. She looks at me one last time.

“Ashley, it’s time to wake up,” I say, in hopes that she’ll leave the nerves behind. “Today is your wedding day.”

 

 

 Check out: 

Adventures of a Professional Bridesmaid: Minnesota Wedding (Part 1)

And stay tuned for (Part 3) next Monday!

Until then:

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