Ask a Professional Bridesmaid: Being Single at Weddings

  Dear Jen,

I don’t like to go to weddings anymore. The first few were a blast because my friends and I were fresh out of college and single.

We’d toast to our newly married friend and roll our eyes because let’s face it, we felt too young to even know what kind of career we wanted to spend the rest of our lives doing, let alone what kind of retirement fund we should opt in for or who we’d like to marry. But then, as if it happened all of a sudden, my friends started getting engaged left and right. It felt like we all started running the NY marathon together, except when I slowed down at mile number 5 to grab a cup of water from the sidelines, they kept leaping away without me.

So what?

I’m happy for them. Really, I am. I just don’t want to go to anymore damn weddings as the “single” one. I never get a plus one and always get sat at the “leftovers” table, beside someone’s cousin (twice removed) or the only other single person at the reception, who usually winks at me and then spills something semi-flammable on my chiffon dress.

Here’s the problem: my good friend just got engaged and when she called to tell me she wants me to be a bridesmaid, I said something like, “If by bridesmaid you mean slow dance with your cousin all night or flirt with the only other single person there who is probably from Mars – then no thanks.”

What I really meant to say was, “Of course.”

But I don’t know how anymore.

I don’t know how.

Sincerely,

You know her…the single one.

 

Halfway through the last wedding I went to, somewhere in between galloping around like a horse to Gangnam Style and doing the Electric Slide, Beyoncé came on the speakers and repeated this: “All my single ladies…All my single ladies,” which became the perfect (and most overused) way for the DJ to round up the non-married ladies on the dance floor for the traditional bouquet toss.

By now, it’s a natural instinct for me. Without even thinking, when I hear that song go on at a wedding, I put down my fork stuffed with cheesecake and I make my way on over to the dance floor.

I’m not a hopeless romantic; I’m just good at following directions.

I’m also good at minimalizing embarrassment and I know, from experience, that it’s less embarrassing to tip toe onto the dance floor and compete with the tree trumps of other eligible women for a tied together flower arrangement, then hide underneath the table and have the bride get on the microphone and shriek, “Where’s Jen! OMG we can’t start this until someone finds Jen!”

Women take the bouquet toss as seriously as they do a semi-annual sale at Bloomingdales. I was once elbowed so hard in the diaphragm; I couldn’t breathe for a couple minutes afterward.  I’ve been tripped, knocked in the face, bitten, and one time, just one time, bribed $5 to get the heck out of the way.

I caught it, once, and a girl ripped it out of my hands, after kicking me in the shin with her fake Louboutin pumps. I knew they were fake because she hit me so hard, the paint from the red bottom came off and left a mark on my leg. I don’t think a shoe that costs $1,500 would break apart so easily from hitting the side of non-muscular calf.

So I’ve learned to keep to myself out there. To stand in the back and run in the opposite direction of everyone else when the bouquet goes up in the air (which is typically toward the bar). That way, I’ll be far away from the danger zone and when the girl with the beaten down tulips rises from the bottom of the linoleum floor, we’ll all just clap and go back to booty dancing to Ying Yang Twins, and put our competitive monster selves away.

But this time, when the DJ made the call for the ladies who are diamond ring-less and most likely have a montage of dating apps on their cell phone, to come to the dance floor, it was just one other person and myself.

Remember when you used to play the game, “Duck, Duck, Goose” in kindergarten and the person who wasn’t quick enough and got tagged, had to sit in the middle of the circle while people screamed “mush, mush, mush”? Well, that’s exactly how it felt to be surrounded by 345 married people as I stood beside just one other person, underneath a giant artificial spotlight in the dead center of a cold dance floor.

I could hear people say things like, “Why are they still single?” and “Oh my, I feel so bad for them.” One elderly lady shouted across the table to her husband, “Boy, do I have a grandson who’d be interested in that!”

The other girl beside me had a serious boyfriend and at the risk of limping around for the next 7 days, when she whispered to me and said, “Mind if I get this one?” I nodded my head and moved way, way, out of the way.

At that moment, I wished the bride just ended this whole thing and put us both out of this miserable form of embarrassment. Maybe, instead of tossing it like softball over her head, she could have walked over to us and placed it in one of our hands. Maybe rip it in half and let us split the luck.

Being single in a group of married, engaged, or seriously dating people is never a whole lot of fun. It isn’t. It’s not fun at dinner or a movie or anytime you’re forced to be the one who doesn’t have someone to turn to and blow pop kisses at or call “Babe”.

It sucks on a Friday night when you want to go out but all of your friends are too busy at a husband’s work event, or watching Shark Tank with them, or tell you they no longer have the energy to dance on a crowded dance floor until 4am with a group of sweaty strangers.

But my sweet dear, let me tell you, it especially sucks at weddings.

When all of your friends, the ones who only used to say I Do to jaeger bomb after jaeger bomb after jaeger bomb, and laugh endlessly at the idea of spending the rest of their lives on a couch with the same guy, watching each other’s waistlines expand, are now the people bulging their eyes at love instead of rolling them.

But hey, It’s not because they look down upon you or don’t love you or want to make you feel so utterly embarrassed you’d rather hide beside fallen pieces of romaine lettuce and breadcrumbs then face the hollow dance floor of the lonely hearts club. Maybe, I think, they are just hoping that you’ll one day feel the same magical, googly eyed, things they felt when they found love, even if you’re not in the mood or ready or interested in that yet.

Isn’t that what we do when we love someone?

We ignore what they want and do exactly what we think is best for them.  Even if we’re wrong, even if we go a step too far, even if we have no idea what we’re doing. Love makes us that kind of crazy, my sweet dear. It does.

So zip up that bridesmaid dress, put on the boldest colored lipstick you have in your makeup bag, drink a cup of green tea (it’ll calm you down) and go.

Go to the wedding and dance with your imaginary boyfriend during the slow songs and exchange Facebook info with the souls beside you at table ten, who you’ll probably never see again, and when the bride whispers that she has someone dashing for you to meet, smile, shake their hand, and know, just know, half the people there, the ones nursing their drunk by 9pm husbands, are rolling their eyes now and envying, just a little bit, your choices, your freedom, your life.

The fact that you have still have the magic and the googly eyed first moments of love coming your way, like the bouquet being tossed at full-speed in the air and falling down like candy from an overstuffed piñata.

Stick your arms out and grab it, as if there’s floor of people wanting it.

Just like I know you can.

 

All my love,

Jen Glantz