Why I'm done being a brat about bridesmaid-ing

I have a love-hate relationship with being a bridesmaid. I’m kind of a grump about weddings in a way that completely doesn’t make sense with who I am as a person. I can romanticize pretty much anything. I love seeing people in love. I am extra as hell with my Pinterest projects. My family has been known to throw a party or two. Wouldn’t this seem like the right combination of characteristics to be pumped to be a bridesmaid? One would think. And, had my big sister or best friend NOT asked me to be up there on their big days, I probably still would have passive aggressively joined them at the altar. Still, when BFF announced excitedly to the group text the sweet reason she decided to move her wedding up a year, my bratty response was to snarkily act like she was ruining my life by making it the same year as my sister’s wedding (in my defense, I was in Downtown Fullerton and there was some alcohol involved…). Because, you know. Everything is about me. 

See, there’s some stuff about me that doesn’t suit well with the bridesmaid life. I will never have a weekend off. I don’t make or spend a ton of money. I also think so much wedding stuff is absolute BS. The idea of weddings I can get behind. You’re deciding to be together forever! Everybody gets to dress up and there’s color themes and flowers and wine and a dance floor and a ton of cute photo-ops! All things that I can vehemently get behind. You’re gonna spend a year’s rent on your flowers and there’s a list of fancy parties leading up to the actual wedding and an even longer list of rules about those parties? This is where weddings start losing me. So the real problem is that those things go against everything I believe about weddings (i.e. that anything that distracts from the fact that two people are choosing to do life together in front of God and all their important people is overkill). This doesn’t mean I judge people for having elaborate weddings! I think whatever particular brand of perfect makes you feel special is totally beautiful. When it starts to involve me, I become annoying. But like Tab it’s NOT YOUR WEDDING SO PIPE TF DOWN.

The good news is that the grumpy side of me has nothing on the Pinterest side of me. You wanna propose to my best friend? Say no more. Her best friends will show up in matching shirts (because we’re all equally extra) carrying these bad boys. (Okay but they looked fancier in person and took hours upon hours…)

You need pastries? That sounds like a job for those from scratch gluten-free/vegan donuts  I saw on Minimalist Baker that pretty much nobody will eat but me, yet everyone will comment on. Delicious recipe found here!

“You made this?!” is music to my pompous little ears. I let that be my driving force in most functions I find myself involved in. So even if I’m terrible and complain about it the whole time, you’re damn right I’m gonna go all out. And then, for going all out, I get to complain even MORE! Right?

The beauty of this weekend gave me the attitude check I desperately needed. I’ve been complaining all week about the stuff I had to get done. The tassels alone took me so long that I finished the last 2 seasons of The Office and still wasn’t done. I took it on myself to make an elaborate recipe and went on a wild goose chase looking for edible flowers (before settling on just probably edible flowers and advising people to pick them off before taking a bite because they were purely for aesthetics). I was responsible for two bottles of champagne and yogurt and berries and one banner. Do you know what my sister Brittany was responsible for? LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE. I complained every step of the way. I complained months ago when I had to spend time on my day off typing address labels because I thought it was silly when we could just hand write them. I told Brittany she was being psycho when she went back through the labels to add “Miss” or “Mrs.” to each name (to be fair, I still think that was a little psycho). I missed all the planning parties because of work and spent all my time this week stressfully running from store to store before and after work because I hadn’t planned ahead for anything even though Brittany had planned everything to a tee. She must have spent hundreds of dollars. Thank God for BFF Cherlynn stepping up and helping her with everything because I was probably just more stress to Brittany that she didn’t deserve. By the time the shower rolled around, I was a stressed out mess with hair growing in size by the hour. Meanwhile, here’s what Brittany looked like.

She is the absolute party planning goddess. She’s the queen bee. The other two (Cherlynn and myself) are just her little workers. The party was magical. Exactly how it looked in her head. The decor was perfect and the food looked amazing and I think that everyone had a good time. All the while, Brittany was composed and looked absolutely stunning. The most important thing was that Nicole clearly felt like a princess. She got to look beautiful and feel loved and that’s the whole point. It made a week of late nights and getting up early to play my one small part feel worth it (and silly to even feel grumpy about). It even made coming home at midnight after a long day of work to string everything together and clean up and paint our nails and frost deserts until 3 AM, then waking up at 6 AM to buy ice (while singing Frozen Heart from Frozen because duh), set up our elaborately crafted decor (while singing Get Back Up Again from Trolls because also duh), and put massive amounts of adorable pastries on cute plates (while singing I AM MOANAAAAAAAAAA because come on, duh) seem like nothing. We were deliriously tired and laughing at things that weren’t funny and getting annoyed with the same things and accidentally had a lot of fun. So what if I had to leave early to work and didn’t get home until midnight? Brittany and Cherlynn had to clean up the whole mess. They had to get up and go to their real grown up jobs in the morning. I got to sleep in. So every compliment we got on the shower, I directed straight back to who deserves it most.

“It was all Britt. I’m just her little minion.” Always have been, always will be. But that’s not gonna stop me from humble-bragging on the blog. (More photos to come on Brittany’s blog)

My point is that I’m so lucky to be able to help two of my favorite people in the world marry the loves of their lives. It’s easy to be selfish and forget that it’s an honor and a blessing to have people you love that much who want you to be a part of creating a day they’ll never forget. Britt, thank you for reminding me that and showing me how to make something so dreamy come to life. I can’t wait to have the honor of doing it for you one day.

xx, Tab.