Friday 17 June 2011

Bridesmaid torture

Looking over someone else's shoulder on the tube at a review of a film called Bridesmaids, I had a sudden horrible flashback to my bridesmaid experience.

According to my stepmother, I once mentioned in passing that I wanted to be a bridesmaid (nb I have no recollection of this) and she never ever forgot it.

So at age 13, at my most terribly shy and self-conscious, the beginning of the years when I would only wear big black overcoats and listen exclusively to the Cure, she blackmailed her nephew into making me a bridesmaid at his wedding. I wanted to say "But I was 5 when I wanted to be a bridesmaid. 5!!!" But it was too late and would have seemed rude & ungrateful, so I had to go through with it.

All the other bridesmaids were Essex lasses who had frosted flicked highlighted hair and wore electric blue eyeshadow and scary amounts of terracotta blusher. They thought I was a freak and clearly felt very, very sorry for me. We all had to wear a peach mock-satin frilly off-the-shoulder number. With a giant hoop in the skirt, like Scarlett O'Hara. Only not.

People kept coming up to me during the wedding saying "Why aren't you dancing?" "Because I'm wearing a fucking giant hoop" I wanted to say. If you had looked up the word 'misery' in the dictionary there would have been a picture of my face to illustrate.

Thankfully when my sister got married years later she only asked for her friends' little kids to dress up as bridesmaids, which is as it should be. We could all wear what we wanted. The kids looked cute dressed up as little fairy princesses. But grown women should not be forced to appear in public as toilet roll holder dollies.

6 comments:

  1. An unlikely story. Photographic evidence, please.

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  2. do you wanna go see that film with me it looks so freakin hilarious... btw - I have been a bridesmaid 4 times - hence never going to be a bride!

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  3. Tim, I burned it.

    Sarah, with outfits and all?

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  4. Yes - outfits and all. Well except one I was allowed to wear what I wanted but other than that horrid satin numbers...

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  5. I was also a 13-year-old bridesmaid. In ice blue satin with £3 white mini-stilettoes that had been coloured to match the dress with blue spray CAR PAINT!

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  6. Sarah - boo! Let's go & see it.

    Spin - hahaha! Classic.

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