Authors: Siri Agrell
In an effort to appease the MOB, Jodie did a detour to pick up a case of Corona and a variety of fun summer decorations like sombreros and fold-up paper lanterns. “I figured, how can anybody have a frown on their face when they are wearing a sombrero?” she said afterward.
Bridesmaids, though, are required to shop within the category of an Assigned Shower Theme, and any deviation, no matter how minor or well-intentioned, can cause an instantaneous demotion in the bridesmaid hierarchy. Jodie got to the cottage an hour late and saw the other guests sitting in a circle on the porch, sipping white wine spritzers and nibbling hors d’oeuvres in “perfect wedding shower formation.” The other bridesmaids kept pads of paper in their laps, jotting down notes as The Bride and her mother held court.
Jodie jumped out of the car and ran over to the group, arms laden with all the goodies she had brought to make up for her tardiness. Laughing and making jokes, she began decorating the porch—hanging streamers and handing out sombreros to the guests.
“About halfway through putting hats on people, I kind of looked out of the corner of my eye and I was getting the devil’s look from the Mother of the Bride,” Jodie remembered. “I could tell everyone was dying to play along but they knew it was better to side with Mom.”
In another setting, this sort of behavior would have been the stuff of fond female memories—a demonstration of individuality and humor that spoke to the intimacy of friendship. Jodie knew, though, that none of the other bridesmaids was going to risk “misbehaving” and take her side. The theme for this shower was clearly not Mexican fiesta, but WASP.
She glanced around and saw finger sandwiches with their crusts cut off and perfect pink decorations, a table overflowing with crisply wrapped packages, and the other guests uniformly outfitted in sweater sets and heels. “And I came and ruined it,”
Jodie said. “If it was any other kind of party that I was going to, it would have gone over like a really fun additive. I would have been a hero.”
The bridal shower had its beginnings in an act of sixteenth-century Good Samaritan sisterhood, when the community of a dowryless bride-to-be in Holland chipped in for gifts that would allow her and her low-income husband to set off on their own, free from Daddy’s fiscal clutches.
The beauty of the shower lay in its pure intentions. The bride had not asked for anything, but her friends were motivated by personal kindness to ensure that she had all the mortars and pestles she needed to set out on her new life, grinding chicken bones for her hubby with a medieval tool that now retails at Williams-Sonoma for $79.95.
It was not until the late nineteenth century that bridal showers were documented in the United States. Initially thrown by rich women in urban areas, the showers swept across North America like the Depression. The bridal registry soon followed, beginning
with the
Marshall Field’s department store in 1924 and gaining steam from boutiques to chain stores as the public developed a taste for personalized china patterns and light pink Cuisinarts.
Unlike the young Dutch woman to whom the shower tradition can supposedly be traced, the beneficiaries of the modern events often do not actually need much help stocking their pantries. Nowadays, the average bride weds at twenty-seven, an age at which, one hopes, she has not only moved out of her parents’ home but has managed to procure her own stemware and
bedsheets. Who needs a hope chest when you have a twenty-thousand-dollar line of credit?
Armed with finely honed shopping skills and wish lists as long as their bank statements, many brides now approach their showers as though they’ve entered the sweepstakes lottery, expecting their bridesmaids to arrange for the jackpot. One bride e-mailed her bridesmaids instructing them not to buy her individual shower gifts but instead to chip in for a stainless steel barbeque. They were still told to host a themed shower for the rest of the guests, however, and The Bride insisted on inviting almost every woman who would be at the wedding, all the better to maximize her haul.
“At the end of the shower, her mom said, ‘Oh, look how we cleaned up,’” said Beatrice R., one of the first-time bridesmaids who had planned, hosted, and paid for the shower of her university friend. “All the guests were still there when she said it. It was very tacky.”
It is completely aboveboard, or so it seems, for brides to register for everything from “his and hers” iPods to home entertainment systems. I’m sure it is only a matter of time before someone registers for a car and asks her bridesmaids to make down payments—or before I snap and get engaged just so I can make people buy me a puppy.
On top of the presents, bridesmaids are also expected to orchestrate an afternoon of festivities to rival the wedding itself. Meals, munchies, a fully stocked bar, and an appropriately deco-rated venue are all on the to-do list. Two California bridesmaids found themselves under the glare of the MOB after the shower they hosted was over. They had dutifully organized a country
club brunch for thirty-five female friends and family members and had even arrived early to decorate with the streamers, balloons, and other festive paraphernalia they had bought.
By the time the brunch began, though, only seven people had shown up, including The Bride, her mother, the two bridesmaids, and two friends they had forced to come along.
“We spent $250 on party favors for seven people,” said Courtney L., who has been a bridesmaid four times. The expense was nothing compared with the abuse they endured from the MOB. Originally, The Bride had wanted her shower on a specific Saturday, one that coincided with the beginning of the two bridesmaids’ exam schedules. When they politely explained this and asked to reschedule, they received a “disappointed” phone call from their friend’s mother, asking why they couldn’t accommodate her request.
At the shower itself, the MOB did not acknowledge either woman’s existence until it was time to go home—not an easy thing to do when you can count your lunch companions on one hand. She ignored them through the course of the event, and they passed the time drinking champagne and orange juice to keep their spirits up. Two hours later the gifts had been exchanged and the meal finished, and finally the MOB deigned to address her hosts. The bill had been delivered, and the bridesmaids were reaching to take it when the MOB sniffed, “No, no, I’ll get it.”
“But in a polite way, like a courtesy offer,” Courtney said. “Our friends are looking at us, like, ‘Let her take the bill.’” Instead of graciously insisting that she would pick up the tab, the MOB turned to her daughter and commented on how the two young
women were trying to show her up. She snatched up the billfold and pulled out her husband’s credit card.
“Then she opens up the bill and says, ‘Oh my gosh, how many mimosas did you guys drink?’” Courtney said.
As if that weren’t embarrassing enough for the bridesmaid hosts, the women had another run-in with the meanie MOB in the parking lot, as they were loading her daughter’s gifts into her car. Both of the bridesmaids had driven to the country club in their own vehicles, one an Audi and the other a Cadillac.
“She walks out and says, Are these your cars?’” Courtney remembered.
The girls said yes, and waited for her to say, “How nice, and thank you for all of your efforts today.” Instead, the woman gave them a withering stare and climbed into her own car, taking one last parting shot as she turned to leave.
“Maybe I should have let you pay,” she sneered.
The modern bridal shower requires women to shell out for almost anything their betrothed friend desires, but it is regarded as unseemly (according to popular wedding etiquette) for the bride’s family to make those demands directly. Bridesmaids, then, are really nothing more than a human buffer between the bride and her unreasonably high demands—and heaven forbid they refuse to act accordingly.
Bailey S. was in a wedding where the bride reacted with unadulterated contempt at the shower that had been thrown in her honor. “She freaked out, because in her head it wasn’t right,’ the four-time bridesmaid remembered.
The shower was a surprise party, and the bride burst into tears when she showed up, but not because she was overcome with happiness. She did not have on the “perfect pink dress” she had always imagined wearing to her wedding shower, and was horrified that she had been tricked into arriving unprepared. To make matters worse, the shower was held in the home of The Bride’s mother. None of the bridesmaids lived in her hometown, so they were faced with the choice of having the party at her family’s home, renting a hall, or inviting fifty guests back to their hotel room. It just seemed to make sense to have it at the MOB’s house, where the guests would have room to relax and the caterers could do their thing without operating out of a bathroom or broom closet.
To make life easy on Mom, the attendants had taken care of every detail, from the caterer to the flowers and decorations, and The Bride’s family never had to lift a finger or even open the door to guests. The Bride, however, saw her family’s involvement in her shower as a faux pas of the highest degree.
“She thought it looked terrible that her mom would be hosting her own bridal shower,” Bailey said. “She said we had humiliated her.”
The Bride said her mother was not to blame, even though she presumably knew the event was taking place in her own living room. The bridesmaids, though, were chastised for taking liberties with the way the shower was planned, from its inappropriate venue to the fact that they had sprung it on her unawares.
“Her buzzword was
etiquette, etiquette, etiquette,”
Bailey said. “It became code for ‘You screwed up.’”
Going to showers really shouldn’t be as painful as being forced into basic training or fat camp. What could be so bad about getting together with the girls on a sunny Saturday and cracking open a bottle of champagne at noon? The problem is that, unlike other forms of organized torture, shower season lasts as long as you have friends who are getting married, which for most of us means at least from the ages of twenty-one to thirty-five.
It is easy to develop a case of Shower Burn, the gradual fraying of nerves that develops from losing every weekend of your twenties to the black hole of Wedding Season.
Helpful bridesmaids are meant to spend the shower taking dictation on who bought which gift for the bride, refilling snack trays, and cleaning up discarded wrapping paper. They should carefully thread the ribbon from each gift through a ring of cardboard to construct a fake bouquet—or, alternatively, wrap the decorations around their own necks until they fall into blissful unconsciousness.
There is no good excuse to skip out on a bridal shower—whether it’s work, distance, or stringent bail conditions, your absence will be regarded as a personal affront to the bride, her family, and the future of her marital union.
Talia B., a first-time bridesmaid, had already organized one expensive shower for her friend in the months leading up to the wedding. The betrothed was a dance instructor, and when a handful of her adult students approached the bridesmaids about throwing their own event. Talia and her cohorts believed they would be given a much needed respite.
“We thought, great, go ahead,” she said. The women assumed that they would not have to go to the second shower or be responsible
for any aspect of its success. It was to be held at a restaurant, where guests would enjoy drinks, appetizers, and a main course as the bride opened her gifts. The bridesmaids were invited after all, and they relished a day where they would not have to clean up or be in charge. When the bill came, though, the other hosts freaked out. “These ladies decided they didn’t want to pay for it,” Talia said, “so we had to foot the bill at the last moment.”
Even if you don’t have to throw down your American Express at every event, attending multiple showers can leave bridesmaids spent. Sarah G. was forced to attend three bridal blowouts held for the woman she had met on vacation and who unexpectedly asked her to be a bridesmaid. She came to each party knowing no one but The Bride, and had to explain to each guest who she was and why she was there. “Usually when you go to a shower, there are your old friends or your close friends, so it might not be great fun but you can go and chat and whatever,” she said. “Imagine having to put a huge amount of effort into it, and meet people and introduce yourself.”
When the other bridesmaids and guests would ask where she came from, Sarah had to patiently explain that she had met The Bride just recently in Mexico. Then she would turn around and whisper under her breath, “And where am I never going again? Mexico.”
The main responsibility of bridesmaids once the shower is actually in full swing is to give the appearance that the event is not just another cash-grab but a grand occasion for everyone involved. It may be tempting to just let people show up, dump their presents
on the table, knock back a couple shots of vodka, and head for the door, but wedding showers are supposed to be micromanaged festivals of fun.
And there can be no fun without games.
Of all the attendants’ duties, making up shower activities has the potential to be one of the more entertaining bridesmaid tasks. Imagine a rousing session of Pin the Pre-nup on the Groom, or an engagement obstacle course where women must jump over career hurdles, change into revealing outfits, and drain a martini while saying something charming before dashing to a finish line decorated to look like an altar.
Alas, the games bridesmaids referee are usually simple tests of knowledge for the bride-to-be to ace. They are also meant to celebrate the magic of marriage or to establish whether the bride is equipped to perform her womanly duties. One etiquette Web site suggests sticking to topics such as “food and travel.” Right, because most women spend their lives creating original recipes and jet-setting around the world.
At my friend’s shower, we had constructed a sort of
Dating Game
questionnaire—a pretty standard bridal shower pastime, according to various Web sites and bridal guides. The groom had been e-mailed a series of questions, and I had written his responses on blue cue cards. At the shower, we asked The Bride the same set of questions and scored her ability to match his answers. Mensa-worthy it was not.