Being a bridesmaid may be an honour, but it’s also a pretty thankless job — only with an actual job, you make money, not blow it all on some horrid peach satin creation and a boozy minibreak package deal involving custom hoodies and matching slutty mermaid costumes. Sure, there’s the smug prestige of being considered a first-rate mate, but is it worth devoting your free time to Pinterest inspiration boards and YouTube tutorials on making origami swans? Maaaaaybe?
It’s no wonder, then, that even the best of us can crack under the pressure to be a perfect lady-in-waiting. Somewhere between Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids and Scarlett in Four Weddings and a Funeral, we find ourselves hitting the snooze button, spiking the punch bowl, and snogging the best man. Maybe our dress is all wrong, or there’s a flask tucked into our bouquet, or we’ve committed some other party foul that’s got the vicar in a tizzy and the groom’s gran clutching her pearls.
Hey, it happens. Just ask these disgraced former bridesmaids, whose taffeta-clad trips down the aisle involved a fair amount of fireworks and a little bit of scandal. Here, they share their wedding-day confessions.
"I was wearing one of those Two Birds bridesmaid dresses and was meant to buy a sort of bandeau bra to wear underneath it, but I just didn’t. And then I also decided not to wear any underwear at all. Somehow the groom found out and put it in his speech. It was kind of an army wedding so everyone cheered and it was obvious that I was the bridesmaid he was talking about. I clearly brought it upon myself."
"Our friends had a beautiful beachy destination wedding a few years back. The locale was gorgeous, but the weather was scorching. When the afterparty wound down, the bride and groom headed back to their room and a few of us decided to have some drinks in town. Some locals convinced us to cool off in the sea, and the next thing I know another bridesmaid and I are playing topless volleyball in the ocean with a handful of the groom’s ushers.
I walked home in a man’s dress shirt and my dress remains in a crumpled, sandy, saltwater-steeped pile at the bottom of my laundry bin. The bride and groom were amused by it all, but another couple ended up falling out over it.
Not going to lie: It was really fun, even if I cringe every time I run into these male friends."
"It’s not my proudest moment but when I was younger I got wild at a wedding where I was a bridesmaid and cheated on my boyfriend — who had recently cheated on me, for what it’s worth — with a groomsman. I never told him, but we did break up soon after."
"I was a bridesmaid in a family wedding at a Mexican resort, and things got a little messy — I blame the generous free drinks policy. I woke up jetlagged and insanely hungover, but what really did me in was the shot of 'tequila' we took with the bride just before the ceremony. One of my cousins had helped himself to a display bottle of Cuervo, but as soon as we took the shots we realised it was just filled with some soapy booze that was not meant to be imbibed.
I spat it out, but the potent combination sent my already shaky self over the edge. Halfway through the outdoor ceremony I had to sit down — as in, frantically gesture to the wedding photographer to grab me a chair while my loved ones and lots of random looky-loos in the pool watched on.
I managed to get through a billion photos before hiking up my floor-length gown and peeling off the Spanx that were cutting off my circulation. I tossed them in the nearest bin in full view of guests, but the sense of freedom was worth it."
"I was in an Indian friend’s wedding and was also emceeing the reception, so I was wearing a bright red sari, bangles, and a bindi as requested by the bride. But I needed to go see another friend’s wedding ceremony before the first friend’s wedding, and I didn’t have the time (or ability) to get dressed in the sari in between. So I cleared it with the second couple that I would be dressed this way for their ceremony and would have to leave before the reception. They were fine with it, but the mother of the bride was not as appreciative. She berated me for dressing in something red, shiny, jangly, and belly-baring at her daughter’s wedding and asked, 'Why didn’t you just bring a cake to jump out of?' I was very happy that I needed to leave that situation."
"I was on a hen weekend that involved taking a stripper limo — yes, that’s a thing — to a country-and-western bar. Guess which bridesmaid got kicked out for falling asleep at the bar? Luckily I rose like a phoenix and managed to negotiate my way back in."
"It’s not that I got too wild — it’s that I didn’t make the wedding at all. I’d had to send my passport off to get my visa renewed, and because of some admin delay it didn’t come back to me until a week or so after my good friend’s destination wedding. I just literally couldn’t get on a plane.
I felt awful — especially because this was after she’d spent a couple of hundred quid on my custom-made bridesmaid dress."
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