I met her at junior school, now thirty-three, she had been a constant in my life. She was pretty, funny, short like me, and had hair for days. Everyone thought she wore extensions but it was natural, other than the ombre dye job. She lived a street away from me growing up, too. We tried our first fag together, bunked off school and dyed each other’s hair.
I wanted to be a nice bride, not a bridezilla and give my bridesmaids choice, and not choose dresses that I liked, but ones that they liked too, as they would have to wear them. I always knew what colour I wanted but for style I was open to ideas.
Anyway, more to the point, one down, or technically two, because my sister obviously would be my chief bridesmaid/maid of honour. A lot of people think that you can’t be maid of honour if you are married but you can. Maid of honour unmarried, matron of honour if you are. Who knew, so two down. The only problem was you needed bridesmaids that would not upstage the bride, but my sister would upstage me in a binbag.
We were very different looking. Chynna was taller than me, in proportion, slim, beautiful, full lips, cute nose and gorgeous chocolatey skin, with long straight hair, the total opposite of me. I am one of four siblings all younger. My sister was the closest to me in age and then I had two younger brothers, Taran and Isaiah. We were all very close. Edward had already asked my brothers to be groomsman, as he got on really well with both of them, which was really nice to see. He was also close to Chynna. I had a step sister, too. Edward didn’t get on with her as much. To be fair, she was a bit of a bitch. To put it bluntly, another Debbie downer, like Spence, when it came to me and Edward, and funnily enough her name was Debbie. My step-mum was a bit better now we were older as she didn’t have to have us round every weekend, but she hated us when we were kids, my dad couldn’t spend a quid on us without her getting the hump. Debbie came as part of the package unfortunately. I never really liked her but mainly because my dad had a good relationship with her. She didn’t see her real dad so spent a lot more time with him than I had, but I felt I had to ask her to be a bridesmaid for my dad’s sake.
Edward had young nieces so thought it would be nice to ask them to be bridesmaids, as they were adorable, and I thought it was cute to have little ones in lovely dresses. I hadn’t got any nieces or nephews yet and all my cousins who were little and young were now eighteen. I didn’t get to ask them properly as someone beat me to it, but the next time I saw them they were super excited and couldn’t wait to go shopping. We had a look online to see what sort of dresses they liked the look of and surprisingly they liked very fitted numbers. I thought they would want big poufy dresses so they looked like mini princesses. They were both under ten but growing all the time, so I decided to leave the shopping for dresses to nearer the time, to save on alterations.
I did have other friends. Of course, there was Spence, but he couldn’t be a bridesmaid, although he would probably look good in a dress. My other close friends that have known me for years, I kept saying should I, shouldn’t I, but if I had to think about it maybe I already knew my answer. They were not constantly in my life, they seemed to disappear off the face of the earth when they got a boyfriend, but when we did catch up it was like we had never been apart.
I got some good advice once from someone at a wedding fayre: if you can’t have all your friends as bridesmaids give them other jobs to do. Ask one to be your witness, one to do a reading, which I thought was a genius idea. When I met up with these friends and they asked who the bridesmaids were, I cringed and then thought, should I ask them.
I had five bridesmaids, three big and two little, but the rate they were going I was going to have five bridesmaids taller than me. Oh dear. I would need them to all wear flats. How was I going to stand out amongst them? Maybe I would have to put them in awful dresses after all.
They thought they were being helpful, sending me pics of dresses they liked. I did think I will put them in different style dresses but the same colour, as they were all unique, different shapes and sizes, and all had different styles. Shoes, it didn’t matter really, but I thought they would need to wear flats as three were already taller than me and by the time of the wedding the two younger ones would be, too, and I didn’t want to look like a dwarf in photos.
I kept saying we would meet up and go shopping, but whenever we would arrange anything my endo would flare up. I wanted to have a nice day out so they could try on different styles see what suited them, then probably end up looking online as it would be much cheaper.
Edward had already sorted his stag do out, everyone invited and, paying off the amount monthly. He was
