What Does It Mean to Be a Bridesmaid in 2021?
For American women, three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and being a bridesmaid. According to one report on average we can expect to serve as a wedding attendant five times—three of them occurring before we turn 27.
Still, it’s a love-hate undertaking. Wedding website The Knot notes that 95% of bridesmaids genuinely enjoy the duty. Standing by a close friend or family member during a milestone most spend their lives dreaming about is a personal, poignant pinnacle in any friendship. But over half, they also say, find the whole thing stressful. If you’re from the Northeast, that rises to two-thirds. Why? For starters, the cost. The average bridesmaid spends $1,200 per wedding. If you count dress alterations, bachelorette parties, or gifts, then it escalates to over $1,820.
That’s a lot. Especially when you consider most bridesmaids are twenty-somethings with early-career salaries. “I remember that feeling of being asked to be a bridesmaid—that excitement, but also, that panic,” Michelle Markowitz, co-author of Hey Ladies, a book that gently satirizes bridal culture. “I’d think, this is going to be another thousand dollars that I don’t necessarily have right now, or I’m going to have to save.” Adding salt to the financial wound is that often, you’re spending it on random but ridiculous stuff: “bride tribe” tanks, tchotchkes inscribed with wedding hashtags in farmhouse-calligraphy font, matching, mass-produced gowns made of miscellaneous polyester-blend. (“The best thing is you can shorten it and wear it again!” a montage of brides tell a horrified Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses.)
Then there’s the fact that, more often than not, women are sold the idea that their wedding is the most important day of their life. With that mindset, the lead-up—and making it all perfect for the bride in question—is often fraught with emotions as well as fear of disappointment. Markowitz recalls serving in a wedding where bridesmaids were instructed to wear purple dresses. “When I showed up, another bridesmaid took one look at my dress, and went, ‘It's the wrong shade of purple.’ I was like, did I just get purple shamed?”
Indeed, these conflicts can be so petty that they’ve evolved into their very own pop-culture canon. The aforementioned 27 Dresses, Bachelorette, and, of course, Bridesmaids, all chronicle the passive aggressiveness that emerges as smart, educated, and frankly, dysfunctional women are suddenly regulated to menial event planning tasks. Even My Best Friend’s Wedding’s emotional climax centers on Julia Roberts’s maid of honor speech to Cameron Diaz. “I had the strangest dream,” she says, the camera closing in on her lilac gown. “I dreamt that a psychopath was trying to break the two of you up.”
It’s easy to think that being a bridesmaid inches closer and closer to mania in the modern-day, as we navigate pastel color-coordinated spreadsheets about South Beach bachelorette Airbnbs and play bridal shower party games with Aunt Nancy. Perhaps it feels that way even more as women’s education levels and retention in the workplace increase, and conversely, the idea that a wedding is life’s pinnacle decreases. (“I have a decade of working and living independently from my parents under my belt, so there are many life events—good and bad—that make me who I am,” author Hannah Kirshner previously wrote for Vogue. “I have had, and plan to continue having, exciting moments in my career and personal life. My wedding will be a big one, but it’s not the only one.)
Plus, as it turns out, being a bridesmaid has always been, well, a pain in the ass.
The murky origin story is that wedding parties started in both the Roman Empire—where legally, you needed several witnesses to a wedding—and feudal China. “A bride would have attendants to protect her from evil spirits,” Dr. Angela Thompson, who teaches sociology at Texas Christian University, told The New York Times in 2018. “By having several women who are dressed alike, the spirits, or kidnappers, wouldn’t know which person was the bride.” (“Dear god,” a friend who’s currently a maid of honor told me after hearing this story. “Give me stuffing bachelorette gift bags any day.”)
Even as kidnapping became, uh, less of an issue, being in a bridal party chafed at everyone for centuries. “It is generally admitted by thoughtful men that there must originally have been some good reason for the employment of groomsmen at wedding ceremonies which has now been totally forgotten,” a writer noted in the Dec 4, 1879 issue of The New York Times. “No one can point out any purpose which these accomplices in matrimony serve.” Meanwhile, a 1905 Pictorial Review article titled “Wedding Arrangements: Plans for the Easter Bride” bemoaned the ugly dresses often doled out to bridesmaids. “Bridesmaids’ frocks have long suffered from monotony in design, want of taste in selection, and a startling variety in execution,” the author wrote.
As traditions fall by the wayside, however, things are slowly changing. The Knot reports that, since 2015, they’ve seen a steady decline in females in the wedding party all wearing the exact same dress, from 55% in 2015 to 31% in 2020. (Some brides are bucking that trend even further, merely asking friends to stick to a color palette.) And while a dozen bridesmaids used to be common, more women are pairing down their parties. “Say bye-bye to the wedding party, or please, no more than three—with limited guest counts, our couples truly had to stick to the essentials,” wedding planner Fallon Carter told Vogue when asked about how the COVID-19 era changed weddings. “The hair and make-up hours that were saved opened up a whole new world in our timelines.”
Yet, whether we’d like to admit it or not, there’s a part of us that might be sad if bridesmaid culture, even the sillier aspects, disappeared entirely. “I genuinely miss that time of my life. It’s crazy—I did not see that coming for me personally,” says Markowitz, who is now in her late 30s. “We had all the time in the world to get together, go in on an Airbnb, and group text each other. Sure, it was annoying at times—but there are also some really great parts about it too.” So go forth and rock that mauve gown, hashtag that half-baked pun or bad last name portmanteau, and remind the group text about that overdue bachelorette party Venmo. Because one day, you'll be wistful about all the big ones.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
