No Response Rant

Being a bridesmaid or maid of honor is certainly a big job. Even if the bride doesn't want much help, there are still dresses and shoes to buy, parties to plan, hotel rooms and beauty treatments to pay for. I get it, you've got a lot on your plate.

Still, that doesn't mean it's okay to skip the normal guest stuff. Seriously, I realize that the bride knows you're planning to attend the wedding, but you still need to send in that little card (or respond online if applicable). For starters, often the person you are responding to isn't the bride but her parents, and they may not really know who you are or be in contact with you. Secondly, those little response cards are a tool for plotting the seating chart and sometimes planning the meal (our caterer for this wedding needs menu selections by the week before, for example). If you aren't in that pile you can cause a lot of confusion. It's also bad enough that some guests will invariably need to be called for their responses but for a member of the bridal party to create all that extra work is just plain rude!

Same goes for the shower, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, day-after brunch, or any other parties you are invited to. Unless you are the person who is receiving responses (obviously, you know if you are attending or not) you should make sure to respond, even if you are helping to plan the party.

We ran into this problem with my sister's bridal shower. As maid of honor, I was the main point person on it with a lot of help from the mother of the bride (secretly, of course, for etiquette's sake) and a little help from a bridesmaid and two friends. The other three bridesmaids not only didn't show up but only one bothered to let me know she couldn't make it! Yup, true story. My poor sister had two members of the bridal party (including me), two friends of hers, and a whole bunch of her mother's friends attending her shower. Honestly, it was a lovely shower but I felt really bad that her friends were so lame about coming and so few let us know either way that we had to plan the party for anywhere from 15-40 guests! Do you know how hard that is?

If we hadn't been graciously offered the home of a family friend to hold it in it would have been a disaster.

Now I'm sitting here, five days after the RSVP date for her bachelorette party with only one response. Since I'm hiring a limo I really need a head count right away and it's making me very angry that I have to call everyone AGAIN!

So, here's a rule that needs to be lived by, when you get an invitation in the mail, check your calendar and respond immediately. That way you won't forget and you'll be making the lives of many people far easier. Oh, and don't forget to mark the date in your calendar while you're at it!

Lowered Expectations?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I get really offended when I read comments like, "Bridesmaids are only required to buy a dress and show up at the wedding." Now, I get the sentiment, since bridesmaids can be disappointing, but I also hate the thought that our nearest and dearest friends and family should be expected to do so little. I mean, even as a non-bridesmaid friend I've done lots of things for brides, because they are my friends and I love them!

So, it especially bothers me both when I hear about low expectations for any attendants, but especially for maids or matrons of honor. After all, the words "maid" and "honor" convey a certain amount of service AND benefits.

I know very few maids of honor either do or are expected to do as much as I am for this wedding, in my past experiences the bride has needed far less help than my sister, but there is always a lot that can be done to make the bride's planning days and wedding much easier and even more special, and the right woman (or man, really) should do what they can within their means.

Of course, that can mean doing anything from throwing a simple bridal shower in your home or helping the bride make her favors to throwing a lavish bachelorette party in Vegas or just listening to endless hours of chatter about the exact shade of white she wants her dress to be. It's never wise to say yes to anything you can't afford, of course, but that doesn't mean you can't do many things that will make the bride feel as special as she should!

Most important, you should always show off how well you know the bride by tailoring everything to her. For example, for the bachelorette party my sister requested a night of bar-hopping, so I'm hiring a stretch SUV or party bus with a DVD player and bringing all her favorite 80s movies we loved as kids and mix CDs of her favorite tunes from her whole life. She doesn't know anything about that yet and I just know she's going to be so excited! I'm also preparing a bunch of trivia questions about her, getting progressively sillier and more embarassing (roast-style). To save money and prevent mixing-related spills, I'm bottling a few homemade cocktails, sort of a gourmet version of her favorite drinks with fresh juices and such (I haven't decided on the exact recipes yet) for the ride.

What I would really like is to get a karaoke machine for the bus but I haven't found one within the budget. Still trying, though! We've always loved to sing.

Still, the point is that it's really all about her and celebrating the past before she enters her future. Not to mention that a lot of what I'm doing doesn't cost much but will have a big impact.

I got off on a bachelorette tangent, obviously, but my real point is that when you make an effort on anything it will make things nicer for the bride. Whether it's just a nice gesture or actually taking care of some work SHE would otherwise have to do you can rather easily be an exceptional MOH.

Especially if the snarky posters on message boards of a certain well-known wedding site are to be believed and attendants aren't pulling their weight these days!

Welcome!

I've been thinking about starting this blog for a long time and it kind of makes me laugh that I actually am when there's only 1 month, 1 week, and 2 days left until The Wedding. Still, the further things go with this wedding the more I have to say and the more I get annoyed that there isn't much out there for the good Maid of Honor, the kind that really wants to step up not just stand up at that altar. There are a million sites and blogs on being a bride! I also see far too many people saying that the only real responsibility a bridesmaid or even MOH has is to buy the dress and show up for the ceremony. That personally offends me, and I feel that there should be better representation of those of us who help the bride, wrangle the 'maids, and throw some killer parties to boot!

"Monster of Honor" is really just a joke with some of my friends and my sister's friends. At least, they say it's a joke! I'm all hyper-organized (for the first time in my life) and basically am working as an amateur wedding planner for my sister. Since I'm naturally sort of a lazy slob with a busy life, trust me, I know anyone can be good at all the work a MOH should do! The wedding planning part is a bit much, a full-time job, really, but I'm enjoying myself immensely, especially since it means I have to talk to my sister a lot and that's a lot of fun.

So, whether you are a MOH yourself looking for tips, a bride trying to pick or work with one (or more), or just a randomly interested person who stumbled across this, I hope you find something useful or at least entertaining here! Let me know if you do. :)