Weddingbee Blog

My little sister got married last month, and I was her maid of honor. It was an absolutely wonderful wedding. The weather for their outdoor ceremony was perfect, she looked stunning in her white gown, her groom got misty-eyed when he saw her for the first time. I was honored to stand up beside her, holding her bouquet and rearranging her dress, on one of the most important days of her life. I don’t think that I stopped smiling once.

Sisters

Later, I was honored to stand up and give a speech at the reception. Generally, I can keep my cool pretty well in front of large groups. I can act confident even if I am not. (It really helps that I taught speech and debate last year to a bunch of squirrely high school students.) So the most that I was nervous about was flubbing a line or two. What I should have been nervous about, however, was the waterworks. That’s right. Within 30 seconds of starting my speech, I broke down in tears. And then proceeded to cry throughout the rest of the speech. Mr. Mole told me later that I had all of the mothers in the audience in tears as well, so I should count that as a successful MOH speech.

My sister during the speech

What hit me—hard enough to make me cry—was the amount of love in the room. Everyone who was in the room was there to support my sister and her new husband in their marriage. Everyone loved and cared about them. Everyone would be there to support them through good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I realized that this feeling in the room is what truly made their wedding so beautiful: the flowers and the weather and the cake were just lovely bonuses. I cried with happiness because I knew that my sister was so fortunate (and deserved) to have all that.

Still kind of teary eyed at this point

Later, after taking off my torturous black patent pumps, I started to think more about my own wedding. Mr. Mole and I are electing not to have a bridal party, mainly because we are expecting our total number of guests at the ceremony in Vegas to be somewhere in the range of 20–25 people. If we were to have even a small party, we would severely diminish the number of people in the pews!

There is also another reason, a deeper one, why we will not be having a bridal party. We know that everyone who is coming to our ceremony is one of our nearest and dearest. These are the people who love us and have made our lives (and love life) possible. So, really, everyone in our audience deserves to be a man/maid/matron of honor. It would be far too hard to single anyone out. So, instead, everyone will have a role. Mr. Mole’s mother will walk him down the aisle, and my father will walk me down the aisle. Our sisters will be doing readings. Everyone will participate in a ring-warming ceremony before Mr. Mole’s father and my mother present our rings to the officiant.

Are you forgoing a traditional bridal party at your wedding?