the following short edition that includes two important attributes a bride should consider in choosing a Maid of Honor and three important roles a good Maid of Honor should fulfill.For the Maid of Honor:
You’ve watched your best friend dream about the perfect wedding day for years, and now you’re about to help make it happen. While it’s comfortable to think that all she needs is you to show up in your mint-green formal and flirt with the best man, she really needs you for much more than that. In fact, she needs you more than you, or she, can even imagine. Think of it as your parting gift as she moves on to a new phase of life. If you follow this list to become the perfect Maid of Honor, she will truly always remember you as her very best friend forever.
For the Bride:If you’re the bride, appoint a Maid of Honor ASAP. You will not regret going through the difficulty of picking just one Maid of Honor from all your many friends and buying a special gown. At all costs, I’d like you to avoid the 11:00 p.m. Bridal Breakdown the night before the wedding. A Maid of Honor to help you with all the planning,
organizing, and decisions along the way is a big help. Trust me, you need her.
Choose a Maid of Honor carefully, based on the following two qualifications. Preliminarily, a Maid of Honor must be:
*Accessible: Your Maid of Honor needs to live close, close enough to come over at any time for any emotional or physical need. This is very important.
*Dependable: This sounds bad, but the best Maid of Honor is not in a relationship, especially not about to be engaged herself. The perfect Maid of Honor is not quite a full-time job, but is going to cut significantly into evening and weekend time, more and more as the wedding approaches. She must be someone who is dependable and able to fulfill the bride’s needs.
If the friend you were thinking of to ask to be your Maid of Honor doesn’t live close, is preoccupied with a lot of things in her own life, or isn’t that great at organizing, you might want to choose someone else.
For the Maid of Honor:
If you were asked to be a Maid of Honor, consider what is requested of you carefully. As the bride’s best friend, she very much needs you to help her get through all the organizing and decision making. What does she really need you to do? The following three roles are indispensable for the perfect Maid of Honor:
1. Shopping Coordinator/Companion:
This is the very first thing your best friend needs you for. When you think of an engagement, the first thing you think of that follows is, of course, a wedding dress! Whether or not the bride has had her gown picked out since she was twelve or she has never thought about a dress design before, she needs to get this huge stress out of the way ASAP. As the shopping coordinator, go through the yellow pages and look for bridal shops. Plan a route on a
Saturday. Don’t forget to plan a break to eat for lunch. On shopping day, be the one to drive so the bride can focus on making decisions. As companion at the store, take along a clipboard. Mark down the price and notes about the style of each dress the bride seriously considers. Take pictures to look over when you get home.
In addition to the dress, the bride will also need the Maid of Honor’s help with shopping for:
· accessories and jewelry to match her wedding dress
· the groom’s band
· bridesmaid outfits
The Maid of Honor can also be helpful in helping the bride make decisions about flowers and reception food, music, and favors. For example, as the Maid of Honor, volunteer to burn the reception play list CD. Take suggestions from the bride and groom, but then take that stress of their hands.
2. Parental Liaison
Planning a wedding is time consuming and costly. The money side of things is often the most difficult part of what the bride has to do. It’s hard to blend the demands, expectations, and circumstances of two sets of parents. A good Maid of Honor can be very helpful to the bride by constantly reminding her to keep open communication with parents. Remind her to ask both families for a budget and to send them updates of how the planning is going. She needs a friend to keep her on-track and to help her juggle all the different needs and opinions in the wedding planning process.
3. Worry List Specialist
The extensiveness of a planning a wedding causes a lot of stress on the bride. A good Maid of Honor can help ease a lot of that stress by playing scribe and organizer for everything on the bride’s mind. In essence, the Maid of Honor should really be the one in charge of the wedding planner to take down notes as the bride makes difficult decisions. If the Maid of Honor is there to write things down and make sure things are done in order, then the bride only has to focus on making decisions.
For Both:
Any bride with an accessible, dependable Maid of Honor at her side who can successfully function as shopping coordinator/companion, parental liaison, and worry list specialist will have no problems at all with planning a wedding. Plus, the situation is win-win because going through the wedding planning process as a Maid of Honor will make the Maid of Honor’s future wedding planning experience so much easier just through practice. As bride and Maid of Honor, the work you’ll do together will be hard, but the wedding can bind your friendship close forever, even though the bride’s situation is about to change.
If the friend you were thinking of to ask to be your Maid of Honor doesn’t live close, is preoccupied with a lot of things in her own life, or isn’t that great at organizing, you might want to choose someone else.
For the Maid of Honor:
If you were asked to be a Maid of Honor, consider what is requested of you carefully. As the bride’s best friend, she very much needs you to help her get through all the organizing and decision making. What does she really need you to do? The following three roles are indispensable for the perfect Maid of Honor:
1. Shopping Coordinator/Companion:
This is the very first thing your best friend needs you for. When you think of an engagement, the first thing you think of that follows is, of course, a wedding dress! Whether or not the bride has had her gown picked out since she was twelve or she has never thought about a dress design before, she needs to get this huge stress out of the way ASAP. As the shopping coordinator, go through the yellow pages and look for bridal shops. Plan a route on a
Saturday. Don’t forget to plan a break to eat for lunch. On shopping day, be the one to drive so the bride can focus on making decisions. As companion at the store, take along a clipboard. Mark down the price and notes about the style of each dress the bride seriously considers. Take pictures to look over when you get home.In addition to the dress, the bride will also need the Maid of Honor’s help with shopping for:
· accessories and jewelry to match her wedding dress
· the groom’s band
· bridesmaid outfits
The Maid of Honor can also be helpful in helping the bride make decisions about flowers and reception food, music, and favors. For example, as the Maid of Honor, volunteer to burn the reception play list CD. Take suggestions from the bride and groom, but then take that stress of their hands.
2. Parental Liaison
Planning a wedding is time consuming and costly. The money side of things is often the most difficult part of what the bride has to do. It’s hard to blend the demands, expectations, and circumstances of two sets of parents. A good Maid of Honor can be very helpful to the bride by constantly reminding her to keep open communication with parents. Remind her to ask both families for a budget and to send them updates of how the planning is going. She needs a friend to keep her on-track and to help her juggle all the different needs and opinions in the wedding planning process.
3. Worry List Specialist
The extensiveness of a planning a wedding causes a lot of stress on the bride. A good Maid of Honor can help ease a lot of that stress by playing scribe and organizer for everything on the bride’s mind. In essence, the Maid of Honor should really be the one in charge of the wedding planner to take down notes as the bride makes difficult decisions. If the Maid of Honor is there to write things down and make sure things are done in order, then the bride only has to focus on making decisions.
For Both:Any bride with an accessible, dependable Maid of Honor at her side who can successfully function as shopping coordinator/companion, parental liaison, and worry list specialist will have no problems at all with planning a wedding. Plus, the situation is win-win because going through the wedding planning process as a Maid of Honor will make the Maid of Honor’s future wedding planning experience so much easier just through practice. As bride and Maid of Honor, the work you’ll do together will be hard, but the wedding can bind your friendship close forever, even though the bride’s situation is about to change.
