Saturday, May 11, 2013

Bridesmaid business



According to my to-be sis-in-law’s sister, the beauty of being a bridesmaid is that you get to experience all the excitement of getting married without actually having to undergo all the responsibilities that come along with it. According to her it’s a no brainer, since you only have to dress as the bride instructs you to dress, without having to worry about how you look on that day. In plain simple words, if you look like the bride of Frankenstein on that day (or worse, bridesmaid of Frankenstein’s Bride), it will all be the bride’s fault not yours. Which is something I do not agree with.

People who know me know that I am not the frilly-attired flower-bearing, cake serving smiley type who perpetually emanates bundles of sugary sweet bridal joy. Hence I am so not your ideal bridesmaidsy type. I have been lucky so far to have been spared of this torture since I am taller than most my friends (I come from a family of long limbs for which I am grateful) and haven’t yet been made the coat rack on which all frilly things that the bride likes hang. The logic is that the bridesmaids should be much shorter than the bride. The aim is apparently, to make the bride stand out by making her escorts look ugly. The intention - not to let one of the lesser beings, the bridesmaids steal the show which I find repulsively degrading as well as personally insulting.

But now, my time has come to become a one of those servile less-prettier-than-the-bride faces. Unfortunately, my brother’s bride-to-be happens to be an inch or so taller than me and therefore, either out of pure sisterly affection or out of obligation, she has insisted that I be one of her bridesmaids. Parents strongly advised against turning down her request (which I was very much tempted to do) and as a result, here I am, one of the frilly lot, letting some strange woman measure me up and down, turn me this way and that, scrutinize my every nook, curve and dimple. This is the first time that my body assets are being so candidly discussed, debated over, agreed upon among one another and I don’t think I like it very much. 

Dancing practices are in full sway (oh I do love the way the dudes move to the music like back-sprained coconut trees) and the household is in uproar, preparing this, that and everything. A man had asked Rs 65,000/- just to teach the wedding dance (Its funny how the word "wedding" instantly raises the price on everything noh?) A saree jacket that only takes around Rs1000/- to stitch goes up to Rs 15,000/-, makeup which is just 1800 becomes 1,00,000 and etc. So as a result, I end up the tutor and them, my faithful students. And I get paid nought :/

Evenings are hot, sticky and energy draining which makes it conducive to neither dancing nor doubling over with laughter at the dance-challenged people. Weddings can be fun I guess, though I am dreading the inch thick makeup, bottles of hairspray emptied over my poor hair and the stifling, suffocating dresses that I am convinced were invented as torture instruments for misbehaving women back in the day.

Await more bridesmaidsy posts. Oh I’m sure there’ll be plenty more where that came from.  
   

2 comments:

Jack Point said...

Weddings have become a big item of aspirational spending.

I think the 'standard' Sri lankan wedding costs about 2-2.5m, which is an astronomical sum compared to the average income of a middle class family.

Such a waste of money and time.

lady grouch-a-lot said...

Agreed wholeheartedly. I just fail to see the point. Might as well hand over that amount to the newly wedded couple so that they can actually do something useful with it!