How To Stay Friends With Your Bridesmaids

Asking a friend to be your bridesmaid is a big responsibility. For you and for her.

For her, it means taking on part of the burden of making sure that your wedding works out exactly as you have planned it. Organising the young flower girls. Making sure you look your most beautiful at the ceremony (arranging veils and trains etc.) Providing a shoulder to cry on/hand to hold when the stress gets to you. Helping with the RSVPs, choosing the venue, the cake ... the list goes on.

Your Best Friend Might Not Make Your Best Bridesmaid

And what's your responsibility? Well, firstly you need to make sure that you're choosing the right person to be your bridesmaid. (And that might not be your best friend either.) You need to have an individual by your side who is reliable, trustworthy, organised, reasonably unflappable and available. Your childhood friend who now lives 3000 miles away might be the person you want, but you really need to have somebody with you who can be physically there quite a lot of the time. Your other Uni friend might be great fun but a bit scatterbrained and you really don't want to worry about what she's forgotten or likely to forget.

And in return - what can you do?

We've all been at weddings where the bridesmaid has been forced into wearing a dress that really didn't suit her. Maybe she was tall and lanky and had to wear a strapless dress that she just didn't have the curves for. Or maybe she was voluptuous and had to face up to frills that did nothing to accentuate her good points but emphasised the not-so-good.

We think one of the greatest thank-you's you can pay your chief bridesmaid is allowing her to choose her own bridesmaid dress. Okay, so we don't mean that she can rock up in any outfit of her choosing on your wedding day (she might be a Goth or something!) but you do need to let her have a say in what she wears.

Different Colours, Same Shade

Let's think first about colour schemes. Say you've chosen blue. Now there are many different shades of blue. A baby blue pastel might look stunning on your blonde bridesmaid but a bit washed out on another. There's nothing to say you can't have different shades of blue for your bridesmaids dresses - that's called an ombre effect. Same goes for pinks, greens, purples, reds.

Sometimes It's Not All About Style

Don't feel that every bridesmaid has to wear the same style dress either. You can keep to a colour theme but let your maids wear variations of dress. Some could be in strapless dresses, others in a high neckline, others in halter-necks.

You'll find literally hundreds of different bridesmaid style dresses at Dessy in a rainbow of colours and hundreds of different designs. Have a browse. Set up a moodboard. Ask your maids what they would like to wear.

Make sure your maids look their very best on your wedding day and they'll be friends for a long time (and you'll also end up with the wedding photographs you want.)

What do you think. How are you planning on dressing your bridesmaids?

Photo credits: Featured image Awkward Family Photos, second image Christian Oth Studio, fourth image Araudo Photography, fifth image Mr Haak via Style Me Pretty.