Nine weddings. Zero fairytales. Endless survival skills.

Original Post Date: 08.05.2020. Revised: 07.19.2025.

My debut as a flower girl occurred in the early 1960s. This was when the wedding Mass took place early on a Saturday morning, usually at 10:00 a.m. It was followed by a breakfast for all who had fasted the night before in order to receive Holy Communion. Afterward, guests went home to change for the reception while the bridal party made its way to the photographer’s studio for a photo session.

By the time all was said and done, it was mid-afternoon, and the female members of the bridal party were eager to get to the bride’s parents’ home. They needed to reapply their makeup, spray their beehive hairdos with Aqua Net™, and spritz their floral bouquets. The carnations held strong, but the delicate roses began to droop like sleepy parishioners during Father Frank’s sermon. A blast of sugar water would resuscitate them just long enough to serve as table décor around the “money box” at the reception.

The groom and groomsmen—who had gone off to relive the previous night’s bachelor party—reappeared around 6:00 p.m. They were responsible for driving the bride, the maids, and me to the reception.

As a result of their antics, no one should have been surprised when the zealous and slightly inebriated driver of bridal car #2 plowed into the back end of bridal car #1 decimating the “Just Married” sign and leaving a trail of blue and white Kleenex™ tissue flowers in its wake.

Due to the quick reactions of the groom, the bride walked away with nothing more than a tilted tiara and a flattened bouquet of white orchids that had started to meet their demise under the hot lights of the photo studio. This event sent the beleaguered blooms quickly and mercifully to their greater good in one fell swoop. The rest of us? Well, fortunately, the blood stains were barely visible thanks to the royal blue color of the bridesmaid dresses and the black dinner jackets of the groomsmen.

It was deja vu all over again for my second flower girl gig. This time, the impact of one car smashing into another was enough to send one of the groomsmen to the hospital. He didn’t make it back to the wedding reception (broken teeth, broken jaw) so his partner was forced to sit out the couples wedding dance. While the rest of the bridal party sashayed its way through “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” Mary Jane seemed perfectly content sitting at the bar, swigging down whiskey sours with one hand, while holding a bag of ice to her temple with the other.

All this to say: I’ve been in nine wedding parties—none has gone well.

Wedding #3: A majority of the wedding party got food poisoning. Something we ate that morning disagreed with us by the time we got to the Slovenian Hall. Bridesmaids took turns holding each other’s bouquets while the rest were in the stalls losing their lunch. Judging by the sounds coming from the men’s room, the groomsmen fared far worse. The poor bride spent most of her reception sitting next to the wedding cake, sobbing.

Wedding #4: I was asked to give a toast. I spent no small amount of time crafting it, and the speech was met with such enthusiastic applause that my wedding partner clicked his glass so hard into mine it shattered—embedding sharp slivers and shards of glass in my hand. (I made it to the end of the night—band-aids and all. I wasn’t about to miss a chance to show off my disco moves during “Staying Alive.”)

Wedding #5 was epic. A college friend of mine married a musician/singer. It was my first destination wedding, and I was a guest of her parents as they drove me—and the rest of her siblings—to Nashville, Tennessee.

The bride was beautiful, brilliant, boisterous, and blessed with a voice that could make Idina Menzel rethink her career. Organizational skills, however, were not her strong suit. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when, after the ceremony, I—along with two other bridesmaids—found myself stranded in a church parking lot somewhere in a suburb of Nashville, with no ride to the reception.

Now, it’s important to remember cell phones didn’t exist yet. And none of us had a copy of the invitation. Even if we could’ve called a cab, what would we say?

“Do you know where there’s a wedding reception going on right now? It’s somewhere in downtown Nashville.”

So, we stood there, stranded in a dark parking lot, our voluminous, ruffled floral-print dresses fluttering in the summer wind, hoping someone would realize we were missing. (Tell me this isn’t a country western song just waiting to be written.)

An hour and a half later, a stranger in a pickup truck showed up. We assumed he was sent to retrieve us. Fortunately, he was. We climbed into the back, sat on the tool storage box, and held on for the ride.

When we arrived at the reception—inside a recording studio, of course—the bride and groom were on a makeshift stage singing a duet of “I Will Always Love You.” They hadn’t even noticed we were gone.

Weddings 6, 7, and 8 were variations on the disaster theme: flat tires, forgotten bouquets, a fainting bride, a surprise appearance by an ex-husband... you can’t make this stuff up.

Thinking I was a proverbial wedding jinx, I vowed never to get married unless hell froze over (which it did—one Saturday in January many years ago. It was 17 degrees below zero, with a wind chill of minus 28. The kind of cold that makes your eyeballs hurt.)

Regretfully, that wedding didn’t come with a “happily ever after,” either. Which only reinforces what I’ve long suspected: I make a far better guest than I do a member of the bridal party. Or bride, for that matter.

I may not have had my fairytale ending. But I’ve got stories. And a survival kit. And a well-earned front-row seat at the next wedding—preferably with a cocktail in hand and no responsibilities whatsoever.

Cheers to love, luck, and bumpy midnight rides in the back of the pickup truck!

What’s the most memorable wedding moment you’ve witnessed — touching, hilarious, or just plain bizarre? You’re in good company here. Tell me everything.

“Wedding Bell Blues” — written and composed by Laura Nyro, © 1967, published by EMI Blackwood Music Inc.