The one-handed bridesmaid

Do you want to hold my bouquet or fix my dress?

That’s the question my sister asked me leading up to her wedding day. I tried to picture myself doing both. Knowing how clumsy I am, I could see myself fall over, knocking her down, messing up the dress, etc. But I also saw myself juggling two bouquets with one hand, and that wasn’t pretty either.

I didn’t want to make her dress look bad. I felt like fluffing it out was a more important job, because if you do it wrong then the pictures won’t be as nice. Pressure is on.

But holding two bouquets? I knew I could do it by putting one in the crease of my left arm and hanging onto the other one with my right hand, but I’d probably look awkward.

For those of you who were at the wedding, you saw that we decided it made the most sense for me to fix her dress. I was nervous about it, but I didn’t fall or make her trip or ruin the dress. I consider myself successful.

And I was actually happy about the decision once I was holding my bouquet. That was difficult as enough. I couldn’t switch hands with it or properly hold it with two hands, and it kind of got in my way every time I knelt down to fluff the gown.

I wouldn’t have enjoyed managing two bouquets. Plus, hers was heavier than the bridesmaid bouquets, which would have added to the difficultly.

It was my first time being a bridesmaid since the accident, so I had never thought about holding a bride’s bouquet or fixing her dress with one hand. I also didn’t consider how I was going to hook my right arm with a groomsman’s arm to walk down the aisle and hold the bouquet. The easy thing is to switch the bouquet to the left hand, but that obviously wasn’t an option for me.

I realized this during rehearsal the night before and gave it some thought before the wedding. I decided to keep it in my right hand, which made the linking and unlinking of arms a little awkward, but it was better than having it in my left arm and possibly dropping it.

I’m proud to say I survived the wedding without any clumsy, embarrassing one-handed moments, and everything (minus the rain) went great for my sister’s big day.