Maid of Dishonor

by Laura Barcella

Two weeks before my 30th birthday, I got kicked out of my best friend’s wedding. Humiliating? Yes. Horrible? Indeed. My fault? Maybe.

Let me backtrack a bit. I’ve never been a very matrimonial kind of girl. Even when my childhood friends started freaking out about future nuptials, I didn’t bite. As a (shy, rather neurotic) prepubescent, I spent more time reading Sweet Valley High, comparing myself to the blond-haired, “perfect size six” Wakefield twins than concocting elaborate fantasies about my long-ways-off wedding night.

So when my best friend from high school asked me to be her maid of honor, I agreed with veiled reluctance. Not because I wasn’t excited for her. We had met almost 15 years prior, during freshman year at a private DC high school. As self-conscious 14-year-olds, we had bonded in that claustrophobic teen girl way. We spent every spare moment together, rolling around in our adolescent angst like pigs in poop. But eventually we grew apart when, after high school, Allie went off to a big Northeastern Ivy League while I headed to a hippie school in New England.

After college, we kept in sporadic contact, but things were different. We were different. I no longer felt like we understood each other the way we had as 15-year-olds scratching ankh symbols onto our sneakers with Sharpies. When Allie squealed, “I’m engaged!” on the phone from Beijing, then asked me to be her maid of honor, I agreed. But the ensuing chatter about three-carat rings and Monique Lhuillier gowns turned my stomach.

Three days prior to the fancy DC wedding – a huge black-tie affair on the night before New Year’s Eve – I was shopping for a wedding gift with Michelle, a high school friend (and fellow bridesmaid). I had organized a bridesmaids’ brunch for the following morning, and was feeling more than edgy about Allie’s approaching Big Day. My fear of public speaking had resurfaced; I broke into a sweat when I thought about the Maid of Honor toast I would have to make. The whole affair was so posh, so foreign, so utterly beyond my comfort zone.