10 Tips On How To Be The Perfect Maid Of Honor At Your Next Wedding
Being a maid of honor is a great honor but it also comes with a tremendous amount of responsibilities and work. You want to make sure your best friend has the perfect day but weddings are messy affairs. From the moment that ring is on her finger to the moment when she finally says ‘I Do’, there are many events to plan and unfortunate mishaps that will happen. Here are 10 tips on how to be the perfect maid of honor so you and your bride can survive all the wedding drama.
1. Take A Break
Planning a wedding is stressful for everyone involved. While you want to support your bride 100% while she is trying to create the wedding of her dreams, it’s important to remember that you also need to support yourself. Take mental and physical breaks when wedding planning becomes too much to handle or your bride becomes too zealous for you to handle. You cannot support her if you yourself aren’t at your best.
2. Carry emergency and extra everything.
Be prepared. Whether it’s the bridal shower or the wedding itself, you want to carry emergency sewing kits, tampons, fashion tape, and etc because what seems like small mishaps can be like massive disasters. If you’ve stocked up and tried to prepare for any situation, when accidents happen, your bride knows that you’ve got her back.
3. Have a planner
She has a wedding planner and you have a physical planner. While your bride might be able to remember the dates of the bridal dress fitting, bridesmaids fittings, groomsmen fittings, bridal shower, bachelorette party, and rehearsal dinner off the top of her head, you, for sure, cannot, no matter how excited you are for the festivities. There is just too much to remember. Keep a physical planner so you can keep track of all the wedding mayhem and make sure you don’t forget important dates or details that you are in charge of as the maid of honor.
4. Organize the bridesmaids
You might be the maid of honor but your bride also selected other women to be part of her bridal party. While you might want to personally oversee any major tasks that the bride has asked for your help on, there’s nothing wrong with enlisting the other bridesmaids to help out as well. Make sure you and your bride aren’t trying to do everything by yourselves or you will be swamped by all the minute details. These women are some of the most important people in your bride’s life and they would be happy to help out!
5. Research with her
Your bride is only one person and there is only so much she can do in a day. As her maid of honor, you probably have a good sense of her style, her aesthetic, and her goals for her wedding. By helping her research, you can help expand her scope of ideas and eliminate potential venues, vendors, and designers quickly. Two heads are better than one and you will surely get more done!
6. It is her day.
Sometimes, it is easy to forget that this is her day when the months stretch on and the stress piles up. While it’s unreasonable to ask that you do everything your bride asks of you, try to be patient, understanding, and compromising. This is her day and you do want the best for her. Whether it is the fifth bridal shop or an ugly maid of honor dress, try to remind yourself that this is her special day and you want her to feel special and supported on that day.
7. Play both sides
When it comes to weddings, all the family and friend drama comes out. Your bride will be dealing with a lot of attitude and fending off a lot of opinions about what she should do and what she hasn’t done. While you don’t need to deal with this drama on a day-to-day basis, try to step in during those special events like her bachelorette party or wedding day and be a neutral third party and alleviate some of the tension. Your bride will appreciate not having to step into an argument just this once.
8. Do what you would want her to do as your maid of honor
A lot of maid of honor duties aren’t that glamorous. Whether it’s holding up your bride’s skirt so she can go to the restroom or being the designated driver at her bachelorette party, you might not always want to do these duties. But consider whether you would want this kind of help at your own wedding someday. A wedding is stressful enough and she could really use some extra support and a helping hand.
9. Mishaps will happen
You and your bride can plan everything to a T but accidents will always happen. Learn to accept that things cannot always go according to plan and embrace the changes that these accidents create. Once you accept the whimsicality of these mistakes, you and your bride will have a much less stressful day.
10. Remind her she already has the guy
One of the most important jobs of a maid of honor is keeping your bride grounded. When your bride is stressed and overworking herself to create this fantasy of a wedding, remind her that she already has her happily-ever-after. She has the guy and everything else is just decorations, accessories, and embellishments. What she needs more than help and research is a friend to remind her when she is getting in over her head and needs to remember she already has it all.
