If your budget doesn’t allow for covering some of your bridesmaids’ costs, you can find other ways to get the point across to them that they are important to you. Money is only one vehicle for showing them love. Your time, your words, and your consideration in the details are all free ways to demonstrate to these women that you are honoring them.
My friends, for example, had a bridal army! A massive group of their friends walked down the aisle and clustered up front by the bride and groom. The bride and groom found it more important to honor those people in their lives whom God led them to honor than to have a traditionally numbered bridal party.
Especially if the girls walk down by themselves rather than with a corresponding guy, the audience will barely notice that your numbers are uneven. I’ve seen two guys walk a girl back up the aisle, just as I have seen one guy with a girl on each arm. I’ve also seen bridal armies of greater than ten on each side (by that point, guests lose count of the bridal party anyway).
Address their concerns. If you decline their suggestion, see if you can address their real need behind it. For example, if your parents were worried about your sister feeling left out, you can tell them how you intend to honor your sister in a different way.
I think the best case scenario is that your guy best friend would befriend your fiancé and vice-versa such that your dynamic in both relationships can appropriately change, allowing your fiancé to be the main man in your life. If this is the case, then your fiancé might want your best friend on his side.
Ah, PC. Sigh. As sad as it is that we have to think about being politically correct with our own bridal parties, we do to an extent. We are dealing with people we dearly love and so we want to be sensitive to their feelings.
Whether you lean more towards the lasting aspect of friendships or towards the influential, you will make a great decision when it is prayerful. Again, there is no rigid standard for which friend makes the perfect bridesmaid. However you consider the significance of your friendships, choose bridesmaids who are meaningful to you and to your soon-to-be marriage.
Consideration #2: Who can offer you spiritual and emotional support? Weddings provoke heightened emotions, both positive and negative. Having someone you can lean on when those emotions are yours or when they are directed at you can protect and enhance the joy of your wedding day. Between your unique blend of family dynamics, your goals and expectations…continued here
Even though I knew nothing logistically about being a bridesmaid, I began to discover that it meant something spiritually to be one. The fact that my friend chose me unconditionally to stand at her side that day and the fact that God used her wedding to change my life proved to me that something spiritual happens in the bridal party of a Christian wedding.
Beyond the benefit of having a crew to help with logistics, having a bridal party can be an integral strand of your marriage’s life-line. These are people whom you trust and love who are committing to you and your marriage!
