I'm not a particularly social person. Most nights you'll find me at home, doing wedding preparation (read as: blogstalking), reading, writing stories I never finish, watching copious numbers of dvds, tv shows, etc. That sort of thing doesn't leave much time for partying and clubbing, which is fine because I don't really do those things anyway. What this does mean, however, is that I have a very small circle of friends. And the friends I do have are scattered all over the show; no 'big group of friends all hanging out together' stuff for me. This did, however, make it far easier to choose my bridesmaids than it would if I had a gazillion best gal pals.
Easiest was the first choice:
Sister Ruby Slippers.
I was a bridesmaid at her wedding in 2003, but the one thing I regret is that the photographer never got a good shot of just US, the sisters, together (something I plan to rectify at my own wedding). This is the best shot I could find - taken by a family friend - of us waiting outside the chapel. There probably was a good professional photo of the two of us with some other people, but I don't have access to that.
Sister Slippers and I aren't super close, but it's not for any particular reason. I guess we just move in different circles and do different things. Growing up with her wasn't the most fun in the world, and we had many the catfight, but once we got a bit older we realised we had more in common than before. A four year age gap isn't conducive to having stuff in common when one of you is twelve and starting to crush on boys, and the other wants you to play My Little Pony with them. It also helped that once she moved out she stopped annoying me with her slapdash forgetfulness and leaving stuff everywhere :-) So now we have a friendly sisterly bond. She likes some craaaap movies and some shiiiiit music, but we have the same sense of humour and we get along well.
My sister duly chosen - of course, you've got to have your sister as a bridesmaid, unless you really hate each other - my other choice was obvious:
Best Friend Ruby Slippers (hereafter known as J).
OMG, look how chubby I was in England!I met J in 1999 when we did journalism together at university. For the first few weeks/months I knew her as a girl in my class, said hi to her if we bumped into each other on the way to other classes, that sort of thing, but that was it. Actually J is a year younger than I am, but the way our uni course was structured was that we could pick two electives, one for our second and one for our third year. I picked film and journalism, as did she, but she did hers the opposite way around! So I was in my third year and she in her second when we met. I often wonder what would have happened if we'd never met, because I really have no other girlfriend as good as J!
This is going to be a long story. One day I happened to sit down next to J before class, and heard her reciting a line from one of my favourite movies of All Time, "What's Up, Doc?" It's a relatively obscure movie from 1972. I knew it because my Dad had seen it back in the day, and made us record it when it came on tv in the early 90's, and J had seen it because it stars Barbra Streisand, with whom she's obsessed. I was like, "Is that a line from "what's Up, Doc?" and she was like, "Oh my God, you've seen "What's Up, Doc?", and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It turned out we both loved musicals; she introduced me to the awesome fantasticness that is Judy Garland, and we're both nuts about classic films. Case in point:
Me: We're naming our wedding tables after our favourite classic film stars.
J: Oooh, can I be at the Bette Davis table?
Me: How do you know we're even having a Bette Davis table?
J: Um, DUH.
Me: Good point. In 2002 J and I went overseas to England, where we lived and worked for about nine months. And our friendship survived! Here we are at Picadilly circus:
And just so I can gloat, us with Dame Judi Dench after a performance of "The Breath of Life" at the Haymarket in London (Those tickets were worth every pretty pound). If you look at the first picture of me and J, and can drag yourself away from my double chin, you'll see the book we're holding is the playscript. That's why we look so excited!
Onto the men. This won't be as long, because I can't really wax lyrical about why Mr Ruby Slippers is friends with them.
Best Man Ruby Slippers:
R and Mr RS have been friends since high school. Like me with Best Friend RS, Best Man RS is also younger than Mr RS, but they met on a school trip, joined community theatre (which, incidentally, is where I met them both), and have remained friends ever since.
I really struggled to find a picture of R and Mr RS together, but there just doesn't seem to be one. So this is a pic of him (in the middle, with Other Groomsman RS on the left, and a good friend of ours, J-S, on the right.
Other Groomsman Ruby Slippers:
A is also a friend of Mr RS' from schooldays. He is very kindly helping us choreograph our first dance, since he teaches on the side. More on the first dance story later! Meanwhile, here is a picture taken of the three of us, the night Mr RS and I first got together. It was a Christmas party, it was well after 3 in the morning, and we look like shit, but I'm putting it here because it was a momentous occasion. And no, I don't know why we were pointing at a foot.
So...a nice even wedding party of two special people each. I sometimes wish it could be bigger, so we could have awesome big group photos like this:
(image by Carl Zoch)but it's okay. They're all four of them great people, and I'm so happy that they're standing up for us at our wedding.
As always, I did some photoshop on these to get different effects of softness and sharpness and brightness. I'm learning, but it's fun!
We took a quick moment to run through our dance. Goodness knows what Best Man RS is doing!
Who doesn't love a good jumping shot?
