Accept No Substitutes
I was maid of honor at my best friend’s wedding. Both the bachelor and bachelorette parties happened the night before. The women stayed out till the wee hours, but the men partied all night long and continued into the following day, leading up to the evening wedding.
The best man was too far gone to make it to the wedding, so I ended up walking down the aisle with an alternate. He was a friend of the groom, who donned jeans, a T-shirt, and Converse sneakers. It wasn’t a huge issue, but his DATE was quite something.
She made an entrance in a tube top mini dress, paired with thigh high glossy leather boots. She had an obnoxiously large and noisy keyring, which instead of tucking away in her bag, she let jingle throughout the ceremony. The noise was so annoying that I actually was thinking of leaving the altar to take it from her.
This woman had also gone through a lot of stuff, and her dress revealed multiple large, distinctive, and self-inflicted scars on her thighs. Several older family members inevitably inquired about her scars, and she calmly responded that she had done it to herself.
She then went into sharing inappropriate and extensive stories about her horrible past relationship. She displayed an overall attention-seeking behavior, even when it led to negative attention. The nightmare was just getting started. As the stand-in best man, T-Shirt Guy delivered an impromptu yet effective speech.
As I began my speech, his date, for some inexplicable reason, decided that it was her turn to speak. I noticed her coming towards me from the edge of my vision. Still, I carried on with my speech, pretending not to notice her. When I finished, I shut off the mic, placed it on my table, and sat down, ignoring her clearly wanting me to hand over the mic.
Now she was awkwardly standing in front of everyone. Instead of silently congratulating my friend or just taking a seat, she threw a tantrum, began crying uncontrollably, and crumpled onto the floor, with T-Shirt Guy unable to get her back on her feet.
He reluctantly dragged her away from the front of the reception by her arm. After causing such a spectacle, you’d think she’d leave, but nope. She continued her erratic behavior, demanded a corner piece of the wedding cake, and even ended up tipping over a decorative table holding a large glass vase. So that’s how my best friend’s wedding unfolded.