Helping Your Bride from Far Away

In Arizona, probably 90 percent of our Twirl bridal parties have girls who live all over the country, or in other countries.  I always feel so bad for brides who feel the weight of all the wedding planning on their shoulders because their bridesmaids are scattered all over the place.  I was talking to one of my brides last week who was going through this, and it broke my heart for her.

So to you bridesmaids out there – step up and volunteer!  It’s really hard when your bride is planning from far away to realize all that she has to do, but knowing you’re there for her no matter where you are will make her planning much more enjoyable and stress free. 

Here are some wedding planning tasks bridesmaids can offer to help out with:

Addressing Wedding Invitations

Offer to have the invitations and stamps sent to you – you can address, stamp, and mail them from wherever you are.  This is such a huge task – believe me.  I hated addressing my wedding invitations!  I think it’s perfectly acceptable for wedding invitations to be addressed with mailing labels, but if your bride wants them written by hand make sure you have that nice handwriting the rest of us are jealous of.  If she’s hiring someone to address her invitations with calligraphy, you can still offer to stuff, stamp, and take them to the post office.

Make Phone Calls to Wedding Vendors

You can follow up with wedding vendors to confirm dates, times, and details.  You can also make a nice spreadsheet for the bride and groom with all the contact information for each wedding vendor, along with service details.  They’ll love you for this organization!

Plan the Bachelorette Party

This is something that the whole bridal party can so easily to via email.  Your bride will be so excited that her bridesmaids have all communicated and planned her bachelorette party/weekend.

Help Manage the Bridal Party

You would think that a bride and groom’s closest pals and family would be completely on top of it when it comes to getting bridesmaid dresses and groomsmen tuxedos ordered…so wrong!  It baffles me on a daily basis how many bridesmaids and groomsmen I have to hunt down at Twirl.  As a responsible member of the bridal party (and you obviously are if you’re reading this), offer to help manage the bridal party.  You can get a list of names, emails, and phone numbers and be the one in charge of reminding everyone to get their orders in on time.  Slacker bridesmaids and groomsmen can be so stressful (and heartbreaking) to the bride and groom – by taking care of this matter, they’ll never know who was slacking.

Volunteer for Day-Of Duties

The very last thing brides, grooms, and families should be doing on the wedding day is running errands, paying vendors, helping guests, etc.  Hopefully your bride and groom will have a wedding planner to take care of all of this, but if not, offering to take the lead to help the walk down the aisle run smoothly will be much appreciated.  This isn’t a job for one bridesmaid, so team up and see what needs to be done.  Otherwise, you may end up seeing these two at the end of the aisle.

Just remember, whether around the corner from your bride, or a thousand miles away, being there for whatever she needs will be the best gift you could give her. 

-Keri