Where The Greatest Honour Lies

When my best friend got married a few years ago, I knew I would not get to be her bridesmaid. Although we'd not grown apart in any way since leaving school, she'd seen less of me than our other best friend, and she also had an older sister with two young children. So the posts of two grown up bridesmaids, one flower girl and page boy were all well and truly spoken for.

I was a little sad – I've always wanted to be a 'grown up' bridesmaid, ever since having been a flower girl in the 1980s in a nice lilac and lace cotton job – but I was not heart broken as I knew my part in this wedding lay elsewhere.

But then the second blow came. I would not be making the wedding or bridesmaids dresses. This was absolutely not because they didn't trust me, it was because of distances and time factors and the fact that my beloved best friend doesn't have the best visual imagination (something she freely admits to) and, already prone to stress in a high powered and demanding job, she didn't want the added stress of worrying her dress was not going to look the way she expected.

Our mis-spent youth.....

Having grown up with her, I knew this to be the truth, and although I would have loved to have made her wedding dress, I also knew that she was sparing the both of us some major stresses and fallings out. And I wasn't to be completely useless. Having very carefully and gently told me she was going to be buying a ready made dress, she made it all better by putting me in charge of her head.

My best friend is very beautiful – tall, slim, blonde – the kind of girl that makes dumpy little brunettes with hair that kinks in all the wrong places like me want to kill themselves. But she has spent most of her grown up life fighting a battle with her hair. It is blonde and straight, she wears it in a long bob and it always looks lovely. But it's as fine as baby's hair and therefore impossible to do anything with. You pin it up, it falls back down, you fluff it up, it goes static and then collapses, and clips just slide right out. So my challenge was to some up with a bridal hair decoration that would stay put, and to somehow make her sister's full length veil attach to hair that struggles to hold on to dust.

A close up of the wire headdress I
would make for her. The finished
piece would have little extra beaded
flowers placed to stand up from the
base.

I was delighted to be given such responsibility and quickly came up with the solutions for both, which was handy as, as time ticked on, my best friend's mum started to have outfit issues. I was called upon for advice and after several phone calls, a few visits and quite a lot of tea, it was decided that I would make her mum's outfit for her, and embroider it too.

I was happy. I had my place in the second most important wedding I have ever been involved in (the first was mine, obviously) and I had lots to keep me busy. Time ticked by, the wedding got nearer, and we started to work out the logistics of the day.

The whole hair thing was mildly complicated. The very beautiful hair 'wire' I had made needed to be put in by the hairdresser, but the veil, which had been kept separate, needed to go in much later, as it was too long for my best friend to wear about the place as she was getting ready. So we all eventually concluded that the only way round this was for me to go the house before the wedding, and assemble the problematic veil last thing before she left for the church.

The day of the wedding arrived, my brilliantly talented friend in the village came round and did my differently impossible hair, I got ready in the outfit I had made especially for this prestigious event, piled the rest of my family into the car and set off rather nervously to the house I'd spent a considerable amount of my teenage years in.

As I rang the door bell, I was expecting to be greeted by one of the bridesmaids, or maybe my best friend's mum or dad. Whoever answered, I was certainly expecting them to be all ready, barring the veil. Instead I was greeted by a family friend from their church, who ushered me upstairs where I was met by a very excited bride in her underwear and two semi-dressed bridesmaids.

They had waited for me to arrive before they got dressed – it was to be my job to get them all ready.

How I didn't cry and ruin my make up I'll never know.

Me and a bridesmaid.  Purely by accident
my outfit ended up being rather well
blended in colour!

I dressed the bridesmaids, did their necklace catches so they didn't ruin their nails. I cooed over the little ones looking utterly adorable in their gorgeous little outfits. And then I went into the master bedroom and put my best friend into her wedding dress.

I do this for a living – I have been putting brides into wedding dresses most days of the week since I was 15 years old. Yet as I helped my best friend place her dress correctly and started to do up the concealed zip, I realized my hands were shaking. Quite a lot.

There was no time to indulge though. We had a brief, watery eyed moment after I'd thoroughly inspected her, and then I was called for by her dad – he'd been saving his cuff links and button hole for me. And then I had to place her mum's hat just right.

Then I was despatched to retrieve the flowers from the water they had been eagerly drinking, dry them off and award them to my waiting girlies. Finally, I stood on the third stair and placed the veil onto the bowed head of my best friend.

They were all ready, and they'd been made ready by me.

I didn't realise this until I was back in the car and on my way to the church, but it hit me as we rounded the last corner and I saw all the guests - so many of them friends from our school days - waiting for the bridal party to arrive: unlike all of them, I already knew what they all looked like. I knew the colours, and I knew the styles, I knew what necklaces the bridesmaids were wearing and I knew precisely which bit of the bride's zip was a little bit sticky. Nobody else waiting at the church knew these things.

I've often been asked help my brides get ready on the morning of their wedding. It's a very special thing to be allowed into the family home on such a special day and put a nervous bride into the dress of her dreams, and I've always felt honoured to be there.

But it was this wedding - my best friend's wedding, all the little jobs the family had saved just for me, that made me appreciate what a very personal compliment it is to be asked to get a bride – and her family – ready for her big day.

I'm glad I didn't make my best friend's wedding dress. I would have worried endlessly about it, and I would never have been completely happy with it – I would have found something not quite right with it even at the wedding. Instead, my best friend gave me what I now believe to be the best job of the lot. I got her ready, I made her look perfect, and I saw the look on her face the first time she saw herself fully ready in the mirror. That was just for me, and even the memory of it still brings tears to my eyes.

Ali, it was the greatest honour you could have given me, and I wouldn't have swapped it for anything.