How I got a bridesmaid

So back in the fall of 1997 Josh and I decided to get married. I told my parents and maybe some co-workers, but I was utterly terrified to tell Anna. Like losing sleep scared, like maybe I'd rather call it off than tell her. I just thought I would be such a disappointment to her, such a sellout. Finally I worked up the courage to tell her, and she was a little grumpy, but mostly just said that she knew we'd get married, but she figured we'd wait until we had a kid first so that there'd be a reason to - so she was kind of letting me off the hook while saving face. As the wedding approached, which was going to be in NC at the beach, Anna started telling me about the dress she had gotten to wear to my wedding - pink chiffon, purchased at the FoWad on the UWS. Can someone else please describe FoWad, or is it one of those places you can only really know through experience? Anyway, pink chiffon from Fowad, but she didn't quite like certain aspects of the styling, so she altered it herself to suit her fancy. Then she told me about the matching shoes, etc. I didn't really know what she was up to, maybe just kind of being silly and making fun of the wedding thing, which was okay by me, as I just wanted her to have fun and express herself however she wanted, as long as it didn't totally freak my parents out, and they would never have thought that pink chiffon was any sort of joke. The wedding was not going to have any bridesmaids or that sort of thing, just a simple, fake Jewish ceremony performed by a friend in a beanie-whirligig hat under the chuppa on the beach. Of course, if I were going to have had a maid of honor, it would not have been anyone else but Anna. So, skip to the day before the wedding (perhaps someone else can tell the story of how they almost missed the plane to NC and how Anna was riding the taxi driver), and we had a meeting on the porch to go through the plans, like a rehearsal of sorts. Anna was there b/c I had asked her to hold a chuppa pole. So we were talking about what to do, etc., and she looked at me, dead-on, eye-to-eye, in her most serious intense face and said, "You do know I'm your bridesmaid, right?" And I said, "you are?" She said, "yes." This made me happy inside, I thought it was so sweet, it was like she knew she should be it, knew I wasn't going to go the wedding party route and would never have asked her to do such a thing, but like she thought she should be there with me, by my bridesmaid, even if we were butch old hippies trying to buck the system whilst participating in it. I like to think of it as reclaiming the bridesmaid. So, I asked her, well do you want flowers to carry, and she said, "of course!" So the next day we took some of the flowers out of my bouquet and made one for her. She helped me get in the wedding dress and managed my veil and all of those bridesmaidly tasks. And she walked next to me and stood next to me and she cheered and jumped up and down when it was all over and she looked so happy and that made me so happy and what a beautiful day, what a great wedding, and what a perfect best friend. Thank you, Anna, my best bridesmaid.

p.s. I will try to get some pictures of her in the dress scanned in at some point.