August 3, 2002, May 26, 2005, and May 27, 2006; Clarksburg and Sistersville, West Virginia

By Alisha Huber

Konni’s wedding didn’t start until 3 p.m., but we were all in the church nursery fussing over her by noon.

She sat primly on a child-size plastic chair, nervously unwrapping Hershey’s kisses. The curling-iron smell — hot metal, singed hair, ozone — blended with hairspray, aerosol and Nicorette as Ashley pinned Konni’s coiffure together.

Konni’s younger sisters fluttered in and out, stopping long enough to eat a Hershey’s kiss and stare wide-eyed at the white beaded dress hanging in the corner before their mother sent them on another errand.

“Katie,” Verna said, “are you sure there’s a pen by the guest book?”

“You just sent me to put it there,” Katie said, her coffee-brown eyes leaving the dress’ white train long enough to roll at her mother.

“Could you go check, please? Katie — go.”

The obedient daughter left the room, glaring at Kassi, the youngest, who had missed her mother’s notice and so had not been sent to run a useless errand. She left like someone who was being sent to fetch the cows in a blizzard, away from warmth, light, and laughter, out into a cold blue world.

The church nursery, despite the ghostly presence of that white dress, felt like the soul of human joy. Women were everywhere, coming and going — bridesmaids, flower girls, wedding coordinator. Konni looked like a queen holding court, all attending on her.

These women, though churched in a conservative tradition, knew how to be bawdy. The previous night, Konni’s just-married friend had gone shopping with her at the local Wal-Mart. “Hey, how about these for Jamie?” she had said, holding up a pair of boxers covered in cherries. She told this story, blushing and giggling, Konni blushing even more. Ash, who couldn’t have been more than 18, raised her diet Coke. “Here’s to Konni—single no more, virgin no more, frustrated no more.”

Jennifer, the maid of honor, was engaged to the groom’s younger brother. “You’re so lucky,” she told Konni. “Chad will probably never get it together so we can get married.”

“You’ll be married before we are,” I piped up. I had been perched quietly in the corner, laying a belated hem into the navy satin of Kassi’s bridesmaid gown. I was engaged to the bride’s younger brother, whose college career seemed to dilate as time went on, as if it operated under its own special relativity.

Ash’s eyes widened when I spoke, as though I had materialized out of invisibility. She eyed my hair, which hung in brown tangles to my waist. “I haven’t done your hair yet! We’re starting in half an hour, come here.”

I shifted closer to her, within the scope of her acrid cloud. My eyes stung with the hairspray. My head was the eighth and last to appear under her hands that morning. “Damn, I want a cigarette,” I heard her mutter. She pulled my hair into a high ponytail, curling the trailing ends. “This will have to be good enough,” she said.

I made a knot to hold my thread and handed Kassi’s dress to her. All of the bridesmaids began shrugging into the homemade dresses, buttoning each other up the back. I fastened Katie’s last button and squeezed her shoulder.

JC used to tease me about loving him for his family, and a grain of truth hid in that comment. His family was full of good women, dependable women. I didn’t grow up with any sisters, and I had only boy cousins on my dad’s side for most of my life. When I met JC’s sisters, a giggling gaggle of them, I wanted to be part of their little clique. I wanted to make pie with Katie and stay up all night talking with Konni. I wanted Kassi to share a joke with me and no one else.

“You look beautiful,” I told Katie. It was true. Her flat little chin, which had made her look like a chipmunk in elementary school, was now the cupid point to her heart-shaped face. She had resisted Jennifer’s makeup brush, for the most part, and what little painting she had allowed highlighted her big eyes, the same color as her brother’s.

“It’s time,” said Jennifer, carefully lifting the white dress off of its hanger, unbuttoning the back. Konni stood up and took off her button-down dressing shirt. She wriggled out of her jeans and pulled on her stockings and girdle.

Getting the dress over Konni’s head without rumpling it or her hairdo was a job for three, but we managed it. Kassi and Katie buttoned the back closed. Ash came forward with a mouthful of hairpins and secured Konni’s veil in place. Jennifer closed the nursery door so that Konni could see the full-length mirror on the back of it. “I look like a bride!” Konni said. Verna bit her lip but didn’t cry.

Konni had insisted that Jamie not see her at all before the wedding. “I want you to have that dopey smile when I come in.”

“I’ll have it anyway,” he said, but she had still insisted. As a result, the church was divided, the women up in the nursery, the men in the basement. When JC and I met for a quick hug in the stairwell, our meeting felt clandestine; we whispered, kissed, then ran back to our own territories. Missives traveled up the stairs, mostly carried by Jamie’s younger cousin Jacob, panting and grumbling as if running a marathon.

The men, it was reported, could not figure out how to fasten their boutonnieres. Verna sighed and went down to help them. At 30 minutes until the wedding, as the girls began to button Konni’s dress, Jacob appeared in the doorway. “They all forgot to wear black socks. They’re running to Wal-Mart.”

“Now?” we all screamed.

Jacob shrugged and ducked out. The women’s laughter followed him, echoing in the stairwell.

Two years later, Jennifer got married. As I had predicted, she beat me to the altar by a year, almost to the day. I wasn’t in her wedding, but I arrived early and crept up to the nursery — the same nursery in which we had prepared for Konni’s wedding — to see if I could do anything to help. “I don’t think anything is left to be done,” she said, “but you can hang out up here if you want to.”

I did want to, as it turned out, and so took my accustomed place in the corner, letting the waves of chatter wash over me. Men were banished once more, and the women again were speaking such bawdry that the poor bride blushed to her temples. All the bridesmaids wore purple this time, and I overheard a conversation between the two flower girls. “Everyone’s wearing purple because that’s Jenny’s favorite color,” the older one said.

“Who’s Jenny?” the little one asked.

“She’s the bride.”

Just then, Jennifer, already in her white dress, the train draped over her arm, walked by them. On her way, she stopped to tell them how pretty they looked. The expressions on their faces matched ones I had seen on television, on the faces of lepers kissed by Princess Diana.

As she moved away, back toward the hairspray and chatter, the authoritative flower girl continued, “It’s her birthday today. That’s why she gets to wear such a nice dress.”

For our wedding and honeymoon, JC packed only black socks. “I didn’t want to forget,” he said. We got married an hour’s drive from the nearest Wal-Mart — from the nearest anything, for that matter.

I had no bridesmaids, since JC’s sisters had filled that role one time too many in recent years. My roommate helped me dress and pinned my hair into the most elaborate braids and twists I’ve ever worn. She fixed my makeup, hiding the dark circles my restless, nervous night had left behind. Then she was off to get dressed and flirt with my stepbrother.

My mom poked her head in the door to let me know she had gotten there, and then slid back downstairs to greet the guests. Katie, Konni, and Kassi came and went, but mostly stayed away — Katie and Kassi were with their boyfriends while Konni was trying to keep JC calm. JC’s mother stopped in to hug me and wish me well, but she, too disappeared, off to figure out what, exactly, the mother of the groom should do.

JoEtta, my mentor and friend, sat with me and tried to calm my trembling nerves, but she eventually went downstairs to look around and change for the ceremony. My grandmothers didn’t even come upstairs. My aunts and female cousins peeped in, but at 30 minutes to go, I was utterly alone.

I sat on the bed in my room at the inn, fiddling with the ribbon I had tied around my bouquet of irises and poppies, pulled from highway medians and friends’ gardens.

Downstairs, I knew, everything was in place. I had welcomed the musicians that morning, in the early light. Kassi and I had set up the cake the night before, colorful origami flowers splayed along the top. Katie had helped me set out the centerpieces, the bounty of my family’s gardens. All the linens were in place, the food was ready, and the 100 people I loved most in the world were arriving. The preacher, a man I loved and respected, was waiting for us. I had JC’s ring on my thumb, and he had mine.

The silence was absolute.

I tried to pray for quiet in my heart, but none came. Instead, what filled my mind was the sound of women laughing. My mom sharing dinner with her friends, having banished my brother and me to the second floor. The women from Monsoon Wedding, painting the bride’s hands with henna and singing raucous songs. The ladies from my church laughing with each other while they tried to give me the words that would make my life with JC easy. Ashley making a suggestive toast to Konni in front of Konni’s mother. My grandmothers telling the story of how they met each other at my parents’ wedding: “I couldn’t stand her kid, but we just loved each other,” they said, lighting their Virginia Slims in unison.

The heavy presence seated on the bed beside me was the absence of women, laughter, and blessing. I never knew that I wanted that at my wedding. I never knew, either, that this was the point of bridesmaids and flower girls. In that moment before I permanently joined myself to a man, all I wanted was to be reminded of the joys of being a woman among women. I hadn’t known to ask for it.

My mother is getting remarried this fall. I pray daily for the grace to give her what she, by insisting on joining the party downstairs, inadvertently denied me.

I don’t know if she had a room full of laughing women before her first wedding. I hope that she did. I hope that she will know to look for it again, to desire to be sequestered for a few hours in a space without men. I want her train to be made of stronger stuff than tulle; it should be woven from women’s laughter.

Alisha Huber writes for Rosetta Stone software. She also writes as a freelancer for publications all over the Net. Her latest project is blogging at The Next Christian Generation about teaching Sunday school.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, July 6th, 2007 | Email This Post

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