Bridesmaid's Blog
Have you been asked to be a bridesmaid? Not sure what to expect? Share in Emma's experiences over the next seven months as she heads deep into bridesmaid territory...
The big day draws nearer, and the last couple of weeks have been filled with enough activity to fill a whole bridesmaid’s biography. But I will spare you all the nitty gritty and rewind, instead, to some pivotal scenes from Sarah-Jane’s own ‘pre-wedding DVD’. We had planned the ultimate girls’ weekend away, a break titled ‘Wife in a Weekend’
(although Sarah-Jane didn’t know it yet)…
Day 1: Friday
3:30pm: The first scene opens on a clear, warm day, with the five of us – Sarah-Jane and her four bridesmaids – in a car headed for Kleinmond, a small holiday town by the sea. Singing along to Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton, we drive straight into a menacing rain cloud hovering right over Kleinmond. But it would take a lot more than a little rain to dampen the spirits of four girls accompanied by a bride-to-be. And so…
5:30pm: We arrive in the tiny town like a pack of soccer yobs, hooting and whooping. Our first evening in Sarah-Jane’s beautiful family holiday house consists of Chinese takeaways and Top Deck (we vow, as a team, to make this our last weekend of chocolate – fittings in two weeks, ladies!), and a High School Musical screening, at Sarah-Jane’s request.
3:00am: We all collapse in a heap, due to an overexposure to late-night chatting and a ridiculous sugar-high, which peaked approximately three hours ago.
Day 2: Saturday
9am: Rose, Julie and I are roused by the splendid efforts of Sarah-Jane and Amy, who belt out a vigorous version of “Mama Themba’s Getting Maaaaaried Here Tonight”. Oh dear. Rose and I (morning people) leap up to locate breakfast, while Julie (not such a morning person) yanks the covers over her head, hangs her feet out the bottom, and resumes resting.
11am: With most of us
breakfasted and showered, we resolve to leave for a day trip to Hermanus by 11:30am. While Sarah-Jane showers, Amy shows us her Bag Of Tricks, designed to set in motion a series of tasks for S-J to complete in order to earn the title of ‘Wife in a Weekend’.
Included in Amy’s tog-bag: a tutu, sunscreen, and a South African flag.
But more of this later…
11:30am: We have each changed outfits at least twice and done one another’s hair, but most of the party are still wandering around the house draped in towels, looking for something to wear. We regroup in Sarah-Jane and Amy’s room, where we resolve again to leave - by 12:30pm.
12:30pm: We sit and chat. In towels.
1:30pm: Eureka! A group of women prove once again that with a lick of lip gloss and a dash of willpower, any goal can be accomplished in just under five hours. We leave Kleinmond for the 45-minute drive to Hermanus. Which, when we arrive, is wet, rainy, and cold – but never mind!
3:00pm: The five of us appreciate the true spirit of the title ‘ladies who lunch’, when we find ourselves enjoying a lovely lazy luncheon in a restaurant overlooking the harbour. We devour a range of toasted sandwiches, and a killer chocolate brownie.
4:30pm: The late afternoon finds us doing a spot of whale-watching (we find one which, we still maintain, jumped just for Sarah-Jane), and spontaneous bouts of dancing on the harbour rocks, against the backdrop of the glorious seascape.
6:30pm: We arrive back in Kleinmond for five-minute-snackwiches, tea, and chatting. Until Amy decides to set the ball rolling by unleashing her Bag Of Tricks…
7:30pm: Sarah-Jane waits on the stairs, dressed up in a skirt, top and boots, with a sign reading “I’m Getting Married” hung around her neck, and a tutu as a makeshift veil, framing her pretty face. Rose suggests that we need more chocolate, which - by the time we leave - can only be found at the OK Bazaars.
8:00pm: We send Sarah-Jane into the shop to buy us a list of sweets and chocolates, armed only with small change – hopefully good practice for a future of demanding children. She performs this task with her own special brand of straight-faced, no-nonsense vigour, leaving the cashier more than a little perturbed. The next task is close by, and involves a large South African flag. To demonstrate her upstanding patriotism – necessary for raising a prospective family – Sarah-Jane belts out the National Anthem to a small crowd of shop attendants and cackling onlookers. Somewhere between “Morena Baloka” and the end, the four of us join in. The raucous applause makes it worth it!
9:30pm: After a few inbetween pranks, we find ourselves yodelling in the car again, in search of Kleinmond’s night life. Which we find, in the form of the town’s one and only “Gatsby’s”, an unexpectedly plush pub where the locals gather to get tipsy and swagger to a mix of sokkiedans and other tunes more familiar to the rest of South Africa. Sarah-Jane walks in to a round of applause.
10:00pm: With a nurse’s apron draped over her clothing, the bride-to-be practises her first-aid skills (hugely necessary for family life), to apprehensive onlookers in the pub. First up is a stranger whose knee must be bandaged; next is a teenage boy who obligingly allows his face to be smothered with sunscreen. Sarah-Jane’s final task is to prove that, like any good wife (ha ha), she can cook and clean. Thus, she is sent to the pub’s kitchen to wash the dishes, which she does with a smile across her veiled face.
10:30pm: The five of us take a break from supervising Sarah-Jane’s tasks, to hit the dance floor. I still maintain that we started the party in that pub. Empowered by the conviction that we would never meet these onlookers again (oh please!), the five of us tear up the dance floor all on our own, to the sounds of “Girls Just Wanna Have
Fun”, “Eensy Weensy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” and other even more embarrassing tunes. As the evening wears on, the pub crowd joins us.
(Ever heard of the ‘Butterfly Effect’? We were on fire!) Soon, we meet a host of males, including Gavin, Clintin, Dirrk (extensively rolled ‘r’), and a series of locals intent on having their picture taken with Sarah-Jane. We sokkiedans, we laugh, and through it all, Sarah-Jane twirls about in her stylish veil.
11:00pm: Crunch-time for Sarah-Jane’s final task, for which she is armed only with a plastic ring. Escorted by Amy, she makes her way to the DJ box, stands daintily on a chair to get some height, grasps the microphone, and yells, “Everyone! I’m getting married!” The crowd roars and claps, and Sarah-Jane continues: “But even so, I have to propose to someone. So, who wants to marry me?” She selects one man from the crowd and he gets down on one knee, while S-J stays up on her podium. “Sir, you are my rock, my world, my everything…” she begins, and continues the proposal in style, at the end of which her subject romantically accepts her plastic ring. We snatch her back from her podium quickly (lest the poor man thinks he really has found himself a young bride), and keep dancing the night away.
3am (again!): Four bridesmaids and one bride-to-be lie sleeping, smothered in duvets, with a tutu hanging over the bedroom door, and a crinkled, soggy “I’m Getting Married” sign flung across the table. Sweet dreams are made of this!
Day 3: Sunday
12:00pm: As we leave Kleinmond, I revisit a memory from last night (or rather, early this morning), that I will keep forever from this weekend away. Sarah-Jane is standing in the shower in her bikini, wearing armbands and a snorkel (a product of Amy’s last ounce of creativity - Sarah-Jane must be able to teach her children how to swim!), and the four of us are doubled up with laugher. We are laughing at the ridiculousness of our friend wearing armbands at two in the morning; we are cackling at how improbable this would have seemed a few days ago, but mostly, we are celebrating with a friend who has been so fantastically and obligingly ‘game’ throughout her wacky weekend.
To friends and laughter; those pillars of sanity that will survive when all else fails…
If you have any comments, feel free to email me: blogs@celebrationhouse.co.za
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