by Sila Anton

Created on: October 01, 2008

The fastest way to lose a friend is to make them a bridesmaid.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she said holding up the most hideous metallic yellow halter dress I have ever seen. Not that I have ever seen any beautiful yellow metallic halter dresses with some weird thigh high slit, but this was definitely the ugliest.

"You're going to look fabulous in it!" she continued, lips flapping a mile a minute but the words she was saying were not connecting with my ears. And the ones that did make it to my ears didn't make sense. Stuff about white shoes, no bra or panty lines, please cover up your tattoo, kept hitting my eardrums and bouncing off.

"Um, you know I can't try this on right now." I said looking down at my protruding belly. "I don't think that is a maternity dress".

"Oh, it's OK" she went on; "the wedding is in 2 months, you should have had the baby by then and lost all the baby weight. I won't be so hard. You'll look great! Please get your hair done at Mario's at 9. You're going to need to be at my house at 11am because that is when the pictures start and we'll all get to the church together. You have to stay at the reception until after the speeches; you could probably leave around 9pm."

"Um, I'll have a newborn then I don't think that I can leave him for that long." I said. She responded with "Oh hun, I know you'll miss him but I don't want any babies crying during the ceremony or the speeches, so you'll just have to leave him at home. You guys can get a sitter."

As I stared at her dumbfounded, one thought kept running through my head; why, oh why did I ever agree to be a bridesmaid?

It's not like I didn't try to get out of this. But for some reason she was hell bent on honoring a pledge we made to each other when we were 13. It didn't matter to her that we hadn't spoken in more than a year. It didn't matter to her that she sulked and pouted through my entire wedding and then disowned me as her bestest friend forever because I did not name her in my wedding speech. I know that she was ticked off at me because my pregnancy was interfering with her wedding planning. I was taking away her spotlight and her other bridesmaid-zillas were doing their best to ostracize me for getting some and getting knocked up. But with all this going on she still wanted to honor this pinkie swear that we made in 9th grade.

WHY?

I tried so hard to be tactful with my withdrawal as a bridesmaid. I sent her an email detailing that; unfortunately, I would have to step down as a bridesmaid. My due

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