A helpful bridesmaid, or a bridesmaid-zilla?

After being asked to be maid of honor at my best friend Anna’s wedding, I think a little monster began to brew inside of me – a little monster called Bridesmaid-Zilla, so lovingly dubbed by Anna’s fiancé, Michael. Don’t fear Knotties this monster is in no way evil, malicious or crazy… well maybe a tiny bit crazy BUT in a good way, promise! In my natural habitat I love planning things, I love organising and thinking ahead, it keeps me calm and sane. So of course the moment I found out I was maid of honor I sent an influx of emails to Anna’s inbox full of great suggestions for the wedding.

This is a real screen shot of my email sent items. As you can see the majority just say ‘me’ in the left column, which is because Anna didn’t reciprocate my email enthusiasm with many replies. Not to say she wasn’t excited, but I think I just took the cake, hence the nick name – Bridesmaid-Zilla. After a few non-replied-to emails I decided it was time Anna created a folder in her inbox called ‘wedding’ to file my unread emails in. To my surprise she did just that! Good work Anna.

During this whole brainstorming and bombardment of fab wedding ideas phase, I had the best idea of them all: the wedding theme! *Cue light bulb over head moment* It was going to be an old New York theme. The invites would have a silhouette of the NY skyline and a couple on a rowboat. The feel of the wedding would be classic with a vintage sort of feel, black and white and very sleek. I saw it all in my mind and it looked amazing, it was perfect. What do you Knotties think? Of course Anna loved it, as did Michael.

So far the theme hasn’t progressed to the point where they are having a Frank Sinatra look-a-like singing through the night and I don’t think it will either. Anna has chosen this theme as a direction to head towards, not the be all and end all of her wedding.

I had the theme discussion with my partner Dean, who I think is the perfect soundboard to all that is going on because he usually has no idea, so always gives a realistic/not fluffed up response. He didn’t quite understand why a wedding needed to be themed. So after much discussion and explaining he came back with, “I think it’s nicer when it’s done simply. A wedding should be about the bride and groom. About their love and the fact that they’ve decided to take this big step. Not about if your bonbonniere or flowers match the theme you’ve chosen.” Wise words. After some thinking I realised that is what Anna’s doing. I love that she has embraced this theme, but not let it consume her every decision. I guess there is only room for one crazy, perfectionist Bridesmaid-Zilla here!

Once I finished writing the first half of this blog I got to thinking, was I too much? So I’m wondering now, has anyone had very pro-active bridesmaids? Did you prefer it that way, or would you prefer to do your own thing and ask for help when needed? How did you figure out what wedding theme you wanted?