Bridesmaid dilemma

[plantsitter]

How did you pick your bridesmaids? I'm getting married quite a bit later than most of my friends so I am really in debt at the bridesmaid bank... if I have everyone I ought to ask because they asked me, we promised each other when we were 5, have a family tradition to honour or have mentioned it in a hopeful manner I will be followed doen the aisle by about 6 grown women and a cloud of silk-clad toddlers! Which might be nice, I suppose, but a bit too costly. We're not getting married for aaages so I have a while to worry about it but do you have any tips for being diplomatic and not offending anyone?

what i done was get some1 to make all my dresses was so much cheaper to buy all the material plus u no they r 1 offs no1 else will ever have the same... i was just over 300 quid for 3 bridesmaids and my dress..
good luck hope everythin works out for u x

Thanks Claire! Sounds like a good plan.

I was in the same boat as you and didn't have a big budget either. There were cousins children that I should have had because I was their mums bridesmaid and a couple of other children from parents I was bridesmaid of. There was my sister who I knew would spend all day trying to be centre of attention and my best friends from school not too mention abour 4 others. I nearly had 5 adults and abour 7 children, in the end I was ruthless and thought to myself about who I wanted to share my special day with and in the end chose my best friend, the 3 children I had nannied for for the past 10 years and my son. There were some people that got a bit upset about it but lie I said I didn't have the budget and the people I did ask ended up buying their own dresses.
My advice is go with who YOU want I promise it is worth it on the day.

You should definitely have me, being your sister and all ;-)

Why not just have the children?

Do you have your own children? If you do just have your own an no-one else.

You could just have a couple of adult bridesmaids - e.g. sister/best friend (whatever applies to you) and children. Then are there other roles that you could get the other significant friend/relations to do.

I chose my best friend and children, and had other friends doing readings, and singing when we signed the register.

I completely opted out of the whole thing, didn't have any bridesmaids and had a man instead. It cut down on a lot of angst. Bless him, he did stress a bit about looking girly for a while. As if I would wnat to show him up and have everyone looking at/talking about him on my wedding day!

and meant to also say, and give each of the adults special jobs.

I also thought you could buy corsages for all of the ladies you would have liked to have as bridesmaids and make a point of telling them and having a photo taken with all of them.

Are any of your 6 grown women the mothers of any of the toddlers? You could just let their kids be bridesmaids. I would be so thrilled if someone wanted my DD (she's a baby!!) to be a bridesmaid or someone wanted to dress my DS up as a page boy, but not bothered if someone actually wanted ME to be a bridesmaid!