House Party

Recently, a vendor mentioned to me that there’s a new fad entering the wedding world called the House Party. From what I can understand this is a second bridal party which serves as a way for the bride and groom to ask whomever they’d like to join in their wedding festivities. Apparently, the House Party can be equal in size to the original bridal party or can be an even larger group than the bridesmaids and groomsmen that may serve as traditional attendants.

I myself have never experienced this House Party trend, but I am here to tell you that this is neither a new, nor a brilliant phenomenon for two main reasons. Number one, because one of my best friends, Anne, executed a similar method of wedding party expansion for her wedding in 2003 – seven years ago. I also used the same strategy, but with a slight twist, for my wedding 4 years ago. Number two, we had reasons for adding additional attendants. This was not something that we decided to do because we wanted everyone and their grandmother involved in our wedding in order to seem important, which is the reason some of the current guests of honor are creating such massive wedding parties and even more massive faux parties, according to local vendors.

My friend Anne has a huge family, so when she got married she realized that most of her bridal party spots would be taken by her 3 sisters, her sister in law, her cousins and two nieces which did not leave any room for our college clique of 5 lovely ladies. With that being said, she had us walk down the aisle together before the bridal party, wearing our own design of a dress in a similar shade of color as the bridesmaids.

When I got married, I had a situation where family and childhood friends filled most of the “traditional” spots so I took Anne’s idea one step further. I actually included my “college crew” as bridesmaids, but because we did not want to ask more guys just to fill in the spots, I had them walk up the aisle along and they all wore black, while the bridesmaids walking with groomsmen wore red. I also wanted to find a way to honor the grandparents that could not be with us on our wedding day, so I had each of the girls carry a blue flower and deliver it to an altar, set at the front of the church, which had each of the grandparents’ pictures on it and a vase in which to set the flowers.

The girls were involved in showers, the bachelorette party, gifts, the day-of preparations, etc., but I just needed a creative way to fit 9 girls in a bridal party what was supposed to only include 4 couples!! Everyone that I chose to participate in my wedding was either a family member or a friend that is still, 4 years later, considered family. I feel that in picking your bridal party, that’s the way it should be. This is not a competition to see who can have the biggest group, and sometimes that’s what I feel goes on when people start adding House Parties to the wedding.

A good rule of thumb is to ask people who have been with you for the major events leading up to the wedding and the people that you know will be with you and that you want with you when times get rough after the wedding. Besides, if you ask every Tom, Dick and Harry that you’ve ever met to be a bridesmaid, how will your real friends feel? Not very special. And if you have an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen, do not just ask someone in order to keep the numbers even. Have the girls walk up alone and have the guys at the altar with the groom already. If you have more girls than guys, have your maid of honor walk alone or when there are more guys than girls, give one lucky girl two groomsmen as her escorts. The point is, there are ways around having unnecessary attendants and there are definitely other spots to fill in a ceremony rather than creating a House Party. Let’s keep things in perspective and have some kind of standard when choosing the most special group of friends and family to stand before our community and advocate this harmonious occasion!!!