Dance Lessons I

Bridal parties occupy a strange place in adulthood. They gather people from every era of a person’s life and place them in the same room at the same time. Suddenly you’re discussing shapewear and marriage with people you know mostly by the transitive property of your relationship to the bride. It’s honestly wonderful, but it can also be mildly bewildering.

Our group assembled for what became a preparatory dress-fitting-slash-group-therapy session. We squeezed ourselves into satin and chiffon, making the kind of promises women make to each other about “definitely wearing this again,” while knowing full well these dresses are destined for the back of our closets, where they’ll hang like pastel ghosts holding the echo of dry toasts and Togolese dance floor decisions that will make us smile for one reason or another.

Bridesmaid dress fittings are a uniquely humbling experience. You are either being zipped into something that requires two people and a prayer, or you are standing on a little pedestal while someone with a name that cannot be pronounced pins fabric around your body and says things like, “You wrong size,” in a tone that suggests this is both unusual and inconvenient.

There were dresses everywhere—draped over chairs, hanging from hooks, sliding slowly off plastic hangers and drooping onto the floor like discarded roses. The bride stood in the middle of the room, overseeing the rest of us as we rotated through gowns, nodding in the serious way women do when evaluating formalwear, as if we were putting together a puzzle that didn’t need solving but somehow required groupthink.

The mirrors did not help. Tailor shop mirrors are engineered to show you angles you did not know existed. Every time someone turned sideways, new discoveries were made that posture could not remedy.

But the thing about a bridal party is that bridesmaids are not really chosen for symmetry. They are chosen for history. A bridal party is less a coordinated aesthetic and more a timeline. Each woman represents a different version of the bride: the girl she was in high school, the roommate she had when she was broke, the coworker who survived a terrible boss with her, the cousin who knows all the family secrets, the friend by her side as she fought for her life through a breakup, the friend who talked her through the first date that resulted in this very wedding.

So there we all were, a living scrapbook in satin, holding cups and safety pins, performing major alterations and minor emotional support (or was it the other way around).

As the last of us slipped out of our gowns, and another gasped for air upon release from the corset’s vice-like grip, our matron of honor, a woman whose organizational skills make the Pentagon look like a kindergarten classroom, casually dropped the update.

“So,” she said, scrolling through her phone with the calm of someone about to announce another brunch reservation, “I’m booking us a B&B for the bachelorette weekend. Oh, and the stripper.”

My brain short-circuited momentarily as the room erupted. High-pitched shrieks bounced off the walls and ricocheted through the ornate chandelier. Within seconds this had become a full planning committee. People were discussing outfits, lighting, music genres, and tipping strategy like we were coordinating a production. Someone asked if we needed singles. Someone else said she already had singles. Someone else said she would take us to the bank. Someone started talking about outfits. Then the conversation took a sharp and immediate turn away from clothing entirely.

I, meanwhile, began mentally calculating how effectively I could fake a migraine that weekend. At one point the Operations Manager looked at me and said, “Girl, you real quiet over there.” I nodded and said reassuringly, “I’m just taking it all in.”

Now, I’ve survived bachelorette parties that ended with skinny-dipping in ice cold lakes and witnessed karaoke performances that would have made Simon Cowell walk out and never come back. I’ve stood in nightclub lines so long I could feel my youth physically leaving my body, only to finally get inside and discover that the DJ’s entire repertoire consisted of remixes of “Cotton Eye Joe.” But a stripper? That’s crossing a line I didn’t even know I had drawn.

I would not consider myself a prude. I have been known to enjoy a variety of extracurricular activities. But when it comes to these matters, as I’ve heard it said, surely taste counts for something. Something about the thought of a strange man gyrating in a G-string to hip-hop on my friend’s lap while her stepmother whoops and waves dollar bills makes my soul want to leave my body and catch the next flight to anywhere else. Stepmom did threaten to teach me how to twerk proper after our last get-together. (Not that I can’t twerk, it’s just that no one can twerk like this queen.)

Three days later, our group chat lit up with the matron of honor’s latest details. She’d booked the Airbnb. It’s a sleek place with an open floor plan, plenty of space for hosting a sordid soirée, and decked out with the kind of minimalist furniture that looks amazing but makes you afraid to actually sit on. Payment requests were made, and our thread kicked into action.

Group chats among women are one of the most efficient organizational structures in modern society. Within minutes we had polls, payment schedules, outfit themes, restaurant reservations, hashtags, and at least twenty GIFs that were not appropriate for work (which I made a point to call out). Governments could learn from bridal party group chats.

Ping!

(Just kidding — there was no “ping.” Of course I muted this group chat after receiving the third meme.)

My phone lit up with the latest message. It contained details about a private pole dancing class requiring additional payment to secure our instructor.

Pole dancing? This was new information. I messaged her privately, my fingers trembling slightly: “Just checking, is this replacing the stripper situation, or...additional entertainment?”

Her response came quickly: “Nope, no stripper. We couldn’t find one that doesn’t look like he lives under a bridge.”

I’ve never felt such profound relief. Suddenly, the prospect of attempting an upside down fireman spin in front of my friend’s stepmother, while relying on arm muscles that haven’t seen action since I relocated my armchair last year, almost seemed like one of the greatest gifts anyone could offer. I immediately transferred the money with a note that simply read “THANK YOU” in all caps, which, in retrospect, probably confused her greatly.