GLANCE FACTS
Glance
Maid of honour 101
• Whether to opt for your only sister or your best friend since birth, the choice can be a serious grey area that must be navigated delicately to avoid hurting feelings.
• You can opt to chose from the family or outside your family. If from the family, the sister nearest in age to you should be your maid of honour.
• With changing traditions, many brides are now turning to male best friends to fill the traditionally feminine role.
Woe unto a bride who doesn’t have a good matron of honour as the days leading to the wedding tend to be stressful, writes NIKKO TANUI
Simply put, a maid of honour can make or break a bride, because in essence, she is supposed to be at her beck and call.
Her duties include; helping the bride shop for a gown and dresses for the bridesmaids, plan the bachelorette party and lead the bridesmaid troupe during the wedding. She also holds the bride’s bouquet of flowers while the couple exchanges vows, sign the marriage certificate as a witness and dances. with the best man during the formal first-dance among other duties.
This is why when it comes to choosing a maid of honour, not every girlfriend, sister, cousin or any other women in a would-be- bride’s life fits the bill.
The question then is, what qualities and characteristics should a good maid of honour posses?
Enthusiastic
A good maid of honour should be genuinely happy and enthusiastic over the fact that her girlfriend, sister or cousin is finally jumping the broom.
You see, the cold fact is, women are naturally jealous of each other and the beginning of a disaster is to pick someone who deep inside is jealous. Such a woman will drag her feet during the entire wedding ceremony leaving you reeling with anger.
Has time to spare
Gone are the days when one would find a woman just laying around doing nothing. These days, every woman is a hustler and hardly have time to spare on other pursuits that are not personal or adding money to her purse.
Therefore, much as a would-be- bride wishes for a particular girlfriend, sister, cousin to be her maid of honour, she will be setting herself to stress if the person in question has a tight schedule to have enough time to spare during the planning of the wedding.
Know her responsibilities
