Dear Answer Lady,

The Devil maid me do it.

Dear Devil-maid,

There is this song we used to sing in Girl Scouts about old friends and new. How did it go again? Something like, "Make new friends, but don't feel any guilt if you fail to keep the old, one is silver and the other's batshit insane in a specific way, it is terrible that our society promotes and indulges this variety of insanity."

I could go on for hours and pages about how the wedding-industrial complex neatly encapsulates everything gross about consumerism, then swathes that capsule in the sickly-sweet buttercream of sexism-and how appalling it is that so many women still willingly gulp it down. I'd go on to talk about how wedding-induced situationally-acquired narcissism deserves its own page in the DSM-IV. I would probably also want to include something about how every time I hear a member of my own generation stare at a piece of hardened carbon on her hand and say something like "You guys, can you believe I'm going to be Mrs. [his name] in just two months and twenty-five days!" I want to mail an engraved note on heavy stationery to every member of my mother's generation of womens' rights activists that says, "Apparently we are fucking everything up and ignoring everything you did. Sorry!"

But this is not Jezebel.

So I will limit myself to saying that this woman is doing life wrong, and you should not feel any compunction to enable or congratulate her in a bridesmaid capacity.

Okay, just to clarify: I am not against people getting married. As far as I can tell, marriage-though imperfect-is the best arrangement humans have yet come up with to create little sustaining team units that can prop each other up through life's tough patches and child-havings and so forth. You can do this stuff without official marriage and people certainly do, but there is something nice about having a piece of paper from the City Hall that formalizes your arrangement, even Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Saarsgaard have come around on that score now. Weddings, though, I think we could pretty much do without.

"Oh," I hear you wannabe wedding-throwers say, "But my wedding will be different! I am going to keep things really *low-key*! I am going to be an *indie bride (groom)*!" Here is the thing: I'm sure this lady who is making spreadsheets for her bachelorette parties thinks SHE is being really low-key too. She probably posts on the "kvetch" boards on indiebride.com about how "low-key" she is being and why can't people understand that she just wants them all to have fun, and relax, and be happy for her from 2:15-4:30 next Saturday at the pre-shower "just relax" spa outing?

Then she will read some other lady's posting about how pissed she is that her professionally baked Steampunk wedding cake was exactly the same as someone else's Steampunk wedding cake and totally sympathize.

Devil-maid, you have to call this woman up-resist, always, crazy
email's intrinsic hit-replyability-and tell her that you don't think you can be the bridesmaid she wants you to be. It's not her, etc. But resist the temptation to mention her outlandish demands, your current employment status, the global financial crisis-actually, avoid specifics entirely. Listen to everything she says and respond to it by saying that you understand, and you are really looking forward to the wedding. Then, when the wedding comes around, see if you can have a good time at it! It is, after all, just a party-no matter how much *every goddamn thing in the universe* seems to be conspiring to make this lady, and the rest of us, feel otherwise.

Previously:

· I Am A Hermit And Is That Okay?
· I Can't Invite My Friends Over As I Have No Drugs
· However Do You Integrate Terrible Events With Your Online World?