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Louise Thomas
Editor
Jen Glantz is the perfect bridesmaid. She’s on hand to straighten the bride’s train at the end of the aisle. She’s always got a tissue ready to dab at a wet eye during the groom’s speech. She’s right beside the bride on the morning of the wedding to help calm nerves and shower confidence. But then, she would be the perfect bridesmaid – it’s her job.
“Strangers hire me to do all the things a bridesmaid would do,” explains Jen, who runs a business quite literally called Bridesmaid for Hire. “Plus, we’re a support system for you before the wedding begins. We have pre-wedding vent sessions with clients, where they can chat through challenges and awkward situations happening with their wedding or with friends and family and we help them sort it all out. We’ll go dress shopping with clients and even attend bachelorette parties, bridal showers and engagement parties.”
Jen set up her business after being asked to be a bridesmaid at over a dozen weddings. In fact, she became so good at being a bridesmaid that a friend once remarked, “You’re like a professional or something!” A lightbulb went off. “If I could do this role for distant friends, why not do it for strangers?” she says. “That’s when I took the idea and posted an ad, offering my services as a hired bridesmaid for strangers. I received over 300 responses, built a website, and booked my first client all in 48 hours. In the past 10 years, I’ve worked hundreds of weddings as a hired bridesmaid all over the country.”
And I can understand why. When I got married three years ago, working out who to ask to be a bridesmaid became a game of mental arithmetic. I’d expected to pour angst into working out the table plan and writing my vows – I hadn’t expected the most taxing job to be picking my bridal party. In the end, I gave up and decided I wouldn’t have any. But the wider wedding landscape suggests that many people aren’t ready to “give up” – instead more are looking to hire experts to fill in the “gaps” on their big day. From hiring a professional writer to author the best man’s speech to employing “wedding mediators” to manage any disputes before or during the big day, brides and grooms want nothing less than perfection. And they’re prepared to cough up to get it.
But when it comes to hiring a bridesmaid, who’s actually doing the hiring? “We’ve worked with clients of all backgrounds and no client is ever the same,” Jen explains. “We’ve had people who are fresh out of college hire us, and people who are in their late forties and are CEOs of major companies. We’ve worked weddings that cost over £375,000 and we’ve worked weddings that cost under £7,500 and are in a backyard. In the end, we work for people who need a support system to help them get through their wedding adventure.”
Which is exactly why Mandy* hired a bridesmaid when she got married three years ago. “I’m a bit of a control freak and very particular and my friends will tell you that I can be impatient,” she tells me. “So I was worried that picking bridesmaids from my own friend group might result in them not wanting to stay part of that group by the time the wedding came around!”
Hannah*, professional bridesmaidI make myself available for my brides day or night. If you’re getting cold feet at 2am? You can call me. If you don’t have time to go to six different trials to find your wedding day makeup artist, I’ll go and do that research for you and whittle it down to just the best
“Hiring one just meant that I didn’t need to worry about offending friends,” she continues. “Or getting annoyed on the day if something wasn’t happening the way I wanted it to. I just wanted someone who could actively contribute to helping the day run smoothly and who would look like a seamless part of the day [herself], rather than a member of staff flapping around me.”
The real identity of Mandy’s hired bridesmaid was only known to a select few people: her husband-to-be, her mother (“she knows all my friends really well and so I would never have been able to pull the wool over her eyes”) and her best friend. “She was able to slot into the day really easily,” Mandy remembers. “She didn’t walk down the aisle but she sat in the front row and wore a bridesmaid dress. She just always seemed to be ‘there’ whenever I needed her. No one even asked me who she was because she was so good at being part of things in a low-key way.”
And though it might seem surprising that none of Mandy’s guests spotted the “imposter”, some professional bridesmaids are actually expected to be aloof. “Often, clients want to hire us and keep it a secret,” Jen says. “That’s when we put on a disguise, have a fake name and backstory, and really immerse ourselves in the person’s life.” As far as other guests know, she’s a “real bridesmaid”, and in many ways, she is: “I wear the dress, walk down the aisle, dance the night away, help the bride pee in her wedding dress, deal with family drama, and so forth.”
And for Tami, who hired her own bridesmaid back in 2020, the option to do so was the difference between having a person there on hand to support her through the day, and not having a person there at all. “I’m quite an introvert in many ways and have never really had close friends,” she tells me. “It’s not something I’m ashamed to admit but when it came to my wedding day I did feel that I would be missing out by not having a bridesmaid, so I rented one.”
The fact that her bridesmaid was being paid to be there wasn’t kept a secret from guests either. “I didn’t publicly announce it or make some sort of statement or anything,” Tami says. “But if anyone asked, I just said she was part of the professional support I’d brought in. I definitely did get a few funny looks and comments about it, particularly from my cousin, who couldn’t understand why I hadn’t just hired a traditional wedding planner rather than someone who was dressed up as a bridesmaid and had joined in with the guests. And I get why, it’s not necessarily a normal concept, but I just really liked the idea of getting to experience having a bridal party of sorts and someone who could be in a ‘friend’ role without me feeling under pressure to provide some sort of friendship back. To me, it was honestly money well spent.”
The exact amount of money you can expect to “well spend” on a bridesmaid differs according to what you might want. “I paid £1,500 in total to hire my bridesmaid and that included her sourcing a dress that fit with my colour scheme,” Tami says. Working with professional bridesmaid Jen costs upwards of £1,865. “Because the range of services we offer varies – whether you want us just to be there on the day of the wedding, or at every pre-wedding event – so does the pricing. Our packages start at £1,865 and go up from there,” she says.
If you wanted the full package though, Hannah*, a professional bridesmaid for UK brides who don’t have a network of friends or family in the country, charges an average of £5,500. “My clients now come to me via word of mouth, but when I first started I would go to wedding fairs, dressed as a bridesmaid, and hand out cards with my number on them,” she explains. “Because I attend weddings as a fully fledged guest, I don’t advertise my services online or put my name out there too much as that would undermine a bride’s faith that no one will uncover her ‘secret’.”
But the women who do manage to get hold of Hannah can expect the full “best friend” treatment. “I make myself available for my brides day or night,” she says. “If you’re getting cold feet at 2am? You can call me. If you don’t have time to go to six different trials to find your wedding day makeup artist, I’ll go and do that research for you and whittle it down to just the best.
“In all the same ways you would ask a real friend to support you through your wedding day, you can expect that from me,” she adds. “I really take the time to get to know my brides so that I can be there for them even without them having to explicitly ask. They hire me because they’re missing their friends, and so I really do want to fill that gap for them.”
In fact, Hannah has become friends with a handful of her previous clients. “You become so close because you’re in touch every day,” she says. “They share their fears and their dreams and they feel really indebted to you for being there for them during some of their biggest and most difficult moments. Often we keep in touch.”
As I learn more about the world of bridesmaids-for-hire, I can’t help but think: would it actually save us and our friends a lot of stress and tension if we all just hired our bridal party? No arguments, no disappointment and no requirement for friends to do anything on the day other than have a good time and celebrate. Instead of shrugging off the idea of having a bridal party altogether, should I have paid to design my own?
It’s certainly not a romantic notion, but given that we’ll be marrying the love of our life, I wonder whether the thing all brides need on their wedding day is a dose of calm practicality and knowhow. Sure, get ready with your closest friends, but when it comes to the crux of the day, perhaps we should all be leaving it in the hands of the professionals…
*Names have been changed
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