Honorary bridesmaids instead of a wedding party

You could. I had a minimony and my best friend was my MOH. I gave a proposal box to a friend that would have been a Bridesmaid kind of am honorary thing.

View Quoted Comment I plan on asking my sister to be my maid of honor, so I guess I’m planning to do what you did haha.

View Quoted Comment Yeah. If I were having a bigger wedding I would have had them but still have gifts and my friend did come dress shopping. I also kept her in the loop on some things.

View Quoted Comment Oh I definitely plan on keeping them in the loop. I don’t know if I’ll bring all of them dress shopping but I definitely would love for them to come to a fitting so they can see it!

Personally, I don't see the point of having someone as a honorary bridesmaid. In my mind, they are a bridesmaid or they aren't.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this. Being a bridesmaid/maid of honor is a position of honor to begin with.


I would just have your sister as MOH and call it a day. You can include your friends in things like dress shopping/fitting without them having any sort of title.

Just make her your maid of honor and leave it at that. It makes much more sense with less confusion than an honorary attendant because a MoH is an honor. Really the only thing she has to do is buy a dress, stand up with you at the ceremony and sign paperwork as your legal witness. No extra expense on your part except a thank you gift.

I didn’t have a bridal party but did ask my closest friends to get ready with me. They came to rehearsal dinner (but not rehearsal) and then on the day of the wedding they got ready with me but then went to a brewery and pregamed while I headed straight to the venue. I still got them a small gift on the day of, they just didn’t stand by me (and they got to wear whatever they wanted).

Just have your MOH & that’ll be it. If you ask someone to be your bridesmaid they will think they’re part of the wedding so either they are or they’re not. Having just one is fine. I’m just having a total of 3- my sister (MOH), my daughter & a close friend are my bridesmaids. Do what you can afford & keep your wedding vision.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this! I’ve been in a wedding where the bride had 2 co-maids of honor (wore certain dresses, stood up during ceremony) and then several honorary bridesmaids (wore whatever they wanted, sat in first few rows during ceremony, but still took pre-ceremony pics and stopped by/got ready with bride on the day of). The 2 co-MOHs planned the bridal shower and bachelorette, and the honorary BMs helped a bunch, especially with the bachelorette. For the bride, this was a good way to include her group of friends without choosing between and/or making several people buy a certain dress, etc.

I think that's a cute nice gesture

We are just having our kids as wedding party, but I have a few very close friends that have been there for me through some difficult times.
I plan to get them pretty corsages, and have them ushered to their seats right before the ceremony - both our parents have passed (we are in our 50s), it this would be in lieu of parents being escorted down the aisles. They are also invited to the “get ready” festivities.

If you want to write letters they receive at home, fine.
But where with bridesmaids, people can say to themselves, they had to choose 3 or 4 people from their lifetime, and two are family ... As a way of accepting that they were not the chosen ones, this is worse. Because this card of honor is free, and you could give out 200 if you wanted to, so anyone not being recognized will feel like a second class friend. It would really be ruffing it in people's faces, honored friends are the haves, the others are have nots. They don't even qualify for a free limitless recognition of friendship, so why are they there, kind of feeling. And it is never good to have haves and have nots together. If you have people invited to a party, you never deliver invitations in front of those not invited, kind of thing. Send your honors privately, or not at all. And remember some people will blab on Facebook.

Instead of giving them a title, just invite them to get ready with you the day of, like bridesmaid would with the bride

I'm in the exact same boat as you and was thinking of doing the same thing. If it weren't for COVID and we were having a bigger wedding, then our parties would easily have been around 7-8 people each. But now, with only 40 guests, having a huge chunk of them standing up during the ceremony would be weird I think haha. So we were thinking of doing 3 people on each side standing and the rest as "honorary" as most of these people are a part of the same group of friends so it would have to be all or nothing. The idea of "nothing" make me and my FH really sad as they all mean so much to us. Although, after reading the comments here and elsewhere, I'm starting to wonder if it comes of as rude? Obviously, I don't think so but maybe I'm wrong...

View Quoted Comment For me the friends I’m inviting are the friends who I’m making honorary bridesmaids so there really isn’t anyone to think it’s rude.