From Smart Girls Say Yes
by Fern McAllister
Hear me out, friends: I think we ought to start an annual race called the Running of the Brides.
Just imagine... Runners as far as the eye can see, dressed in taffeta and satin and silk. Bustiers and bustles. Veils turned loose on the wind. People in attendance from near and far. Hundreds strap on running shoes. Hundreds more, their cameras.
One bride is running to raise money for breast cancer research. Another, in honor of the sister who died at the hands of her abuser. Every bride has a purpose, though none of them run toward the altar. It’s not the vows they’re sprinting for.
Some may even be there to run away. A few brides run after walking in on sights they can’t unsee, and after reading texts that secret lovers assumed would always remain hidden.
A handful of jilted fiancées chase their runaways like the bulls in Pamplona.
But a wedding isn’t the destination for any of them.
We run to wear the dress. Because we can’t return it. Because it may not fit tomorrow. Because we’re sick of waiting for the ring. We can all worry about marriage later, but the dress we love today has an expiration date. I think it would save the country a lot of heartbreak, though it might drive a hefty proportion of divorce lawyers out of business.
If I had the gumption, I’d make it my mission to bring the Annual Running of the Brides to life. My friends ran something similar once. Everyone ought to get the chance.
In late 1998, Emma broke off an ill-fated engagement. Only the groom and his mother had trouble understanding her decision. The rest of us breathed a sigh of relief and assured her she’d done the right thing. We bought her drinks and held her hair as she worked the grief out of her system.
Gradually, with time, the shock of losing the life she’d envisioned faded away. But one regret remained: her wedding dress was nonrefundable.
“Take it from me, girls,” she said. We were drinking cherry bombs at the Moana Loa Club. “Buy your gown off the rack and keep the receipt. Alterations ruin everything.”
We ordered another round and rubbed her back. Then I had an idea.
The following weekend, we hosted a cocktail party. We called it the “Aisle of Broken Dreams” and took decor inspiration from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s Island of Misfit Toys. We invited everyone we knew—except for ex-fiancés and former boyfriends. Attendance required a costume.
I dressed as a doctor in scrubs and a stethoscope.
Andi wore a bathing suit and life preserver in honor of her long-abandoned hopes of becoming a Cypress Gardens water-ski star.
Carolina turned circles in a leotard and tutu, the ballerina her mother always believed she could be.
Chandler put on a suit coat and stuck a name tag to his lapel. “Dad’s favorite.”
Emma, of course, looked stunning in a Vera Wang knockoff, the one with the peekaboo back that only a tiny thing like her could pull off.
That night, she fell asleep on our couch—too danced out to make it the three blocks home—and woke in the morning hungover but happy in her “runaway bride” skin. Over coffee and eggs at the Balboa Café, she said, “I’m not ready to take this off.”
So, the next week, the three of us without dresses haunted vintage shops and thrift stores for bridal gowns of our own. Andi’s had lace like wisteria blossoms dripping from her bosom. Mine had a detachable train and a butt bow the size of a Honda Civic. Andi’s came with a matching floppy hat.
The four of us donned our gowns and sat together in the Saturday afternoon sun, pouring tea and eating cucumber finger sandwiches in the tiny back garden behind Emma and Carolina’s apartment. We repeated silly Britishisms like cuppa and biccies until our sides split from laughing. Andi brought a tin of Marmite, which we spread on water crackers and wondered aloud how anyone could enjoy such a strange salty treat.
Later, too in love with ourselves to shed the taffeta and ribbons, we walked arm in arm to the Palace of Fine Arts and, like thousands of brides before us, took pictures beneath the soaring stone rotunda. Had Emma gone through with the wedding, she’d planned to have her bridal party surrounding her in the very same spot.
Let’s call Emma’s jilted ex-fiancé Ted. I named him in honor of Ted Bundy. I don’t care if he reads this. I don’t need him to like me. I do need you to understand that Emma did the right thing by running.
Ted and Emma met at a party in Andi’s Haight-Ashbury apartment near University of San Francisco Law School. The place was barely the size of a closet on the second floor of a four-bedroom Victorian split into six rental units. Somehow, a few dozen of their friends squeezed in and brought a keg of Anchor Steam with them.
Of the four of us, Carolina met Ted first. She made the mistake of putting her red plastic cup down and turning her back. When she turned around again, a guy she didn’t know was drinking from it.
“Dude, that’s my beer.”
“Nah,” he said.
To this day, when Carolina tells the story, she leans heavily on the nah. No one with a degree should have permission to give single syllable responses.
“See that bite mark on the rim?” she continued. “That’s my sign.”
“Well, I’m a Scorpio. That’s my sign.” Then he took a long pull and capped off his disdain by finishing the cup. “Ahh. Cold and tasty.”
“You have mommy issues,” she said and walked away, intending to never speak to him again. It would have been an ordinary Saturday night for Carolina if, a few hours later, she and Andi hadn’t spotted Ted and their dear friend Emma mashing faces under the streetlight below.
“Oh,” Andi remembers saying. “That is not going to end well.”
It took almost two years, but the end eventually did come. And, no, it did not go well.
Ted wasn’t a man used to hearing the word no. Indeed, he did have mommy issues. But like I’ve said before, that’s a story for another chapter. What I’ll tell you now is that Emma was lucky enough to wake up before saying “I do.”
“You know, I bought another dress before this one.” The four of us were in the back garden drinking our tea. “His mom insisted on seeing it, so I invited her to my first fitting. She said she loved it. But that night at dinner, he commented that I needed to make sure the dress I chose would be ‘timeless.’”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means his mom didn’t love the dress,” Andi answered.
Emma sighed. “Apparently, I looked busty.”
“Jealous,” said Carolina. Emma filled out a bikini the way none of us could.
“Tell me you got your money back on that one, at least.” I remember cash registers ringing in my head. The money. The money. The MONEY!
“The shop gave me in-store credit to find something else.” Emma floofed her skirt. “This was my second choice. And now I’m stuck with it.”
“I like it,” said Carolina. “The only thing it’s missing is a giant floppy hat.”
“And a butt bow,” I said.
Carolina ripped a sprig of polyester wisteria from Andi’s bodice and stuck it between Emma’s boobs.
“I really do love you guys,” Emma said. Even though we already knew.
Sometime later, Carolina came home bursting with enthusiasm and waving a copy of SFGate. “A production company is filming in San Francisco and there’s a casting call for nine hundred brides.”
Word was out. The movie was titled The Bachelor and reportedly starred two of the late ’90s hottest hotties, Chris O’Donnell and Renée Zellweger. We dialed the 1-800-number and were told to report for costuming at a warehouse in China Basin at five thirty Saturday morning.
It was still black as night when Andi poured me a cup of coffee and said, “We must really love Emma.”
If you’re wondering what nine hundred film extras packing a warehouse parking lot before dawn looks like, think: your first day at summer camp. Makeup was fresh and attitudes peppy. Conversation buzzed with star sightings. Was that Renée? Oh, my God, did I just see Brooke Shields?
To that image, add a run-down warehouse. Through the front window, one can see nothing but white, as if the infamous San Francisco fog had rolled in off the bay and got trapped inside. Finally, create a line of people marching for the door. Before entering, they look like your friend, your sister, your neighbor, even the guy in the apartment upstairs who dances in a drag show on Columbus. When they exit, however, they’re transformed. Sheathed beneath billows of cream and white and pearl polyester. Lace upon beads upon ruffles. Brides marching as far as the eye can see.
Given that Emma, Andi, Carolina, and I came dressed in our very own gowns, we didn’t have to undergo bridal transformation, so we had time to mess around with the small and insanely expensive digital video camera Carolina borrowed from Chandler. “I told him I wanted it in case we saw one of the stars. He agreed to loan it to me if I promised to capture a video of a beautiful woman reciting her phone number.”
Carolina recorded the line of brides going in and coming out of the magic warehouse. She caught us trading the rest of our coffee thermoses for a packet of gum. Mostly, though, she can be heard on the microphone saying, “Can you believe all this? It’s beyond words!”
Eventually, one of the production assistants saw her with it and hollered, “Hey! No cameras allowed. Get rid of it.”
“As if,” Carolina muttered under her breath, then hitched up her crinoline and slid the camera into the waistband of her bike shorts beneath. “I knew I wore these for a reason.”
Around midmorning, the costuming crew loaded us on buses and drove us to the set on Grant Street, where we were met by production assistants sporting matching production company T-shirts and name badges. “Matilda” herded us all the way to the curb and gave us our direction. “When the brides in front of you run, you run.”
As you can imagine, nine hundred brides lining the San Francisco streets eventually stretches into several city blocks. Whatever movie magic was underway for the stars, we didn’t have line of sight into it. For the next several hours, we ran, retreated, and ran again.
Here’s how it worked. Somewhere in a galaxy far away, a director would call, “Action.” Presumably, Chris O’Donnell, dressed in his tuxedo best, would then run, and the brides behind him would give chase. Two, five, seven minutes later, that wave would ripple back to us, and we would follow, lending our feet to cinematic history.
“I wonder if you’ll be able to see us,” we each asked in turn.
When the movie came out that November, Emma thought she saw Carolina’s floppy hat. Andi thought she caught a glimpse of my face. I knew all of it was simply wishful thinking.
Late in the afternoon, it began to rain, and soon herds of brides trudged back to wherever they’d come from, veils soaked and feet aching. Emma’s hem turned black with mud. I lost my butt bow somewhere on Grant Street. We skipped the buses and walked home.
“That was quite possibly the best day of my life,” I said.
“Definitely the best wedding I’ve ever been in,” said Andi.
Carolina dialed Chandler and told him to make dinner reservations.
Emma said, “You guys must really love me.” And we did. We really, really did.