Couple Gets Married In Wedding With 95 Bridesmaids
Her solution to cutting down the VIP list? Just don't!
AntonenkoS | Shutterstock Most of us have been to a wedding or two that was a bit over the top, and unique spins on wedding traditions have been a trend for years now. But one U.K. couple seems to be gunning for some kind of record after their headline-making wedding with not only a giant guest list, but an absolutely enormous wedding party.
A U.K. couple's wedding had 95 bridesmaids out of a total 250 guests.
Anyone old enough to remember the distinctive drama of the MySpace Top 8 knows that it can be really difficult to narrow down the list of people nearest and dearest to you. For recent bride Kathryn McGowan, the solution was simple: Don't narrow it down at all!
She and her groom, Jack McGowan, recently tied the knot on the Larchfield estate in Annahilt, County Down, in Northern Ireland, near the bride's hometown of Hillsborough. And accompanying Kathryn down the aisle was a staggering 95 bridesmaids, ranging in age from 6 to 40. And you thought your friend's wedding was a bit much.
The bride is a dance teacher and wanted as many of her students included as possible.
Kathryn told the BBC that from pretty much the moment they got engaged, she and Jack were debating about how many is too many when it comes to bridesmaids. They started out discussing seven or eight, still higher than the average three to five.
But soon that number had ballooned to 10, with no end in sight. "I was thinking and thinking about how it was going to work, and I thought in my head, what's the biggest number of bridesmaids I could have?" Kathryn said.
The main source of the problem was Kathryn's career. She's been a dance teacher for years, and trying to edit the list of students at her dance school that she wanted to be included in her big day proved quite a task. "All my dancers and my friends that have been in my life for a long time, they're still very much a massive part of my life," she said. So she landed on the only solution that got the job done. She included all of them! "It was just a very, very easy decision in the end."
The couple said their gigantic wedding party worked perfectly, even if there were only 8 groomsmen.
Typically, of course, there's an equal number of bridesmaids and groomsmen who are paired with each other to walk down the aisle, take part in the ceremonial dances, etc. But groom Jack could only come up with a comparatively paltry eight groomsmen. What's a couple to do?
Danik Prihodko | Canva Pro
For them, it was all part of the fun, even if it did present a bit of a challenge when it came to each bridesmaid getting a dance. Speaking to BBC Radio days after the wedding, Jack joked that "the best man is still dancing today." But he said that for him and his wife, the wedding was actually quite natural. Kathryn's career means they are constantly at big events with this large group of women, so he was "weirdly not shocked" by the mob scene.
And the couple said that it became a very collaborative moment between them all that made the wedding even more special, saying that each woman or girl was allowed to choose her own dress based on the color scheme, and that "the older girls organized the younger ones" during the wedding photos.
"It was absolutely brilliant," according to the groom, and Kathryn agreed. "It was better than we ever imagined," she said. May we all be so lucky to be so close to nearly 100 people — but be spared the cost of having to buy them each a bridesmaid's gift.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
