I am thirty-seven years old. I have been a maid of honor twice. I have been in nine weddings total. I have a rule now, which I did not have before Jillian's rehearsal dinner, that I tell every bride who asks me for feedback on a dress the honest thing on the first fitting. I tell them because I have learned, the hard way, that the only thing worse than a bride being told the truth about a dress six months before her wedding is a bride being told the truth the night before, in a bathroom, by someone she trusted with seventeen years of lies. I will say it: I should have said it in April. I should have said it at fitting one. I did not,

because I was a coward, and because I thought — as every bridesmaid in the history of weddings has thought — that it was not my place. It was my place. I was her best friend. I was the maid of honor. It was literally my place. And the one night of her life when she needed the truth the most, she almost got married in a dress she would have hated herself in for the rest of her life because I had been too polite to ruin a fitting in April. Jillian forgave me. Marion forgave me. I do not, yet, fully forgive myself. So tell me — was the rehearsal dinner honesty brave or reckless, or was the real crime the six months of lies before it?

* Story inspired by real-life situations. Names and details have been changed for privacy.