I was the maid of honor. I had been Jillian's best friend since our sophomore year at Wake Forest, seventeen years of closeness so intertwined that I had been in the delivery room when her daughter was born in 2019 and I had been the third person to hold her after her divorce was finalized in 2021. Jillian's fiancé — the man she was marrying the following day, a sweet and slightly boring orthodontist named Will — was the second marriage for both of them. Will's first wife had died of ovarian cancer four years before he and Jillian met. Jillian and Will had, by every measure a friend could apply to a

relationship, been the right kind of thing for each other for two full years. I was happy about the marriage. I was not happy about the dress. And I had, in the seven months since her first fitting, watched Jillian walk into three different bridal salons in three different cities — Charleston, Atlanta, and once on a trip to New York — and I had watched her try on that specific dress and I had, every single time, said some version of the sentence that kills every bride's honest feedback from her best friends. I had said, "You look so beautiful."