Photo: Gia Canali
You've booked a wedding date (yay!) and now it's time to choose your wedding party (sigh). In theory, this should be an exciting task—a chance to ask your nearest and dearest to stand by your side on the happiest day of your life. But choosing your wedding attendants among all the very important people in your lives is, for some couples, a very difficult task. If you've already asked someone to be your maid of honor, does that mean your groom must have a best man? Is it OK if he doesn't? Our wedding etiquette experts are here to answer your wedding-party questions in our daily post.
My fiancé doesn't want to have a best man, but I've already asked my friend to be my maid of honor. Will this be OK?
Definitely. If your groom doesn't want to choose a best man, that is totally fine. But the best man traditionally takes on many important wedding roles: he typically plans the bachelor party, keeps the rest of the groomsmen in the loop about suit fittings and other wedding-related scheduling, hangs on to the wedding rings during the ceremony, and offers a toast (either at the rehearsal dinner or reception). So your fiancé will need to divvy up these tasks among all the groomsmen to make sure everything has been taken care of. Also, the best man usually serves as a witness and signs the marriage license after the ceremony. So your groom can assign this role to one of the groomsmen or ask someone close to him (his dad or mom, a female friend, an aunt—anyone he'd like, really).