Ben Ballard, a 30-year-old consultant from Washington, has been a best man once and a groomsman twice. But the wedding he attended Sept. 24, 2016, marked the first time he was part of the bride’s side of the party — a bridesman, as he called himself.
He and the bride, Alyssa Shibata, had been best friends since the fourth grade. She had joked for years that when she got married, he would have to be part of the wedding. So when the time arrived, he flew down to Dallas for her bachelorette party and kept the ladies in good spirits as they hopped between bars in a limo. On the morning of the wedding, he met them at Ms. Robinson’s Dallas home and sat for a stylist who cleaned up his hair.
The bridal party were all wearing gold sequin Converse Chucks, so he did the same. (He said the sneakers looked more “ridiculous” with his tuxedo than with the bridesmaids’ long dresses.)
At the ceremony, held in the Dallas World Aquarium, he walked down the aisle and stood with the three other bridesmaids, next to the bride. When the maid of honor couldn’t hold the bride’s bouquet any longer during the ceremony, because her 2-year-old ran up and started pulling on her dress, he took over the task. “I held it like a true pro,” he said. And he endured plenty of jokes, jabs and stares.”
But none of it bothered him. “It meant a lot to me that when the rubber met the road she still said, ‘I want you to be in my wedding,’” he said. “Her confidence in it made it feel totally normal. She just wanted her best friends around her at her wedding.”
Across the country many brides and grooms are forgoing tradition by appointing mixed-gender wedding parties. The idea is simple: They want their closest friends or relatives at their side during the wedding festivities, no matter their gender.
Continue reading the main storyMastering the logistics of how it works, getting family members to accept the decision, or making all parties feel comfortable during the festivities, is sometimes less simple.
Jennifer Maas, a 27-year-old reporter for “The Wrap,” a website covering the entertainment and media industries, is getting married Oct. 6, 2018, in downtown Los Angeles. Her father, Stephen Maas, thought she was joking when she told him that she was going to have two men in her bridal party — her brother in a maid-of-honor-type role and her closest guy friend as a bridesman. “It took a while for it to sink in for me because I had never heard of such a thing,” Mr. Maas said.
When Mr. Maas got married years ago, men always stood on the groom’s side and women on the bride’s side. “I’m old school,” he said.
Nowadays, he said, “I still can’t figure out when the boys walk down the aisle. Do they do it with the bridesmaids, or do they stand on the side of the groom? Is he going to wear heels?”
For his daughter, who lived in one of New York University’s first mixed-gender dorms her senior year, the traditional practice made no sense. “They are my guys, and they belong with me, no matter their gender,” Ms. Maas said.
Alex Yergin, 32, who lives in New York and worked in business development, asked one of his best friends, Ellen Campbell, who is also 32 and from New York, to be a “groom’s gal” for similar reason for his wedding Sept. 16 at his family’s home in Siasconset, Mass.
“There might be some historical purpose from a long time ago that I’m unaware of, but nowadays the point of a wedding party is to have the people closest to you to be there supporting you,” he said. “Anybody who knows me knows that is Ellen.”
He also noted that there are no wedding party duties that she couldn’t do as well as a man.
Kellee Khalil, the founder and chief executive of the wedding website Lover.ly, said that the next generation of brides and grooms is less likely to abide by tradition. “The old rules don’t apply,” she said. “Everyone is trying to make their wedding their own, and that includes who is by their side during the festivities.”
Ms. Khalil said that for decades weddings have been guided by strict, clear procedures that have been passed down for generations. Now that many couples are choosing not to follow the norms, they have to make up new rules as they go.
“You have to think that we have become a society that accepts all types of genders and fluidity and how people identify; that is this generation,” she said. “Same-sex weddings have become normalized, and I think this will be, too. It will be: Who do you want in your bridal party, a guy or a girl?”
One of the common questions with mixed-gender wedding parties is what to call the male bridesmaids or female groomsmen. Are they bridesmen and groomsmen or groomsmaids and bridesmates? “People kept coming up with different words,” Ms. Campbell said. “‘Groom’s gal’ was a favorite. I was going with ‘groom’s human.’”
Ms. Khalil said she’s also seen many couples also get creative with the wedding party’s fashion. “You get girls wearing pantsuits or men wearing accessories,” she said. “What’s really fun is you get these amazing bridal party photos where friends are expressing themselves.”
Some of the hardest details to figure out are which wedding-related activities the mixed-gender wedding party participants would attend.
“We weren’t doing all-male bonding activities before I got married; we were just hanging out,” Mr. Yergin said. “There is nothing I wanted to do on a bachelor party that would have been single gender.”
Ms. Khalil, though, felt that clarity was needed on these issues, so she created a guide on her website. When it comes to prewedding gifts, or example, the guide suggests giving the men something that is similar to what the women get, but not the same. “There’s no rule that says the gifts have to match perfectly,” it said.
More traditional families, however, might be troubled by mixed-gender wedding parties. “They are concerned about the relationship their son or daughter has with that individual,” said Elaine Swann, a wedding-etiquette expert in Los Angeles. “They think there could be some romantic relationship involved there.”
Ms. Campbell once had two of the bride’s family members ask her on the day of the wedding why she had never dated Mr. Yergin if they were such good friends. “It’s like asking why didn’t you date your brother,” she said. “But I think for them they were just a little confused. They were in no way mean or hostile. They were just curious because it’s out of the norm.”
Other bridesmaids or groomsmen may feel uncomfortable, too, by having someone of the opposite gender around them during what have traditionally been same-sex bonding activities.
“It might be better to err on the side of traditionalism unless that individual is clearly, clearly part of the entire family unit where everyone would think it is the most natural fit,” Ms. Swann said. “The concept is neat, but it is so new that some families just aren’t quite ready to accept it.”
Mr. Ballard, the bridesman, witnessed the confused reaction of some guests. “There is this picture of me walking down the aisle with a lot of people being confused and staring,” he said. “I think a lot of people were wondering what is going on. But, whatever.
“I got to actually hang out with my best friend on her wedding day.”
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