Who wants to hire a bridesmaid?

Venue—Check, Decorator—Check, Caterer—Check, Professional Bridesmaid— Say what? Do you have a series of questions cropping up before you can even finish thinking the first one? Did I read right? What is a 'professional bridesmaid'? Who hires one? Do these brides not have friends?

Well, if you ask 26-year-old, Jen Glantz, a professional bridesmaid, she'll tell you that she is there “to be your personal assistant, on-call therapist, social director and the ultimate peacekeeper”.  

So how did this come about? According to her website, her 'professional bridesmaid' training started in 2010, when she started travelling the country as a consultant for a national sorority. Every week she found herself hoping off a plane in a new city and working with a group of women she had never met before. She would help them organize and delegate their to-do lists, problem-solve overwhelming situations, and cleanse their lives of any chaos or drama that was swimming circles around them. She learned how to make strangers into friends and turn difficult challenges into stress-free adventures. But let's fast forward to June 2014, when she was nicknamed 'the professional bridesmaid' after she was asked to be bridesmaid for her friends' weddings one after the other, “Soon my tiny NYC closest hugged more bridesmaid dresses than I had hangers for!” she says. After standing beside so many brides throughout their wedding planning process over the past couple of years, she witnessed first-hand the stress that brides experience and decided that there was a need in the bridal industry that wasn’t being fulfilled yet. Simply put, there was no one there whose job it was to focus entirely on the bride. “That’s why I decided to write a Craigslist ad offering my services as a professional bridesmaid and after I received an overwhelming response, I decided to turn it into a business,” Jen adds.

By hiring a Professional Bridesmaid, you can still honour your friends and family by having them be your bridesmaids, but without the burden or the 'dirty work'. A quick look through her website will help brides decide what kind of package to opt for—Virtual Bridesmaid, Undercover Bridesmaid, Ultimate Bridesmaid, Bridesmaid by Your Side or Bridesmaid Boot Camp. So how is her work different from a wedding planner? “Wedding planners have quite a job of their own; their focus is on preparing for the big day, making sure the vendors arrive on time and setting up the venue exactly as the bride imagined. I’m there to work specifically with the bride and her needs—whether it’s shopping for a wedding dress, organizing RSVPs, coordinating the bridal shower or bachelorette party, helping with a registry for gifts, or even dancing the cha-cha slide with your drunk Uncle. Plus, if I’m there on the big day, my number one goal is to make sure the bride and her wedding party are stress free and that their to-do list becomes my own personal responsibility,” shares Jen, who is also a full-time writer and also works as a copywriter for a tech start-up.

Jen, who is working with 27 brides right now for weddings as far away as October 2016, tells us that other bridesmaids are glad to have her around. She tries to relate to the wedding party before she meets them and once again in person to establish a bond between herself, the bride and the other bridesmaids. As her website states, “we’re not here to replace your best friends, we’re here to make sure that wedding stress becomes wedding joy among the bridal party”. Getting to know brides who were once strangers to her and working together for many months has had an impact on her personal life in many positive ways. She also loves handling weddings for different cultures and religions and does a lot of research and asks a lot of questions if she's not familiar with a particular culture or religion. Her day begins with checking emails followed by a quick wake-up workout in her room and then work (either writing or managing my bridal clients).

So what does she do with her closet-full of bridesmaids dresses? She sometimes “wears them around my apartment, hoping to get invited to a fancy gala one day. Then I'll have so many dress options!” shares the New Yorker, who hopes to tie up with a male friend and work as a team, offering a bridesmaid-bestman package for prospective brides and grooms, in the future.

When asked what are her plans for her wedding, she says she has “already started taking mental notes of what I'd like at my own wedding. I would totally have a professional bridesmaid by my side for my wedding day. Someone to keep me stress free.