Here comes the bride…

Sylva Florence / senior photographer Senior Sylva Florence poses with her best friend Kelly after her wedding.

My best friend Kelly walked down the aisle with her husband. All the guests rose from their seats, clapping and smiling. At that moment, I realized how different our lives suddenly were.

She has her own house, a dog and a husband. I rent a house with six other girls, have a car that sometimes works and a wild rabbit that regularly hops across our backyard.

I stood in my little spot on the grass as her maid of honor, thinking that there isn’t anything that prepares you for that feeling of instant adulthood. And there’s no manual that told me how to react when my best friend since fifth grade pledged her "until death do us part" to a man from California.

I still remember when Kelly and I used to play Barbies and fight over who got the authentic mermaid tail and who had to make her own.

Now she’s somebody’s wife, and she and I (playfully) fought over how to arrange her Unity Candle table at her wedding. It is weird now to think we once argued over something as trivial as Barbie dolls.

Technically, her marriage didn’t change anything in my life. However, when close friends start getting hitched, it ushers the un-wed closer to the next stage of life – that creepy thing called "the real world." Here, all of us probably eventually will tie the knot, get real jobs and have to stop drinking five out of seven nights of the week.

My friends and I have always laughed and said I’ll be the last one to get married, but now that it’s happened to one of us …

Let’s back up a smidge. Realize of course that I watched my best friend take a huge, flying leap into the real world — and I also had the joy, as maid of honor, of being the human lubricant that kept that wedding rolling relatively smoothly.

Without the maid of honor, the groom’s ring would be MIA, relatives and bridesmaids would be hopping and skipping down the aisle at a self-determined pace, and the best man would have to shoulder the entire after-wedding toast. More importantly, the bride may have been on the fritz.

Senior Annie Santos was the maid of honor at a friend’s wedding last weekend, and she admitted what irked her most was the bride’s state of mind.

"I’m most worried about her having a breakdown before the wedding," Santos said. "[I’m worried] something simple will happen like a nail breaking and she’ll flip out."

To keep Frazzled Bride Disorder from setting in, remember one simple rule — do not, at any time, start crying. If you do, you’re screwed — the wife-to-be will be on the brink of crying a good 72 hours before the wedding and the probability of tears will increase proportionately with the proximity of the wedding.

Now, also realize that I cried when Wesley and Buttercup finally re-united in "The Princess Bride," and I used about four boxes of Kleenex watching "Bambi." I was screwed.

But somehow — maybe due to the fact that Kelly and I never stopped long enough to cry — I held it together. The wedding was perfect and so was the weather (the bride still doesn’t know that it was cloudy with a chance of rain in the wee hours, and that my bright idea of blowing up balloons at 9 a.m. was only to keep her away from the windows).

So now, I just have to get used to the idea that my best friend no longer is on the market.

Santos also felt a little strange about her friend tying the knot. "I can’t believe she’s 21, building a house, graduating and getting married all in the same year. I don’t even know where I’ll be in six years from now."

The funny thing is, neither do I — I can’t really tell you what I’m doing next weekend, much less next year. The other funny thing is I caught Kelly’s bouquet.

Don’t get excited just yet — freak accidents happen all the time. And me finding a husband — at JMU no less — would be an even freakier event.