I met maid of honor Erin Brind'Amour before I met anyone else in the world, spending 9 months together in utero and then in the NICU. Just three years later, we met our little sister, maid of honor Maeve Brind'Amour, in the hospital. Since there were no kids on our street growing up, the three of us were constantly together, waking up at the crack of dawn to play Polly Pockets before school, exploring fairy allegations in the backyard, or drawing up our self-published fashion magazine, MEM, in the basement. We also engaged in physical and psychological warfare with each other (as sisters do) and devised dangerous games like throwing a cash register at each other in the dark. Sometime around eigth grade, I met my bridesmaids Emily Byrnes and Alicia D'Annunzio at junior high, and grew even closer in high school. We bonded over our shared teenage jobs working at Schooner's Riverside Pub, a downmarket establishment featuring fishbowls, live music, and one of the world's last remaining cigarette machines. When I finally moved to Virginia for college, I met bridesmaid Bailey Parsons, who lived in my hall. We became fast friends over music, our international relations course, and Redbull fueled "productivity sessions" that usually involved falling asleep, laptops open, on the dorm floor. Soon after, I met bridesmaid Sam Schwartzkopf in a meeting for our scholarship, and knew we'd be fast friends. We merged our two student radio shows, and spent every Wednesday night of college in the WDCE studio snacking, chatting, and blasting indie sleaze out to the Richmond community. As college morphed into the "real world," these women have accompanied me with sage life advice and social commentary that makes me laugh out loud. In Richmond, I'd meet Sam on Strawberry Street to exchange baked goods and comiserate on our underpaid public service lives. In DC, I'd take the bus to New York to caulk vole holes and eat yummy vegan food with Maeve, or the Amtrak down to Richmond to play with Bailey's corgi while we rehash our cringiest years.

Photos