For somebody who's had the lousiest luck imaginable with men, I seem to have had an awful lot to do with OTHER people's marriages and relationships. I've been a maid of honor numerous times (and have a variety of hideous atrocities in the back of my closet to prove it!), introduced three couples to each other who are still going strong after 10 years (and thus have been indirectly responsible for a number of births as well), and have provided sympathetic counsel to a number of my maligned and cheated-on women friends (although I have to admit that for the most part, my "counsel" has been limited to the words "dump the bastard").

My first maid of honor experience was for my friend Becky, a no-makeup-Birkenstocks gal who had only agreed to a big white wedding to please her wealthy parents, who were in their 80s and had waited...ahem!...a long time for this. I had brought her to my weekly volleyball game in the park, where she met her future husband's best friend, who told her all about his dark, heavyset scientist buddy who was doing a fellowship in Sweden. (Since Becky had always told me she intended to marry a dark, heavyset scientist type, this understandably peaked her interest). Email addresses were exchanged, and the next thing I knew, I was helping her pack and locating recipes for lutefisk. The following year, they returned from Sweden with her pregnant and needing a suitable wedding gown. Off we went to the chi-chi bridal designer, who had probably never encountered anyone like Becky, who refused to wear a bra, heels, makeup or jewelry, hated everything that was put on her, and who kept pulling the pins out of the bodice, declaring it all "too tight." She finally ended up with something more suitable for a nunnery, and I believe she later dyed it navy blue, so she could wear it again. The trolls on the wedding cake were a nice touch. And the good news for me was that I got to wear anything I wanted, as long as it didn�t clash with the flowers.

My next maid of honor experience was for a coworker, Betty, whom I had again hauled to the weekly volleyball game. Betty was another very low maintenance type whom I doubt had ever had even a passing acquaintance with a razor (why these folks were attracted to a high maintenance friend like me is anybody's guess). I introduced her to the local Neanderthal -- an overbearing, unattractive, unshaven, soap-challenged pseudo-intellectual named Larry. Naturally, it was love at first sight. Their outdoor wedding was an artsy-woodsy affair that had strolling minstrels, maypoles, children lisping Elizabethan poetry and -- the one masterful touch -- a sing-along recessional of "When I'm Sixty-Four." (If I ever get married, I'm going to steal that idea.) Larry later took an intense dislike to me for some reason, and doesn't let Betty communicate with me anymore. No idea why, but c'est la vie. I often wish I'd hung on to the cheesy medieval getup I had to wear for this one -- it'd probably be right in style now.

Next up was my best friend Wendy, whose wedding to (shudder) an actor was an ill-advised affair -- one of those relationships that had gone on so long that it had stagnated, and their wedding was the result of an ultimatum on the bride's part -- never a good thing. Everyone, including the bride and groom, wore black, which may have been symbolic. They're still married after 9 years, but there are a lot of recriminations. I did, however, get a nifty black pantsuit out of that one, even if one of the gay groomsmen told me I looked like a "lipstick lesbian." I'm still not sure if he meant it as a compliment.

Then there was Carol, who had always claimed that her goal in life was to be a "matriarch." (Now there's something you don't hear very often!) Her wedding took place on a cold, rainy October day in a miniscule chapel in Wisconsin's Door County. There were several interesting developments surrounding this wedding: most of the wedding party had never met each other and were housed in a small bed-and-breakfast in the woods. It was a ranch house and its owners lived, during tourist season, in a trailer in the front yard, only venturing into their house to cook the meals and change the linens. The wife also moonlighted as a waitress in town, and it was not unusual for her to serve you breakfast in her home, and then lunch at the Blue Iris on the main drag. My roommate for the weekend was a huge formidable crew cut sporting female prison guard named Dudley, apparently providing the musical entertainment, who lumbered in garbed in men's clothing with an enormous key ring jangling from her belt. She spent most of both nights keeping me awake droning on about her gender confusion issues and need for a good depilatory.

The next day the bride, Carol, confessed to us that she had cheated on her fiance several times in the previous month and wasn't sure she should go through with the ceremony. After we convinced her to go full-steam ahead (we all thought the groom was HAWT), we met her at the chapel, where we were confronted with a problem: the groom's father was a quadriplegic and none of his considerable apparatus would fit down the aisle. Nor would much of anything else. Finally, everyone crammed in as the rain pounded on the leaky roof, and we all helped carry the father over our heads across the pews. Dudley turned out to have a beautiful soprano voice (go figure) and was a mean guitar player. The reception back at the groom's parents' house was bizarre to say the least -- the quadriplegic dad was placed in a large sandbox in the corner, where some sort of electrical current moved his arms and legs for him. I had never seen anything like it, and wondered if I'd somehow landed in a Beckett play. We all sat around eating potato salad, playing every musical instrument in the house and singing. In the end, a good time was had by all, and my turquoise dress and matching hat landed in the Goodwill box the following Monday -- couldn't even stand to have that one in my closet.

That volleyball game was responsible for one more union: my twin brother's. I brought him along one Saturday, and he met his future wife Kit, a hard-bitten editor for a city news bureau. Seeing that my brother was somewhat skittish, she wisely approached him through my sister and me. In fact, I think we were both a bit concerned that she might be gay and was hitting on us! But no -- they've been happily married for 10 years, and have my nephew, the best kid EVAH.

I suppose it's really too bad there was never someone around like me, FOR me. But I guess some people are put here to be facilitators, and aunts (honorary and otherwise). And maybe there's nothing wrong with that.