Meet the Woman who Gets Paid to be a Bridesmaid
And her services are in high demand – at approximately €1,000 per wedding.
The women a bride-to-be chooses as her bridesmaids are likely to be close friends, dear siblings or close relatives, ones who have seen the bride-to-be through years of life’s ups and downs. And you wouldn’t think Jen Glantz, 28, is any different when accompanying the bride through her special day – except that she gets paid approximately €1,000 to do it.
“I’m a mix of on-call therapist, virtual assistant, social director and peacekeeper,” she says in an interview to The Telegraph. “I do the bridesmaids’ dirty work – and I love it.”
Her Bridesmaids For Hire started three years ago, when she was asked by two friends to be their respective bridesmaid within 2 days of each other – friends she wasn’t particularly close to. “They asked me because they know I’m organised and I don’t get stressed easily.”
Glantz went on to post an ad on Craigslist offering her bridesmaid services, and received 250 emails overnight. Within a week, she had received thousands of messages, with price packages that start from around €1,000 for a ‘virtual bridesmaid’ who gives support before the big day, to ones that go up to around €1,700 for pre-wedding help, hen-party planning and Glantz walking down the aisle with the bride, in a dress that’s paid for by the bride herself.
To date, Glantz, who lives in New York, has worked with 65 brides, and she’s in constant demand, to the point that, when she was made redundant in 2015, she had enough work to make her business full time.
Her bridesmaid adventures have seen her scooping up donkey poop with her bare hands to save the bride’s dress from getting soiled, and wrapping duct tape around her chest after lending her strapless bra to the mother of the bride.
She told The Telegraph that many of the brides she’s worked with over the years have chosen to confide in her, knowing that she won’t judge them or break their trust. “I deal with cold feet all the time. Some people realise right before they’re about to get married that it is to the wrong person, but others are just caught up with nerves. There’s so much pressure for it to be perfect that people feel all these emotions and some of them are misplaced.”