Two weeks before my 30th birthday, I got kicked out of my best friend’s wedding. Humiliating? Yes. Horrible? Indeed. My fault? Maybe.

Let me backtrack a bit. I’ve never been a very matrimonial kind of girl. Even when my childhood friends started freaking out about future nuptials, I didn’t bite. As a (shy, rather neurotic) prepubescent, I spent more time reading Sweet Valley High, comparing myself to the blond-haired, “perfect size six” Wakefield twins than concocting elaborate fantasies about my long-ways-off wedding night.

So when my best friend from high school asked me to be her maid of honor, I agreed with veiled reluctance. Not because I wasn’t excited for her. We had met almost 15 years prior, during freshman year at a private DC high school. As self-conscious 14-year-olds, we had bonded in that claustrophobic teen girl way. We spent every spare moment together, rolling around in our adolescent angst like pigs in poop. But eventually we grew apart when, after high school, Allie went off to a big Northeastern Ivy League while I headed to a hippie school in New England.

After college, we kept in sporadic contact, but things were different. We were different. I no longer felt like we understood each other the way we had as 15-year-olds scratching ankh symbols onto our sneakers with Sharpies. When Allie squealed, “I’m engaged!” on the phone from Beijing, then asked me to be her maid of honor, I agreed. But the ensuing chatter about three-carat rings and Monique Lhuillier gowns turned my stomach.

Three days prior to the fancy DC wedding – a huge black-tie affair on the night before New Year’s Eve – I was shopping for a wedding gift with Michelle, a high school friend (and fellow bridesmaid). I had organized a bridesmaids’ brunch for the following morning, and was feeling more than edgy about Allie’s approaching Big Day. My fear of public speaking had resurfaced; I broke into a sweat when I thought about the Maid of Honor toast I would have to make. The whole affair was so posh, so foreign, so utterly beyond my comfort zone.

I worried about being the fattest girl in the wedding (her other bridesmaids were uber-tan and toned). I worried about the speech I would have to make before hundreds of guests. I worried about whether I would ever fall in love again.

So when Allie called around six to ask whether Michelle and I could meet her for a last-minute dinner with the rest of the wedding party, I rolled my eyes. I wanted to buy her gift and go to bed. The entire following day—indeed, the entire upcoming weekend—would be devoted to Allie’s wedding.

“Um, would you mind if I skipped dinner?” I chirped. “I have a ton of stuff to do before brunch tomorrow, and I don’t have much money to drop right now…” My voice trailed off. Allie was not known for diplomacy.