July 2000 ~ My first encounter with “Terror”
After dating my present-day fiancé for about a month during the summer of 2000, we decided on the fly one Friday night to meet up with some of his friends who I did not yet know. Specifically, he wanted to introduce me to his fairly new, though seemingly old friend, Ms. Terra Morgan. Though I exuded a forced confidence as we entered the quaint Seattle pub that night, on the inside I was shaking like a leaf. Why? Well, despite the fact that Terra and I had not yet met, a rivalry between us already existed thanks to my new boyfriend, Scott. From the beginning he had fed both of our egos feverishly, openly stating it would be a battle to see who could drink whom under the table. Well, where I come from, “them’s fightin’ words” to a 20-something.

As we walked in, I began to envision the heavyweight champion of the female world sashaying up to me with a bottle of Beam and two pint glasses, ready to send me to the stomach pump. Gulp. But as my eyes scanned the room and finally affixed on this Arizona beauty, all fear dissipated like a summer marine layer. Terra, or Terror as was her moniker back in the day, and I got along famously. And the infamous rivalry, which is a continued source of humor to us both even today, soon faded into true friendship.

April 2001 ~ The Seattle Sisterhood Begins
As the weeks passed by, and then the months, Terra and I started becoming better friends, though our lives were still relatively separate. It was about this time, during the Spring of ’01, that I learned just how exuberant and persistent Terra can be when it comes to her latest idea. You see, Terra had started entertaining the notion that she should gather all of her random Seattle girlfriends together, people she had accumulated through her various bar conversations, mutual friends, and dating mishaps, for semi-regular girls’ nights. Though I think we all probably thought that it was a good idea in one way or another, laziness would always prevail, and no one ever helped realize this idea with Terra.

Eventually Terra came to see the fruits of her labor though, as we finally all got together for a night out on the town. After about six rounds of tonic with a splash of vodka in it, some over-priced ravioli, and some grabby-grabberson a-hole dudes on the dance floor, we were all feeling the end of the night approaching. But, nooooo. Terra was just getting started. As is typically the case, Miss Terra gets her third wind at or near the 2am mark, which is usually about the same time that the rest of us are about ready to grab a famous Seattle hot dog with cream cheese and then go home and crawl into our “I’d never let a guy I was attracted to see me in this” pajamas to drift off to sleep. But there’s no convincing a tipsy Terra on a mission. That girl forced us all back to the apartment at which we began our evening for a nightcap and another hour or two of conversation. And in the end, that’s what I remember most about that inaugural girls’ night. That was our true bonding time, a time when I not only started to get to know Terra a little better, but also got a chance to start chatting up some of the other girls as well. Today we spend many of our weekends getting dolled up for a night on the town to celebrate a birthday, an engagement, a bachelorette, or better yet, nothing at all. We’ve become our own little clique of girls that could easily rival any ya-ya sisterhood out there.

April 2002 ~ The Engagement
I always thought that being in cohorts with a man planning his proposal to his girlfriend, and one of your own close friends, would be not only easy, but enjoyable and romantic. Yeah, I was a little bit off on that one. Don’t get me wrong, it was terribly fun to manipulate our dear Terra. It was just that my fellow bridesmaid, Karen, and I didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into with her fiancé, Mike. Poor Mike just couldn’t stand keeping that information to himself. He had to get it all out on the table. After Karen and I very slyly managed to convince Terra that we should all email each other ring designs that we liked for ‘someday’, we quickly pushed ‘forward’ on our trusty computers and instantly emailed her oh-so-private pictures to an anxiously awaiting Mike. He then sent them on to his family friend who just happened to be a jeweler in Ireland, and we were off. But before Karen and I could pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, we found that we were back in the saddle, scheduling multiple ‘meetings’ with Mike to ‘go over the details’. Yeah, well basically these meetings were really just Mike’s outlet to discuss what the ring was going to look like, show us the pictures again and again, and just talk. Though it was sweet and endearing that Mike was so anxious, excited, and nervous, both Karen and I also felt a little like ugly redheaded stepchildren. At one point we found ourselves sitting at a small, dimly-lit table at a local bar on a Monday night, gulping down beers like water, and staring down at pictures of various ring designs BY OURSELVES (Mike was at the bar for what seemed like an eternity!). It was at that point that Karen and I, both single and dating, thought, ‘Is this some sort of bad karma for the time we dined and dashed in college? Or perhaps for the time that we drew on our friend’s back with red nail polish after he passed out?’ Thankfully, after that session Mike felt the confidence we’d hoped to instill in him, and he was ready to go. Now all we had to do was watch and wait. We knew that they were traveling over to Ireland for a vacation, and as Mike had told us in confidence, that was when he planned to pop the question (insert excited girlie clap here).

Now, fast forward just a week or two later, and a large group of us were gathering to go out for Karen’s birthday. Terra and Mike were conspicuously missing due to their trip overseas, but at approximately 7, maybe 8 pm that evening, the phone rang. It was Terra. She asks to talk to Karen and me. I got on the phone expecting a huge screeching sound followed by immense praise for our assistance in planning her engagement. Instead what I encountered was an audibly intoxicated Terra slurring, “You suck! I can’t believe you kept this from me, you bxxxx! I totally hate you! But can you believe it! We’re engaged! I love you guys!” Ever so calmly I laughed and congratulated the now dwindling Terra, and wished them well in their newly engaged life together. It was a classic drunk Terra moment: cursing you and loving you all in the same breath. What would we do without this character in our lives, I thought.

Fall 2002-Present ~ Life as a Bridesmaid, Part IV
Being the experienced bridesmaid that I am (I’ve got old battle scars from being in three weddings in the past 2 years), I knew I could be one of Terra’s girls in my sleep. I’ve got the walking-down-the-aisle-with-a-constant-smile-on-while-in-heels-and-carrying-flowers thing down pat. I know my size in just about every dress manufacturer out there from Jim Hjelm to After Six, and I’ve got plenty of opinions when asked, but definitely won’t butt in if the bride’s got her own thing jiving. And so far so good. Terra’s been a great bride to ‘work for’ - definitely my best boss yet. She’s provided me with endless comedy (mostly at her expense as we realize how terrible she can be at actually making a decision on something - the girl had something like 8 different flatware patterns picked out!), given me ideas for my own wedding, and has really seemed to enjoy all of the researching, organizing, and panicking that is wedding planning (from what I understand, but I still have almost a year). All in all it’s been so much fun to be around my girl, Terra, during this important time in hers and Mike’s lives, and I can’t wait to see the finished product when we all gather together in just two short months to celebrate our friends in their very own Irish wedding.

Congratulations Terra and Mike!