How to Decide If You Should Have Junior Bridesmaids in Your Wedding Party

Junior bridesmaids may be the most excited members of the wedding party. Still young enough to gaze dreamily at the bride in her flowing wedding dress and think "princess," she also loves that she gets to wear a pretty dress and hang out with the older female attendants. If you have a young sister, niece, cousin, or friend's child with whom you're close, you might be wondering how she fits into the wedding party. If she's too old to be a flower girl but too young to be a bridesmaid, a junior bridesmaid might be just the job for her. Here, we explain how to determine if someone is the right age for this role.

It's all about her age.

The first and most important criterion that determines a girl's title is how old she is. If she's from four to eight, she's a flower girl, If she's between nine and fifteen, she falls into the junior bridesmaid category; older than that, you can go ahead and call her a bridesmaid.

Consider her maturity.

Sometimes age has to be overlooked in place of common sense. In the event that the girl you're thinking of including is nine but needs a lot of supervision, you may want to ask her to be a flower girl, which means she'll have no other responsibility other than walking down the aisle ahead of you. On the other hand, someone who's a very mature fifteen may fit in better with the bridesmaids than any of the junior bridesmaids.

This is what her role entails.

A junior bridesmaid contributes time and energy, just as a bridesmaid would. She helps with invitations (stuffing them, stamping them, filling out envelopes), putting together favors, tracking down guests' addresses, and any other reasonable chore a bride may need extra hands for. She also attends all pre-wedding events like the bridal shower, lunch, tea, rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, but not the bachelorette party. Of course, she takes part in the wedding ceremony and attends the reception, but she's too young for the after-party. At that point, the party's over for her!