A Massachusetts bride is putting a unique twist on a long-standing wedding tradition.
Instead of selecting only one maid of honor for her upcoming nuptials, Anna Vatuone chose to honor five of her closest friends and asked them all to be maids.
The 29-year-old writer and brand strategist shared her decision in a TikTok post, which has gone viral with over 551,000 views, and explained to "Good Morning America" that she was inspired by a similar idea she saw in a Reddit post.
For her friend Rachel, Vatuone asked her to be her maid of loving kindness. To be her maid of joy, she asked her friend Becky. When it came to her friend Kirsten, she wondered if she could be her maid of passion. Vatuone then asked her friend Crystal, whom she first met when they were both college students, if she could be her maid of courage. And last but definitely not least, Vatuone asked her friend Erin if she could be her maid of generosity.
"I wrote a letter that basically just said, 'This is the quality I see with you,' and I shared different examples of different times in our lives where I've seen that quality come through," Vatuone told "GMA." "And at the very end, I asked them, 'Would you be my maid of courage? Would you be my maid of generosity and share with me the night before my wedding, what that word means and how you think I can bring it into my marriage?'"
Vatuone captured the moment when she shared each letter with her friends and the gesture brought some of them to tears when they read about the concept.
She said coming up with each characteristic and honor came quickly to her and as she gets ready to say "I do" this fall, she couldn't imagine not having her friends by her side.
"One of the things that I said in the video was like, they loved me first. And I think about it all the time. Because I think for so long, I really craved finding a romantic love and wanted to find a great partner and was looking for that and now that I'm engaged to this amazing guy, I keep thinking, I had an amazing love story with my friends already and they showed me how to love, they showed me how to be in partnership," Vatuone said.
The bride said she wanted to share her post with others online to show that wedding planning doesn't have to look the same for everyone.
"I really liked the idea of showing people that actually, there are different ways that we can do this and how can we give back? How can we give back to the people in our lives who have helped us get to where we are today?" said Vatuone.
And so, this fall, Vatuone's wedding will not just center the love between her and her fiance, Trevor Scanlon, but also her deep friendships with her girlfriends.
"In a sense, yes, I'm getting married but it's a chance to celebrate a community, our community together – his friends, and my friends – have all helped us get to this place that we are today," she added.
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