Chocolate Mexican Wedding Cookies

Would you like to be my bridesmaid?

The setting is an engagement party where Annie, the maid of honour for her childhood friend Lillian, has been asked to make a speech. Annie (played by Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote the script) takes to the stage, glass of champagne in hand, and makes a short, heartfelt toast. But then in a glorious show of one-upmanship, another bridesmaid grabs the microphone and delivers a moving monologue peppered with humorous anecdotes and spiritually uplifting Thai proverbs. The evening rapidly degenerates into the bridal equivalent of a hip-hop battle, with each woman hilariously trying to outdo the other in sentiment and prove they are the better friend.

"That definitely struck a chord," says Vicky Pigott, a 28-year-old solicitor who has been a bridesmaid four times (by the end of this summer, that will rise to six). "I've been at a hen do where we were all asked to stand in a line, ranking ourselves according to how close we were to the bride." Where did she place herself? She shakes her head wearily, like a battle-hardened wedding veteran. "I refused to do it. At that point, I just stood aside and said: 'No.'"

For some unmarried women there is a time in their late 20s and early 30s when being a bridesmaid becomes a rite of passage. Our daily lives can be measured in answerphone messages: the ones from female friends who have been dating the same man for 18 months or so, announcing enigmatically that they have "some news" to impart. Then there is the inevitable engagement party email, in which we are told that Stephen or Ben or Patrick proposed on the beach at midnight in Tulum, just as the Mexican solar eclipse reached its fullest point of luminescence and a flock of hummingbirds dived into the sea.

A few weeks later, when we are asked to be a bridesmaid, etiquette dictates that we grin delightedly even though a part of us is dying inside at the thought of being asked to wear chartreuse taffeta and having to sit through the screeched renditions of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" at the hen-do karaoke. At the wedding, if we are single, we will always be seated next to the designated Eligible Male. An unmarried acquaintance was once placed on a table of male trainee firemen. When she asked why, the bride replied: "Oh, but you're such a good sport, we thought you'd like to be the centre of attention."

It is these indignities that Kristen Wiig (a graduate of the Saturday Night Live . As it happens, I am going to be a bridesmaid in August. Fortunately for me, the friend in question – Kirrily, a frighteningly successful NHS doctor – is the most un-bridezilla-ish woman you could hope to meet. There have been no competitive speech-offs in the run-up to her wedding and she has insisted that her five bridesmaids all choose their dresses.