Bridal publications and etiquette mavens discourse at length about the responsibilities of members of the wedding, but there is a whole 'nother category that it seems to me receives short shrift: Friends of the Mother-of-the-Bride.

Believe me, they are essential. Their duties begin long before mother-of-the-bride (MOB) status has settled on a friend. Especially if they are themselves seasoned MOBs, they must endure hours of whining as the would-be MOB complains that she is the only member of her crowd who lacks son-in-law and grandchildren.

Then when Cupid's arrows fly, they have to listen to the opposite cavil: Her daughter is marrying a man she hardly knows or perhaps worse one she knows only too well.

It's the friends of the MOB (FOMOBs) who propose and carry out the rounds of bridal showers and teas their own daughters ought to be doing, but either can't afford or are away at college and therefore unable to help plan.

With our own impending nuptial event happening out of town, and the perpetrators thereof mature adults, the pressure is off my FOMOBs to fete my daughter. That hasn't excused them, however, from listening to me wail about how suddenly this long-desired union is happening.

Nor have they been excused from their roles as MOB dress consultants.

Theirs is a daunting task. Few people are less interested in clothes and shopping than I am. My tastes, such as they are, lean sophomorically toward denim and my rare purchases toward impulse buying.

This does not faze my friend Viki, who vowed that as soon as she gets back into town from her current grandmotherly excursion to Wisconsin she will drag me off to Lenox Square and find The Dress if it means trying on every one there. I'd rather have a root canal.

There are women to whom Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza are as familiar and comfortable as the Braelinn Kmart and Smith & Davis are to me, and I salute their sophistication. That just isn't moi.

It's true, however, that the prettiest, most becoming dress I own was chosen for me by a clerk who somehow saw the potential and insisted I try on something I wouldn't have looked at twice on the rack. But the thought of taking off and pulling on clothes in cramped dressing rooms with hangers on the floor was so appalling, I decided I'd do this my way, and before Viki gets home.

The bride, you see, MADE her wedding dress within a week of receiving her engagement ring. (I try to block out that this also followed by only a week the first moment she laid eyes on her groom.)

Why should I do less? I thought. After all, I made virtually every school dress and coat the child ever had, and taught her to sew over the telephone after she flew the nest and found out how much ready-to-wear costs.

So I consulted with Bonnie, a FOMOB whose skill with a needle is legendary in my circles and beyond. She showed me what she's working on, let me slide my hand over some scrumptious satin-backed crepe, nodded sympathetically as I pointed to my anatomical geography to indicate what we need to cover here while emphasizing there.

I left her dining room/studio inspired and next day hied me off to The Pavilion to (a) see what's in the stores and (b) look at patterns.

No names here in case they advertise with this paper, but in one store, I had the distinct feeling I was in a flea market, complete with never mind. The small shops were hardly more appealing. The aural warfare inflicted on shoppers by the young clerks' operation of the sound system drove me screaming silently from several premises.

(I swear this is the truth -- I distinctly heard this line in one caterwaul: "...Lying naked on the floor..." This is inspirational in a dress shop?)

Everywhere I looked, the prettiest outfits featured elegant jackets worn either over pants or over black dresses. Call me quaint, but I really think MOBs should wear skirts. And black makes a statement at a wedding that I am not prepared to make, any misgivings I may have about the suddenness of this event notwithstanding.

Between dress shops, I paged through pattern books at WalMart. Somehow sketches of impossibly slender women in dresses that don't even exist appeal more to me than real, tangible dresses crushed together on racks.

OK, I thought, I'll combine the skirt in a pattern Bonnie said she'd lend me with the top from another, and all I have to do now is find fabric not an easy task in this quality-dry-goods-forsaken county. But one more stop first for possible inspiration: Belk.

And there it was. The Dress. A stunning royal blue, one-piece that appears to be a braided jacket over a full skirt. I picked up the only Size 12 there, stepped into the dressing room and when I zipped it up and looked in the mirror, I almost cried.

It's perfect. I'm gorgeous in it. It fits better than anything I've ever made myself. Sleeves and skirt-lengths on ready-made are rarely long enough for me these were. I've even got shoes that will work. And it was on sale.

Now all I have do is get one of my other FOMOBs to break the news to Viki. I haven't the heart.

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