When Stevie Hutchinson was preparing to serve as maid of honor at her best friend's wedding, she wasn't sure what would be required of her.

The wedding was being planned for last June at Kualoa Ranch, but the groom was on the Mainland and the bride was traveling. What could Hutchinson do to help?

The bride sat her down and spelled it out:

1. I need you to wear this dress you're going to hate.

2. I want you to write a speech that will make me cry.

"The thing about bridesmaid dresses is, it's the bride's vision of her perfect wedding," Hutchinson said. "It doesn't matter how ridiculous or outrageous, it's your obligation as a friend to fulfill that image of what that day is supposed to be."

Many a bridesmaid has been reminded of her own experiences by Katherine Heigl's new movie, "27 Dresses," which has Heigl's character reeling from duty in one wedding after another. But when it comes to being an FOTB (friend of the bride), Hawai'i bridesmaids pull out the aloha spirit.

Hutchinson commends her friend's fashion sense - her bridesmaid's dress was a sky-blue strapless Ann Taylor gown - but the Kaimuki resident owns up that she hasn't had much opportunity to wear it again here in Hawai'i. Even so, she's prepared to fill her closet with more dresses she'll only wear once, in the name of friendship.

"It seems like all my friends are getting to that point," said Hutchinson, who's also been a flower girl. "That was my freshman wedding. Now, I can write a speech like a pro."

The brides bought dresses for Regina Berry of Pearl City to wear as a bridesmaid. Score! Except that they were maroon and gold - not really her colors.

No matter to Berry. "Right before the last wedding I was in, my friend was struggling over which to purchase," said Berry, a member of the National Guard. "She wanted the perfect one, so all the bridesmaids would be happy with it. I told her, 'Pick a dress you like. It's your day. It's not our wedding, it's yours.' That took the stress off her."

Berry agrees the role of bridesmaid is to support one's friend: "You really are there to calm them down, keep them grounded, rather than worrying about what might or might not happen. The bridesmaid's job is to make sure the bride lets go of little things and has a good time."

The first time Berry was in a wedding, she sent her measurements ahead for a Mainland ceremony. She flew in, tried on the gold gown, and it fit to a T.

Another bridesmaid went to slide into her own gown and couldn't.

"That dress fit me better than it fit her," Berry said. "So I had to swap dresses. I went from being really happy to sad. It goes back to, 'It's not my wedding.' Either I gave her my dress or we were short one bridesmaid."

It all worked out in the end: Even in a tight gold gown, Berry had fun and no one knew the difference.

"Everybody was looking at the bride," Berry demurred.

Of course, being a bridesmaid is about more than just the dress.

"Don't go into it thinking you're gonna wear it again," Millie Martini Bratten, editor-in-chief of Bride's magazine, told Newsday in a recent report. "Go into it knowing you're there to support a friend; stand tall and smile on her wedding day. Because that's what friends do."

While some bridesmaids tease their bridezillas, Grace Chan jokingly calls herself the maid-of-honor version - bridesmaidzilla, anyone? She laughs as she tells how she insisted on being the maid of honor at all four weddings she's been in. That way, she's had a hand in picking out the gowns.

"I pick it fast," Chan admitted, but even so, noted that most of the gowns she wore only once, then given away to a friend, a ballroom dancer.

Chan, who works in the wedding industry, has very specific ideas about her own wedding, though that's still a while away - "need to find the husband," she joked - especially her bridesmaids-to-be: "I will pick dresses for them," she said firmly.

Julie Kirk, whose own wedding will probably be later this year, knows the place of the bridesmaid is to accentuate the bride and smile big.

"You go to the fittings, hate the ugly dress but say it's fabulous. Oh, and say 'I'll definitely wear this again.' "

The Mainland transplant, who lives on Round Top, keeps six - that's right, six - of the dresses in a closet in her mother's home in Virginia, right next to mom's organza cotillion dress and the mink stole she'll inherit one day.

Kirk's idea: When she gets married, the brides whose weddings she attended must come to Kirk's wedding in the gowns they had her wear, right down to the teal dress with the white shoes - with bolero jacket.

Melissa Gibson concurs when she thinks of the dresses she's donned, which is at six and counting (two more bridesmaids gigs are coming up this year).

"I've kept them all," said Gibson, a food writer who attended Punahou School and now lives in San Francisco. "My theory is, if I ever get married, at my bachelorette party all those brides will be wearing the dresses they made me wear. They'll have to wear them openly and in public. That's my redemption. If they don't fit, well, that's really not my problem. It's just desserts."

Gibson has been swathed in colors ranging from tangerine to sea foam green to purple.

"One looks so bad on me that my best friend told me I had to throw it away," Gibson said. "That's the only reason I don't have it. At the reception, she came up to me and said I looked so unfortunate."