My vote is Go For It!! What’s right is right.
Who’s in charge of the bachelor party though? 
Whatever. Miss Manners isn’t a fucking historian. I HIGHLY doubt that she has any real clue as to why weddings are done the way they are, and is just spewing rhetoric that she thinks sounds good. I say she can’t be the “best Man” because she is a WOMAN. It is called best “MAN” for a reason: it’s supposed to be the closest MALE friend of the groom. If she and the groom are such good friends, then let her be one of the female attendents. Everyone on here who says her being the best man would draw attention from the bride is exactly right, and THAT would be a lot more rude than not letting a woman be best man.
Sorry for the profanity, I just get so PASSIONATE about weddings! Plus, Miss Manners annoys me. 
Well, personally, if I had a vagina, or if I was just a total girl, it would be so cool. I would totally get the hot chicks. I mean, in a petite but firm female body I could so get the chicks. I’d tease the dudes for money at strip clubs.
Let’s see, if memory serves me correctly, the reason it originally called for a best man was that if the groom whimped out the best man was supposed to marry the bride. Luckily that is not the case any longer.
HUGS!
Sqrl
That stinks. Your friend should not put tradition over friendship. Who cares what it “looks” like. What’s more important, what it looks like, or whether you make your best friend feel bad and left out?
They want to have a Catholic wedding so I think that’s part of it. I’m friends with the bride but we’re not as close as the groom and I are. I think it’s more for appearances sake that I’m not going to stand up for him.
I’m going to the bachelor party though. We’re probably just going to go to a few titty bars and then to our regular hangout. I guess it’s o.k. that I participate in the bachelor party even though I’m a woman… oh well.
I think it’s a fantastic idea to have whomever you want stand up for you at your wedding, also, but I have to agree with Mamapotamus that it really doesn’t matter what you or any of us think. If the bride and groom have decided that they want to stick to the more traditional “rules” that’s their decision. This is their decision as a team and even if the groom does want you to stand up for him, maybe he’s willing to compromise on this with his soon-to-be wife.
Thinking back to our wedding, I don’t think that I would have been excited about having a woman as a “groomsman” or a man as a “bridesmaid”. It’s not that I would have been worried about anyone “showing me up” or anything like that. I think it’s just a little too non-traditional for what I had always imagined as my wedding. And that was my and my husband’s choice. No big deal.
Funny, I can’t remember a single person that ran up to my husband’s best friend and said, “Bernadette, you look so fabulous! Not like that troll Steve married!”
She’s my husband’s best friend. He felt a little weird asking her to be best “friend.” I encouraged him to. It’s supposed to be the happiest day of our lives–if what makes him happy is to have his best friend stand by him at his wedding, it makes me happy too.
Unless Rachelle wears a see-thru gown, she won’t be drawing attention away from anyone.
Can we refer to the people in the wedding party by using the nice gender-neutral word: “Attendants”?
Although I have been to weddings where people mixed everything up (gender-wise) and I see no problem with it, ultimately it is their wedding and their choice.
Though as your best friend, he should feel compelled to have you participate in the wedding somehow. Maybe you could read something in the ceremony, be in charge of the guest register, or even be an usher (AFAIK, Ushers don’t have to stand in attendance, though most do.)
The Catholic part could be a big part of it, too. I was Maid of Honor in my friend’s big Catholic wedding (with full Mass) and she refused to let me take part in taking communion because I was divorced. I was pissed but what could I do? I love her and it was her wedding. The bitch. 
I hope he finds some way for you to take part in the wedding, it would be a nice gesture on his part!
My wife was “best friend” at our friend’s wedding.
Before that, he was the best man at our wedding. My best friend at the time was her matron of honor. So we “chickened out”, but it made the pictures look better.
These remarks are not aimed at you, porcupine, they’re just a general response to the sentiments expressed in your post.
A wedding is about the people getting married. Her friend has the right to do whatever he wants in his own wedding. He has the right to exclude anyone, invite anyone, put them in the ceremony or not. And there are also the feelings of the bride and both families to consider, ALL of which are more important than anyone elses’. If having a female best man would seem unusual or gossip-worthy to ANYONE in the above mentioned groups, it should be avoided. The is a very important day to more people than just the groom, and what those other people think DOES matter. Hell, THEY’RE paying for it, after all. (I assume)
Maybe the best friend will feel bad and left out. She’ll get over it. But if the bride or her family is offeneded it will probably still be making the rounds years later. A best friend who can’t grasp this and doesn’t know when discretion is the better part of valor is not a “best” friend at all.
The OP doesn’t say anything about the bride being upset, the family being upset, or anything like that. All it said was that the groom said it wouldn’t “look right” and he didn’t want her to “show up the bride.” If that’s the only reason, I stand by my original statement.
Of course the B&G have a “right” to do whatever they want. Just as the OP has the “right” to be a little unhappy about it.
If I were getting married, it would be a lot more important to me to have my closest friends be involved than it would be for everything to “look right” and to follow tradition.
BTW, at my brother’s wedding, my future sister-in-law had my brother ask my sister and I (and presumably others) to take Communion because the bride thought it would “look nice.” We were all raised Catholic, bu I am an atheist, and my sister is agnostic, and this was known to my brother and his fiance. Should I have done it to make the bride happy? FTR, I didn’t, and neither did my sister - I told my brother I wasn’t going to be a hypocrite so everything “looks nice”. I could tell he was rather embarassed to have asked in the first place.
I understand that it’s their wedding and their day and I’m not gonna be pissed that I’m not standing up for him… I just think he should be able to choose whomever he wants to be his “best man.”
We’ve had a lot of problems with our boyfriends/girlfriends being jealous that we’re so close… they always think that there’s something going on between us or that we were lovers at one point in time. We’ve never been more than friends and never will be but sometimes it’s hard to get that through to our SOs. His bride-to-be may have a hard time dealing with our friendship because he hasn’t told her just how good of friends we are because he doesn’t want to go through what we’ve gone through in the past with his other girlfriends. Not a wise thing to hide on his part but that’s his decision. She knows that we’re good friends but she doesn’t know how much we talk on the phone and how much we hang out together. (She lives in Florida and is in the Navy. He’s moving there after the first of the year and then they’re coming back here to get married next summer. She was here for about a week to visit and they spent a lot of time with me and my SO so she kind of knows we hang out but probably assumes that my SO is always around.)
If he wants a man (he’s already picked someone) to stand up for him to please her, that’s fine. I can’t do anything about it and I’m still going to be happy for him and attend the wedding and reception. I will also be making a toast at the reception (in addition to the best man’s toast) and I’m gonna be in charge of the bachelor party (collaborating with the best man on that too). That’s been decided already.
Rach, it the groom is secure with himself, you certainly are capable of being the best man.!