I was maid of honor at my twin sister's wedding right after getting divorced. I was a total mess, but she was empathetic.

• As maid of honor at my twin sister's wedding, I was a total mess after dealing with divorce at 30.
• Highlights included arriving drunk at her rehearsal and getting the groom's ring stuck on my finger.

I was sopping wet, standing barefoot in my bikini in the ladies' room at the Aqua pool club in Las Vegas. "Are you OK?" the bathroom attendant asked in the way people ask when they know for certain that you're not.

"Yeah," I said, trying to look like someone who was not about to vomit. "You know how sometimes you're not sure if you're going to be sick?" I asked. The bathroom attendant looked at me with pity and handed me a small white towel.

I stood in one of the stalls, dry heaving over the toilet until I was pretty confident I wasn't actually going to throw up. Classy, I know.

I was 30, newly divorced, and easily the drunkest, most out-of-control person at my twin sister's Vegas bachelorette party. Unfortunately for her, I was also the maid of honor. But there wasn't anything honorable about how I'd behaved the previous 2 ½ days. I had drunkenly made out with a random guy I'd met from Jersey and another from Texas, got us kicked out of a club, and generally acted like such a fool that my sister was forced to babysit me. She also paid for everything because I was completely broke.

That was just the beginning.

A simple trip to pick the best man up from the airport got turned upside down

My sister's wedding rehearsal was about a week after the bachelorette party. It was my duty to pick up the best man from the airport. "This is my chance to redeem myself!" I thought. Plus, I had met the best man — he was a cute, single guy who worked as a firefighter and was always up for a good time. All I had to do was entertain him for a few hours between picking him up at the airport and driving to the rehearsal.

I pulled up to the airport in my storm-blue Toyota Scion tC, and right away, we decided barhopping would be an excellent way to kill a couple of hours. By the fourth or fifth bar, I realized we were definitely going to miss the rehearsal. We pulled up to the venue just as everyone lined up to go through the mock ceremony, and I laughed hysterically while the best man stood at the trunk of my car in his boxers, changing out of his cargo shorts and T-shirt into dress clothes for the evening's events.

Everyone watched us drunkenly run through a field up to the ceremony site just as the rehearsal ended. My sister just narrowed her eyes and stared at me.

Thankfully, my sister was so annoyed with my mom for doing mom things like making suggestions she didn't want to hear that she opted to ride to the rehearsal dinner with me so she could complain about what a pain our mom was.

My salon appointment became a 'walk of shame'

At the rehearsal dinner, I sipped water and kept quiet. I didn't want to ruin yet another event with my drunken tomfoolery.

I managed to act like a functioning human for the entire dinner. I just asked myself how a sober, mentally stable person who wasn't traumatized by their recent divorce would act.

My sister and her soon-to-be husband were so exhausted from the day that they left shortly after the dinner. Most of the wedding party, including me, decided to hit the town for a few more drinks.

Shortly after midnight, I knew that the prudent thing for me to do was to head home. So naturally, I invited myself to the best man's hotel room for a nightcap. We sat at the foot of his bed, swigging from a shared bottle of red wine that we spilled all over the white sheets and comforter while eating candy we stole from the front desk.

The next day, I woke up in a panic. All I had to wear was my dress and heels from the night before, and I had an early morning salon appointment with my sister, mom, and the other bridesmaids.

The best man offered to walk me to my car, and just as we were making our way through the hotel lobby, I noticed all the guests who had flown into town for the wedding were eating breakfast and staring at us. There I was in my dress and heels from the night before — not a good look. A couple of the men from the wedding party smiled at us knowingly.

I felt very out of place, to say the least, wearing stilettos and a cocktail dress at my 8 a.m. hair appointment. My sister just shook her head when she saw me. At that point, I think she was just relieved I was there.

I held up the ceremony when I got the groom's ring stuck on my finger

After our appointment, we all piled into a limo, where I plied my sister with as many mimosas as possible, hoping she might not mind the pit stop we had to make at my apartment so I could take the fastest shower humanly possible and grab my dress.

When we finally reached the wedding venue, my sister handed me her husband-to-be's wedding band and said, "Do. Not. Lose. This." In hindsight, I was surprised she trusted me at that point.

The good news is that I didn't lose the ring — the bad news is it did get stuck on my middle finger, where I had wrongly concluded was the safest place to keep it.

When the officiant asked for the rings, my family and sister's in-laws looked on as I stood at the alter next to my sister and struggled to pull off the ring, finally using my teeth to free it from my finger. My sister did not look amused.

My wedding toast turned into a saga

After that, I promised myself I wouldn't cause any more shenanigans. I realized I needed to hold it together until my speech, and then my maid of honor duties were fulfilled. I barely had more than a sip of wine throughout the dinner because I planned to perform an off-the-cuff speech. I needed to be sharp.

I can't describe the look on people's faces during my toast. Their reactions were somewhere between confusion and disbelief as I railed on about hating my sister's husband when I met him and hoping I could break them up. During my speech, all you could hear was several men from the wedding band stifling their uncontrollable laughter.

I knew my speech was over when my sister physically took the microphone out of my hands. This was just about the time I was getting into stories from our childhood, like how my sister used to peel gum off the bottom of random restaurant tables and chew it.

The best part of the evening was when one of the bridesmaids told me that her husband overheard a bunch of the men in the bathroom talking about my early-morning walk of shame through the hotel lobby. I secretly hoped that had been a nightmare.

Aside from one of the bartenders catching me and another bridesmaid drinking a bottle of tequila in the bathroom, the rest of the evening was fairly uneventful.

My sister cared more about me than the mishaps

The next morning, my sister and her husband left for their honeymoon. I spent most of the day nursing a brutal hangover and wondering if she hated me as much as the time I ruined her UGG boots or when I backed my car into her boyfriend's new Mustang.

Surprisingly, my sister called me the next day from her honeymoon to see how I was doing. She knew I was struggling to accept my recent divorce, which included living alone for the first time and dealing with a lot of financial issues. Somehow, she was able to look past all my bad behavior and empathize with my situation.

That was over eight years ago, and we've since had a number of conversations about the unfortunate timing of my divorce and her wedding. I've offered her many apologies for my antics, but I still carry tremendous guilt for how I acted during such a special time in her life.

Not to mention, I also owe her about $1,500 for the Vegas bachelorette party that I should have paid for.

Thankfully, my sister and I are closer today than ever, and I'm the proud auntie of her two — soon-to-be three — adorable daughters. I often joke with her that if I ever get married again, she has my blessing to behave as badly as she'd like!