“Follow this 2-week plan to drop 10 pounds before your big day!” “This is the perfect diet plan for you to look flawless on your wedding day!” “Start your wedding diet NOW with our detox cleanse.”
The pressure is real.
Our wedding should be the best day of our lives. It should be a day filled with love and joy, a day where you are surrounded with people you love the most. It’s a day we should look forward to.
Yet, we are constantly reminded that we should look a certain way on our wedding day and that if we don’t, it won’t be as beautiful.
Diet culture has found another way to capitalize on women’s insecurities. In addition to planning a wedding, we feel obligated to also work towards losing weight, inevitably adding a lot more pressure.
I am in recovery for an eating disorder and I would be lying if I said that I did not worry about the way I was going to look in my wedding dress. I was the biggest I had been in 10 years and I was scared. I remember searching for dresses online, and I would stumble upon those articles that can rob you from your confidence in a split second. Are they right? Should I try to lose a few pounds? Do I really have to look thinner on my wedding day?
The answer was and is no.
I quickly shut my laptop. I lay down on my couch for a few minutes and I focused on what would make ME happy. Feeling good in my wedding dress? Yes. Starting a diet? Certainly not.
I had to be careful who I was going to surround myself with.
I realized that when I went into a store one day and a lady told me she had the perfect dress to hide my hips. I ran out the door. Not long after, a makeup artist came to my house to do a makeup test and she talked about dieting during the entire appointment. I told her I wouldn’t be working with her.
I made sure that the people I was working with were supportive of my choices and respectful of my body.
Of course, it is not easy. Everywhere we turn, we’re told that we need to lose weight.
But you will not be less worthy of being a bride because you are not thin on your wedding day.
I found my perfect dress a few months before the wedding date in a little boutique. I promised myself that I wouldn’t worry about what I would be eating or about weight gain. I was reassured, knowing that I was allowing my body to just be. And with this in mind, wedding planning became much more fun and enjoyable. Because it should be fun and enjoyable.
I went into the boutique one week before the wedding and I did not fit into my dress. The zipper wouldn’t even go halfway up! But my seamstress immediately told me that she would alter it until I felt perfectly comfortable in it.
I felt so good knowing that I would be able to wear the dress of my dreams, feeling comfortable in my body while staying strong in my eating disorder recovery.
Here’s a few reminders to survive the pressure to be thin before and on your wedding day:
- You do not need to lose weight for you wedding day. Repeat it to yourself as much as you need.
- You will look beautiful in your dress no matter what size you are.
- Focus on the fact that this day is about celebrating life and love.
- Surround yourself with people you can trust. Your seamstress should be able to make the dress bigger for you, if need be. You should feel comfortable.
- Don’t read weight-loss articles, they hold false promises. They do not have your best interests at heart, they just care about selling.
- You are not less worthy of being a bride because you are not thin on your wedding day. Your future husband or wife loves you for YOU, all of you. No matter your weight.
- HAVE FUN! It’s your wedding!
