Blog entries, homework, and going to classes have gotten more difficult with all the running around, taking care of the last minute details. Being engaged and planning a wedding has been a wonderful, exciting, stressful, and sometimes infuriating process. With a little boy to consider and also his 7th birthday to celebrate sufficiently, I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed. It is all falling into place, though. The last 8 months of planning will culminate into me and Brian being married, and, in the end, THAT is the whole point.
It can be easy to forget at times, and easy to get wrapped up in the superficial parts of the process.
I imagine that every woman wants to be beautiful on their wedding day. No matter how society advances and no matter how un-traditional a woman is, I believe every woman wants to be beautiful on the day they get married. I want to be beautiful.
Many standards of beauty includes being thin, which I am not. I dreaded trying on dresses, but was also longing for that exprience.
Being plus-size and searching for a wedding dress presents a few challenges. Many dresses I tried on were made to show off the large woman’s breasts. I understand why, but I was not interested in wearing a foot of cleavage when I get married. I found that if the dress was not spilling my breasts out in front of me, then it was enveloping me in loose flowy fabric. Maybe for those big women who want to hide their bodies. It was also challenging to find much selection. I went to 4 places in the valley that claimed to have sizes 14 and up. What I discovered was, out of hundreds of dresses from their entire store they had maybe 5 dresses that were in that size range.
I wondered if I was doomed to wear an Ursala-the-Sea-Witch-bursting-forth-from-the-bosom-of-her-disguise dress. (A reference to the Disney film. Seriously obscene moment in The Little Mermaid) Or, I would end up looking like I draped myself in gigantic doily with angel wing sleeves. Eventually I found a dress that I thought encompassed everything I wanted (with a few tweaks needed) and I bought it.
Do you know how much wedding dresses cost?! Did you also know that large people have to pay more for clothing, in general?!
I digress.
Back to the dress.
I found a lady who does dress alterations. She came highly recommended. As I stood looking at myself in her trifecta of mirrors surrounding me, I had all the chance in the world to hate my body. My hips were too wide and the dress would not slide down exactly where it was supposed to be. The sleeves were too tight around my upper-arms. The dress fit like a glove around my ribcage and waist. It was barely long enough in my bare feet. I could have hated my body, right then. I could have said; “Never mind, I will exchange this dress for the winged doily” or “Forget it! I do not deserve to get married to a man who loves me. I am not perfect enough.” BUT then…the fifty-something, long-fingered, pinch-lipped seamstress did something. She patted me on my right hip, and said “Someone needs to start walking,”
I laughed at her little joke, as did my mother who was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. I suppose that is what this lady thought when she looked at me.
I looked at myself in the mirror again and saw what my Fiancé might see when he looks at me, and tells me I am beautiful and desirous and sexy. I saw a statuesque woman who had a prescence not like any one else, who wore a stunning white dress which accentuated her curvy body, and who was not afraid to be exactly who she was on her wedding day. I saw, just me, and I loved it.
No comments:
Post a Comment