Weddingbee Blog

Since I bought my dress off the rack, I’ve been lucky enough to have it with me for the past couple of months. It lives in its garment bag on the back of my parents’ bedroom door—and other than opening it up to stare at it every now and again, it’s stayed in its place for months. December turned into January, January turned into February, and now February is over: meaning that I need to start figuring out what I want to do with my wedding dress.

You would’ve thought that having it home with me would’ve been a constant temptation to try it on and waltz around the house in it—but nope. I’ve been putting it off, and not for a good reason. You see, I’ve been worried that I wouldn’t fit into my wedding dress anymore—and not in the good ‘I’ve lost a few kilos and it’s falling off me’ kind of way.

Back in my early days blogging for the ‘bee, I wrote a post explaining my struggle with losing weight.

Mr. Jaguar: it’s time to go. Dress picture ahead: you’ve been warned!

That was in October, a month before I ended up buying my dress while overseas. I was, and still am, a plus sized bride-to-be. And I am, just as I was then, still a-ok with that. It’s who I am, and I like myself. I may struggle with body image from time to time, but I’m me. What’s frustrating is that after losing over 25lbs last year {before blogging that post} is that since then? I’m still exactly the same weight. In fact, I’ve even put on a few pounds. Sure, travelling for a month will do that to some people, but as soon as we got home and got into our routines again, I was expecting to plug on away at the weight loss. That hasn’t happened. I’ve upped the exercise, and am currently on Week 4 of the C25K programme, but that hasn’t made a difference.

So what’s that got to do with my dress? EVERYTHING! I squeezed into a Size 16 standard dress in the store, and I was thrilled. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my dress—it’s beautiful, everything I wanted to look like in a gown—but it was snug then, and I was terrified to have another fitting for fear of it not doing up. Since it was nearly March and seeing that my mum had never seen me in the dress aside from photos, I finally worked up the courage to try it on this past weekend.

On the bright side? The dress does zip up. I was worried about this the most, since it has no corset and is just a zipper back. Mum and I were laughing as we were doing it up, since I was having flashbacks to that Bulging Brides TV show, where their dresses don’t fit and they have a few inches of zipper that just won’t do up! Thankfully, we got it up. It was snug then, and it is still snug now. Thankfully, I think it still looks okay—what do you think? This is the dress minus my beautiful lace bolero, which is still my all-time favourite thing in the entire world. (Look at my original dress post to see them together!)

(My squashed little dress needs a good steaming… poor thing!)

Here’s where it gets a trifle irritating. The boobage-area is a lot looser than it was three months ago – so I must have lost some weight in that region, which is always the first place to go. But it’s still tight in the tummy and hips, meaning I need to focus on slimming that area down. That’s where you see the dress pulling, particularly at the back where the zipper is – we didn’t attempt each individual button, but I can see it’s going to be tough getting them done up with me at this size. See the strain?

(Please excuse the blurry iPhone pictures.)

So what to do? I have nearly 100 days exactly until the wedding, so we have a bit of time to work with here. I plan on investing in my first pair of heavy duty gut-sucking undergarments, since I don’t own a pair of them, and I want to see how many wrinkles they smooth down. But the next step is working on my diet big time: I really need to lose a few inches over the next few months to feel more comfortable in the dress. (I love how I look in the gown, but it’s not the most comfortable to sit down in, if you get my drift.)

And the big question is, how long do I leave it before getting some alterations done? I have to have the dress hemmed and to figure out some sort of a bustle, as well as no doubt getting it taken in a wee bit around my chest, but I don’t want to do that too early, since I’m hoping to lose a little more in the coming months. Any ideas to help a girl out?