Wedding Mythbuster: Myth #3

Wedding Myth #3: If you make ________ yourself, your wedding is going to be The Dreaded T Word.

Y'all know about The Dreaded T Word, right? To my Dad, it means "This adjective means it's a substance I can use to stick pieces of my ancient car back together, along with some coat hangers and duct tape." To my Granny, it means wearing jeans to work. To folks in wedding-world, it's a verbal shuriken.

It's not a nice word, but it's one of those words that people still think -- some of them keep it to themselves, some of them have the cajones to say it out loud, but, well... that there's a fightin' word.
DIY has come into a heyday in wedding-world. An extremely crafty bride-to-be could pretty much create an entire wedding by hand these days, and it seems like many weddings incorporate at least one handmade or semi-handmade product, whether it's invitations or reception decor or part of the wedding attire. But though wedding DIY has become pretty mainstream, it still doesn't float every guest's boat, and the craft-savvy bride may still be left wondering if Aunt Ermintrude is going to be offended by the knitted wrap she made to wear with her dress.
I know I sure do.
I had an awkward conversation with one of my bridesmaids over the fact that I'm not using real flowes -- or even silk ones -- at our wedding. I'm making my own out of fabric, but she was completely and totally horrified by this. At first, she didn't believe me, then said that I'd be bringing down the tone of the whole wedding and my homemade ones would show my lack of thought and effort behind the whole thing. I explained where I was coming from, and she let it go, but the experience really shook me. I'd just ordered my fabric to make them, but even as it was speeding toward my post office, I was starting to think that it was all a bad idea because now I was worried that my flowers would offend the world more than Janet Jackson's boob ever did.
Luckily, once I started working on them, my fears were put to rest when I saw how they were turning out. I realized I love the way they're going to look, Johnny likes them (and seems to be proud of me for them, which makes me happy beyond measure), no one in our immediate families has given me the shocked look* at the idea, and that all helped me calm 'er down and not care so much about what other folks may think. The whole experience made me realize that to DIY, you have to have a real desire to do it, a good sense of what you can commit to, and balls.



*the Shocked Look **

Mythbusting:
I think having the right attitude is essential to having success with your wedding DIY projects. They're not really something you can come up with and put together with ease in one fell swoop, so it takes a lot of perseverance just to get your finished product. I've already had a three-hour stretch where I cut up some of my flower fabric, realized that it wasn't going to do what I hoped it would do, and had to scrap that particular batch of materials. Even when you're going great guns on a project, things still take longer than you expect. It's important to evaluate what you can commit to as extensively as you can to start, then be prepared to stick with your projects through the long haul (and it doesn't hurt to have backup plans!).
And if you're going to put that much work and thought into a project, I'm finding that it also helps to get defensive of it, at least in your brain. These flowers have become my babies, and I ain't about to let anyone tear 'em down! No power in the 'verse can stop me! Taking up for yourself and your projects doesn't have to be aggressive -- it's kind of the same thing you have to do when standing up for any wedding decisions you make.
When people are staring at you like you've grown another head when you mention your shower-curtain-fabric table cloths, you can:

• Keep your response short. You don't have to justify your decisions to anyone who's not directly involved in the planning. The more you try to explain, the more invested you're going to feel in the argument, and that can just wear you out when your words sometimes fall on deaf ears.
• Show your excitement. Sometimes folks don't realize how their judgements sound until they see that you're excited and happy about a project.
• Show them some inspiration pictures. Seeing a similar project in pictures can help bridge the mental gap for someone who can't quite envision what you're thinking of in his or her brain.
• Remember that you're staying true to something that's you. You wouldn't be making something that didn't express who you and your fiance are -- keep your personal inspirations close to your heart and you'll remember why your projects are fun and exciting in the first place.
• If you're feeling truly ornery, you can always stare at them in silence. I need to grow some more DIY balls before I try this one.

  

  I need to grow a pair of DIY balls.

There are lots of great DIY resources out there these days, from the mainstream options like Martha Stewart Weddings to the DIY Bride website (which I love and is, unfortunately, down at the moment - but check out their Tumblr here!). There are also some great forums and websites full of brides who can inspire and advise you as they craft boldly onward.
Don't let the haters get you down -- go look at the masterpieces of other DIY brides, get inspired, get organized, get determined, and know that you'll be joining their ranks with pride!

** I thought Pippin would be an appropriate person to illustrate The Shocked Look because it's also the look that most people gave me when I mentioned having a very subtly Lord of the Rings themed wedding. Folks don't know what they're missing out on -- mallorn-leaf boutonnieres! Johnny's best man telling him "You have my axe!" Really, people. Party. Poopers. Fortunately, enough of the folks in the wedding party were into this idea that it may happen as a surprise anyway.

Wedding Mythbuster: Myth #2

Myth #2: You have to spend a lot of money if you want your wedding to look good.

About a month after we got engaged, I started trying to be a smart bride and figure out my budget. "Easy!" I thought. "I can put half my paycheck toward the wedding every month, and we'll be set!" I should have known things would get complicated. Because, you know, life costs money, and I don't make that much to begin with. Saving for the wedding and honeymoon has had me watching my bank accounts like a fiend because I've never done this much stretching of dollars before in my life. Even though I'm doing a good job saving for a modest wedding we can afford, it's still easy to get down about how hard it is just to save so little, especially when this myth rears its head.

I'm lucky that I live in a rural area where folks aren't about to run out and spend more on a wedding than they would on a used car and I know that my family and local friends aren't going to look down their noses at the corners we cut. But some of my friends from more urban, economically well-off locations? Sometimes I feel sick when I realize what their expectations may be.
I know one person in particular who voiced her opinions about good vs. bad weddings loudly to me while planning her own wedding: "I went to one wedding that cost $10K, and it was horrible. Trashiest thing I'd ever seen, the food was awful, it wasn't what a wedding should be at all because she didn't invest in it." She probably doesn't even remember saying that (and making other statements like it) to me, but ohhh, I remember them. She's also advised us to go to the Justice of the Peace with a tone that I knew meant "oh honey, you're such a broke-ass bride, you shouldn't even try to have a wedding because you're just too poor to have it be worth anyone's time."  Whenever I'm thinking over my budget in the middle of the night, I hear those words in a nasty little sing-song voice, taunting me.



 But whenever I start to panic and consider eating nothing but PB&Js until October or just running off to Gatlinburg (what Gretna Green was to Jane Austen's heroines, Gatlinburg is to our area), I get myself back under control by getting real with my two choices. I can either give in to the folks who tell me that I can't have a wedding that looks great and is fun to attend, or I can adjust my expectations, shut my ears to the doubts that tear me down, and do the work I need to do to make it happen. I don't need anything except my husband-to-be, some witnesses, and a license to get married, but I believe I can put together a good celebration that doesn't put us in debt to mark the occasion we're looking forward to so much.

Mythbusting:
This is one myth I've spent a lot of time and effort busting for myself because it's at the core of how our wedding is happening, and I've amassed some tips that get me through the times when I start doubting the feasibility or kick-ass-ness of any part of our wedding.

• Find other brides who inspire you! I quickly realized that I'm soooo not alone in the world of brides on a shoestring. There are some well-known budget-bride bloggers like Sara Cotner of 2000 Dollar Wedding and Meg Keene of A Practical Wedding, some of the ladies like Mrs. Locket and Mrs. Bunny at Weddingbee, and everyday not-internet-famous ladies on wedding messageboards everywhere.
• Do your research. This is the nitty-gritty step of how our wedding is happening -- when I see something I like, I read all I can about what it costs and how it's done, finding the most affordable ways to make it happen. You know that bridal show I mentioned? I saw a tree full of photos there at a florist's booth that I fell in love with. If I were having a florist make it, it would be costing me a buttload more than ordering manzanita and fixing it in a base myself, printing and matting my own photos, and attaching flowers I find at Michaels. Can you find that cool thing you want on Etsy, or do you know someone who crafts, or is there something you could do that's similar even if not-quite-exactly what you're wanting? Research and creative thinking will give you the answers.
• Decide early where to splurge. I fell in love with these invites when I first saw them waaaaay before I was engaged, and they're the wedding splurge I'm going to budget for. Actually, budget-wise, it helps a lot to decide on many things early -- especially when it comes to DIY, which I'll talk about tomorrow.
• Use coupons! I use coupons in my wedding budget in two different ways -- whenever I use coupons or a member's card while grocery shopping, I take the amount I save out of my checking account and put it into my wedding savings account (when I can afford to). But the more direct way I use coupons is by signing up for emails from all the wedding-related places I plan to spend. I have a separate email account for all my wedding business, which keeps it from getting lost in my personal account -- I can just go in and check the wedding account every few days and delete the things I know I can't use. If you take the time to look at the deals and steals available to you and can adjust what you want to make the best use of them, you can save a lot.
• Don't be afraid of getting things that have been used -- there are brides selling tons of candle holders, vases, cake stands, dresses, and other wedding and reception ephemera at PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com, BravoBride, RecycledBride, and WeddingBee Classifieds along with other non-wedding-specific resources like Ebay and Craigslist.
• Know what to stay away from. I love Style Me Pretty... who doesn't? But I know I'm horrible for seeing something gorgeous on there, realizing how much it costs, and being a sad panda. When I can kick into research mode, I can pull myself back out, but it's just so easy to get overwhelmed by looking at the high-end wedding stuff that I don't let myself do it (much).
• Don't give up! Finding nice used stuff, researching how to make things, and talking to lots of people to find the best deals can be a lot of work, but when you score a great deal or come up with a great solution, it's all worth it! 

Wedding Mythbuster: Myth #1

Myth #1: You should _______________ to look good for your wedding.

I've already talked about my personal struggle with one aspect of this myth -- the "you should lose weight for your wedding" aspect -- in a previous post. But just this week, I found out that there's actually an upcoming reality TV show on CW based entirely around it: Shedding for the Wedding, which looks pretty much like The Biggest Loser repackaged with engaged couples.

Show logo

I have issues with weight-loss reality TV in general -- as much as these shows talk about "healthy lifestyle transformation" and whatnot, I think the method of "whoever can lose the most the fastest wins" doesn't back up that message very well. But this show sounds a lot better than Bridalplasty. Even the producer of Shedding for the Wedding can't stand Bridalplasty, apparently.
I haven't watched Bridalplasty, but I'm pretty horrified by the idea of women competing in challenges to win free plastic surgery for their wedding. The internet tells me that when a contestant got voted off, they were told "Your wedding will still go on, but it may not be perfect." Ugh. Ew. There's so much that's wrong with that, it's scary.

Granted, both these shows win viewers because they're extreme. But the idea they capitalize on is that every bride wants to look perfect for her wedding day and they promote that there is a way to accomplish that. It's that idea that's inside every insecurity that makes brides feel like "oh, I should lose those pounds," or "I could never afford professional teeth whitening, but maybe I should buy some of those strips..." not by sending a positive message about cardiac or dental health, but through the threat of "you're going to look awful your wedding pictures if you don't do this." Which makes me mad. There's too much to be happy about when you're getting married to let messages of you're not pretty enough tear you down.  Not everybody has to join me on the Body Positive and Health at Every Size bandwagons, but I think every bride deserves to feel beautiful just as she is on her wedding day, without having to spend money to look "better," but it's hard to feel that way in our culture.

Mythbusting:
I was really worried with I got engaged that I wouldn't be able to find a wedding dress I liked, but the more I've looked at dresses online, the more I see that there's a whole world of plus size dresses, as well as dresses that look great on girls of all different heights. There are some gorgeous plus size wedding dresses out there these days, ranging from things I can afford to couture, and there are plus size trunk shows. I wish I could have gone to the one that The Curvy Fashionista reviewed -- from the pictures, it looks like it would have been awesome!

One of her trunk show pics. I love that all these ladies look happy!

I've been scouring the web for information about positive body image work specifically for brides, but there's not that much out there -- however, there are some great books and other sources of information on positive body image that apply to any time in a person's life. You can find books in a whole spectrum of perspectives, from more feminist texts like The Body Myth to a title on the subject published by Focus on the Family, Comfortable In Your Own Skin. For a quick web resource, I particularly like the tips given at the companion website to the book Our Bodies, Our Selves, especially the ones on mindfulness. Even just being mindful of the fact that I'm being exposed to a lot more negative pressure in bride-world than I am in regular-Meredith-world helps me evaluate my feelings more realistically when I start worrying about how I'm going to look in my wedding pictures.
But the biggest reason that I know this is a myth -- when a guy proposes, he's asking you to spend the rest of your life with him just as you are. Your man loves you, not "you with ears that stick out less" or "you that doesn't have thigh cellulite." I feel happy and blessed that my future husband loves me and thinks I'm hot stuff without having to change. And that's what it's all about.

Wedding Mythbuster: An Introduction

I'm back with a vengeance after conquering the stomach flu -- and I've got a post series hot and ready to go. I've been thinking a lot lately about some of the things I believe that guide me in my wedding planning adventures -- actually, it's more like list of things I don't believe. Whenever I get frustrated with feeling like I'm expected to plan a wedding around ideas I don't believe in, I get myself feeling better by thinking about it like I'm an honorary team member on Mythbusters. I'm kind of on a mission to prove that there's a lot of stuff you don't have to go along with to have a great wedding.
But first, I want to tell you a story about why I became a Wedding Mythbuster in the first place.

September 2010 was a hard month for me. I was getting used to a new job and feeling a lot of pressure from some folks at our church to just go ahead and get married already (since Johnny and I were living together, and even with a roommate, that wasn't a move that sat well with some folks in our rural, conservative community). At the same time, Johnny had been planning to propose on our anniversary in October for a few months, but I didn't know this -- he'd also planned out one of the longest ruses in history and kept me thinking that marriage wasn't on his mind at the moment, or at least that it wouldn't happen til around 2027. As well-adjusted as I was in my status of "waiting," I still had crazy-days when I, too, wanted to just go ahead and get married already.
In the middle of all this, my friend wanted me to go to a bridal show with her. I'm her Maid of Honor for her wedding in May, and she asked me to take a day off work to drive three hours to where she lives, try on bridesmaids dresses in the morning, go to the bridal show in the afternoon, then drive three hours home and go to work the next day. I love my friend. We shared many deep, meaningful moments and beers while I was in college and grad school. So I sucked up my waiting-craziness and drove to South Carolina.
After a morning of whirlwind dress trials, we grabbed some pizza and beer, then headed for the expo. I had a feeling that I wasn't well-prepared for what was to come -- my buzz from lunch was fading, and I was already tired. And I didn't know what to expect -- at this point, I hadn't read a single bridal magazine or seen an episode of Say Yes To The Dress. I wasn't prepared for the onslaught of advertising, pressure to one-up everyone else, and emphasis on doing anything it takes to have The Perfect Day. But as soon as we were in line, I could tell that there was a small blessing to be found: without one of the "Bride" stickers on my chest and a ring on my finger, none of the vendors felt the need to talk to me. I was able to fade into the background and trail behind my friend, watching, listening, observing.
I watched how vendors pitched their sales to brides and compared themselves to the competition, assuring women that they needed platinum photography packages and orchids and cakes that could have come off of Food Network, emphasizing that their services would help each bride's wedding stand out and have a "wow" factor. I stared in disbelief at the fact that a cosmetic surgery booth was one of the first booths to be seen when people got out of the ticket line. I stammered when vendors talked about me rather than to me right in front of my face, assuring my friend that "she seems like she'll be a great help to you when things get too overwhelming."
And then, as I hustled down a row a few steps behind my friend as she made a beeline for a DJ booth, someone reached out and grabbed my elbow. Slightly dazzled by the ballroom lights and the shrimp-filled ice sculptures*, I turned and blinked. A woman from a photography booth had hold of me.
"Ma'am, could you ask your daughter to come back here? I've got some great packages that I don't want her to miss out on."
...
So, I was less than impressed by the experience of being thrown into bride-world like a five-year-old into a pool. But I learned a lot from it. Particularly, what I learned was that there are a lot of ideas I just don't believe in when it comes to weddings. They're the kind of ideas that advertising promotes and that folks embrace because they're considered normal, but I think they're hogwash. Hogwash, I say! (If photographers think I'm old enough to be my friend's mom, at least I should be able to assert my opinion of hogwash like a crotchety granny). And by keeping my head and not letting these myths about what you have to do/be/believe to have a wedding make me stress out, I'm determined to bust 'em, at least for myself.

Cupcakery

I've been away from the internet for the past few days recuperating from a round of stomach flu that kept me from feeling up to doing much more than watching the entire first season of Desperate Housewives. One morning over the last couple of days, I was hiding from the world in bed, when Johnny came to give me a hug and said "there could be cupcakes."
At first I thought I might have heard him wrong through the medication fog, but he went on to explain that he'd been flipping through one of the bridal magazines he bought me (which may or may not have been located in the room of the house where stomach flu led me to spend a lot of my time, which may or may not be how he ended up browsing it...). And in that magazine had been a feature on some of the best and most creative cupcake creations in bakeries across the nation. I'd been under the impression that he wanted a traditional cake, but seeing some of the cool cupcakes got him thinking that they might not be so weird, after all. We haven't made a final decision yet, but his interest piqued mine, and now that I can think about food again, I've had cupcakes on the brain.
While my fiance and the rest of my non-bride-world-residing friends and family members might think that cupcakes are a newfangled idea, I'm aware that they're one of the more well-known trends in weddings these days (even Betty Crocker offers up her advice on DIY-ing them). But I'm drawn to cupcakes not just because they're cute and not just because they're "in" -- I'm drawn to them because they're DIY-friendly.

From The Cupcake Blog

My Mom loves to bake and has a real knack for cakes, and together we'd planned to be the creators of whatever cake-thing we ended up with for the wedding. (Not that there are many other options in rural Western NC - we'd be going to Asheville to find the nearest professional bakery that does anything cake and wedding related, so non-pro is the way to go, not just for budget reasons). So far, we hadn't really settled on any definite plans as to what kind of cake, how many tiers, what size they'd be, how to make up the extra, and such. We knew that we were going to be limited in our abilities to construct a tiered cake (more than two tiers would have been rough), and we'd been trying to think of simple ways to decorate a cake that would look good even with it being an amateur creation. That's where the beauty of cupcakes lie, for me -- in how much easier it would be to pull them off well than to make a really nice, even if amateurly made, tiered cake. Here's my list of pros and cons from a DIY angle:

• Cupcakes show fewer baking mishaps than layer cakes. When one cupcake in a batch goes wonky or you mess up the frosting beyond hope, you're only out one serving.
• There's less of a process involved in making a prototype of your final version. I've been anxious about testing the stacking and sticking-together-with-dowel-rods of a tiered cake. It just seems so much easier to frost a cupcake, add your decorations, and know what you're going to end up with.
• I have a feeling cupcakes would be soooooooo much easier to transport. It just seems like there's less opportunity for cupcakes to fall apart in transit than there would be for a big cake (at least if you can't put it together on-site).
• With the popularity of cupcakes, there are lots of resources for amateur bakers out there to make really awesome-looking creations. Paper wrappers! Sugar pearls! Edible glitter! Decorative picks! (which you could totally DIY also, if you were feeling really crafty...)

From Rhubarb and Rose - these are gorgeous!

If we do decide to go this route, there'll be recipes and pictures on the way as soon as we gear up for some test runs! I love pictures of monochromatic cupcakes, like the white ones with seashells on the blue stand, up top. And there's something about the creamy brown chocolate buttercream frosting (like the ones above) that makes a gorgeous neutral tone and might be hard to do on a big cake.
I've been both a little nervous and a lot excited about our DIY cakeventures that we've been planning to have, and this possible new development just makes them all the more fun for me... and makes me hungry. And makes me miss Bliss bakery in Chapel Hill, and taking Friday afternoon adventures there.
I've been looking for some DIY cupcake inspiration from non-pro folks who like to bake and have done cupcakes for weddings. The Recipe Girl has a great post about pulling off a smorgasboard of cupcakes even if you're not a cupcake professional -- her pics look a-maaaaa-zing! And of course, there's always Good Ol' Martha Stewart.

Do you have a favorite cupcake flavor, or is there something in particular that cupcakes evoke for you? I wonder if everybody has a particularly good cupcake memory...

An Appalachian American wedding

A piece of the heritage my fiance and I share has been part of almost every direction I've gone in wedding planning so far -- we're country (you might say "redneck," I say "Appalachian American"). It's not something that we really wear on our sleeves. Most days, I'm wearing casual office clothes to the library and Johnny is wearing a t-shirt, cargo pants, and flip-flops -- we're not "country" in the sense of wearing cowboy hats, boots, and Wranglers. But we both come from long lines of mountain people.
When Johnny and I started dating, it was the first time I'd been in a serious relationship with someone who came from the same background I'm from, and that commonality is behind a lot of what makes us great together. When I started to think about how to our wedding "ours," I wanted to embrace where we come from in the details.
It works out nicely that rustic is in right now as a trendy feel for weddings, and I love looking at all the different ways that couples incorporate rustic aesthetic into their wedding days. But maybe it's because it's become so popular that I'm still working to personalize our rustic details as much as possible.
So what are some of those details?

Apples and apple butter

Apple butter time! (with future-bridesmaid Kristy and flower girls to the left)

When Johnny and I started dating, it wasn't a week before I met his family. I mentioned that I helped out with their apple butter day in my post about Johnny and his great ideas -- what I didn't mention is that we both grew up in families that made apple butter every fall for a long, long time, up until our generation reached being teenagers. Johnny's family used to run an apple orchard, along with farming other fruits and vegetables, which they sold at a family produce stand on the mountain, and he grew up knowing how to identify different apples by taste. I grew up looking forward to the times when my great-uncles and great-aunts would come to my grandmother's family homestead and sit around telling stories while we passed around the apple butter stirrer. Apple butter is time-consuming, expensive, and tedious to make -- it's been hard for our families to get together enough people with the patience to do it -- but Johnny and I want to keep the tradition alive for both our families in the future, and we're looking forward to making a batch to be served at the wedding if we can!

Mason jars

I know, I know... everybody's doing 'em these days, and there's hardly anything that gives such a quintessential rustic feel as these bad boys. My first ever idea for wedding planning involved mason jar centerpieces, and I thought I was being soooooo original (until I saw how they've exploded onto the wedding scene). But their popularity doesn't bother me a bit -- and I'm still looking forward to using them in our centerpieces. When Johnny and I lived together for a (wonderful) six months on the mountain, near his family, we drank out of mason jars -- they remind me of those days. (I suppose I could also add that we both have for-real moonshiners in our family trees, but I don't know if that's quiiiite the association we want to make at the wedding, or my Granny will start preaching about the Evils of The Drink. We have moonshiners and teetotalers.)
Speaking of my Granny, another great reason for using mason jars? We don't have to buy them. She has a cellar-full, even after we do our summer canning. Yay, free decorations that remind me of my Granny!

Fabric

One of the things that made me leap at the idea of making my own flowers out of fabric is that the women of my family have sewn out of neccessity up until my generation. My Granny's clothes were altered and patched to go on her five little sisters, and she made many of my Mom's clothes when Mom was little. Mom grew up knowing how to sew because she saw Granny doing it all the time, because they had to. Mom used her sewing skills in a different way. She makes German-style cloth dolls, and made lots of stuff for me to wear when I was little because she liked to dress me up and take pride in seeing me enjoy what she made. Then I learned to sew... and spent two years making costumes for our college theatre, along with various RenFaire outfits and costume pieces for others along the way. Further back in our family history, we've got quilters -- something I'd love to try eventually (especially since I know that Johnny's grandmother had a quilt frame that someone might let me use, someday). If I had all the time and money to do it, I would love to make a wedding quilt for us!
Fabric is definitely featuring most heavily in our fabric flowers, but I have a feeling it'll be cropping up in some of my other DIY projects, too.

There are some less visible ways that we're honoring our roots in our wedding -- holding it in the church Johnny's family has attended for generations (Johnny himself helped the new fellowship hall), and by doing a lot of "making do." Budget weddings are coming into their own these days, and I like the ways that our spending decisions on our wedding go with the attitude of making the most of what you have without doing things outside your means that my Granny has always shown me.

I took this picture on the Blue Ridge Parkway in November, 2007

Fat girls get married, too.

Maybe it's because January has been National Fail At Silly Resolutions Month. Maybe it's because my bosslady has gone on a diet and talks about it with me nonstop. Or maybe it's because I went for a bridesmaid's dress fitting for a friend's wedding last month and was introduced to the miracle of Spanx. But as my wedding planning process has kicked into a higher gear, I've noticed that I feel more and more pressure to lose weight before "the big day."
I don't doubt that most brides, whether they're size six or size twenty-six, hear those messages -- they're really hard to escape. Even if you're not reading bridal magazines or watching Say Yes To The Dress, if you're talking with other people, it seems like it just comes up. Like it did with my bosslady. We were sitting at the circ desk when she started telling me about another assistant librarian she'd had who had gotten married during her time there.
"Rory really wanted to look great for her wedding, so she lost a ton of weight..." Bosslady said, with a nice awkward pause at the end as she waited for a response from me and I fumbled around in my brain for one. My personal response to "how are you losing weight for your wedding?" is simple - I'm not really planning to.
One thing I promised myself when I first got engaged was that I wasn't going to let insecurities about my weight rob me of any of the joy that comes with the experience of being engaged. About three years ago, I realized just how much of my life I had spent feeling like I was less of a person because there was more of me. Waking up to that was hard.
I've been overweight since I was eight years old, and I've stayed about the same proportions since puberty. When I was in high school, I evaded the pressure to lose weight by dressing like a guy -- wearing clothes that hid my shape as much as possible and masking my insecurities under combat boots and two-inch-long hair kept me a step away from being compared to the other girls.

I'm the second from the left, in all my John-Lennon-shirted glory.

When I went to college, I went to a tiny hippie school where there were so many kids trying to be unique that weight wasn't really an issue -- who cares about how one girl looks when there's social justice to be done and everyone's rockin' dreadlocks? But at that time, I started dating a guy who was really into running, weight lifting, martial arts... and two years into that relationship, he had me feeling pretty awful about my body. Before I left him, I felt like he was with me because he could stand me in spite of my curves and softness, and knowing that he found me unattractive despite the fact that we were dating was painful. When I left him, I somehow didn't stop feeling like I was unlovable because no one would look past my surface to give me a chance.
I spent my two years in library school walking two miles each day and eating haphazard meals that weren't nutritionally sound because I was trying to escape being in a place I didn't like. For about a year, it was hard for me to care for myself because I was so busy trying to shut out the world. I weighed the least I'd ever weighed (including the three diets I'd gone on while dating Martial Arts Dude), but I was miserable with myself. Part of that -- not all, but part -- came from being surrounded by the "beautiful people" who flocked to the institution. I felt like I didn't fit in because of my size (at least on the campus at large. In the library school itself, there was much more diversity -- at least the way it seemed to me.) It was in the middle of that time that I started realizing, with the help of some amazing friends and a therapist on campus, that the first step to taking care of myself was to love myself the way I was. Not allowing popular opinion about what's pretty to dictate how I treated myself and what I let myself do opened up a whole new world of experiences for me. I started wearing tank tops for the first time ever, felt more comfortable in social situations, tried more new things.

In grad school, at my lowest weight.

When I found a guy who loved me for the woman inside and who made no secret of appreciating the outside as well, I realized that my ability to trust in our relationship came partially from that foundation I'd built. Learning to be okay with myself helped me open up to the idea that someone else could feel that way about me, too.
With that history being a part of what led me to the life and love I have, I knew I didn't want to fall back into a pattern of feeling not good enough leading up to what I want to be a day of happy memories. Being a bride means being at the center of a lot of attention for a couple of hours, and being in that kind of spotlight is what motivates a lot of people to lose weight, build muscle, whiten teeth, treat their skin, and do all kinds of other things to feel like they're at their best. And that's not a bad thing -- it's great to have a goal to motivate you to make changes. But any type of changes that come out of guilt or feelings of self-loathing aren't okay with me. My personal approach to that impulse puts things in a slightly different focus because I don't want to fall back into negative thought patterns (and which would make my fiance sad, because he works hard to make sure I know he loves me the way I am). I want to make healthy changes based on what I have to gain, not lose, like more high-quality days on this earth to spend with the man I love, or knowing that my future kids will have a healthy start in life.
I'm doing my best to develop the most positive habits I can. It means trying to add more vegetables and fruits to what I cook, trying to find healthier substitutes for less healthy things, trying to embrace more movement in my everyday life. I'm not purposefully starting a diet -- I'm working on making better choices, one day at a time. I don't know whether it will result in any weight-loss or not -- but I have a lot of confidence that each time I make a decision that's healthy, I'm doing something good for myself. And one of those healthy decisions is to love myself as a size eighteen bride in a world that says I shouldn't be okay with that.

At the Woolly Worm Festival* less than 24 hours
after the proposal, when I couldn't be happier with
myself and life!

* Why yes, my county has an annual Woolly Worm Festival, in which participants race Isabella tigermoth larvae up strings for the honor of predicting the weather for the winter.