By lunaKM
No one has ever told me that I will make a beautiful bride. I’ve never heard the words “stunning” in reference to me in my wedding dress. It’s always been pretty or slimming or simple. Yet I know that I will be the most beautiful bride for my future husband, because he has chosen me.
Next month I will be a fat bride. I will walk down an aisle and marry my best friend, the man who makes me feel like the precious jewel of his existence and the light of his life. No matter how rotund I am he can see the perfect me. The imperfections that I will try to hide as I slip into the dress, the shawl I will wear to cover my flabby underarms; these are all things he doesn’t see when he looks at me.
Sure, I will love his handsome figure in the rented tuxedo, but I imagine when I walk down the aisle that I will have fleeting thoughts of trying not to trip, hoping I’m not smiling too big, that I’m holding my head just so my double chin isn’t pronounced and walking so that my pendulous hips aren’t swaying as much. But I know he’ll be thinking distinctly different things.
He’ll be thinking about how lovely I look, how the light shimmers in my hair, how my lips are so kissable and that the dress just floats along my curves. He’ll want to caress my bare shoulders and wrap his arms around me to declare his love.
And that’s really what I should be thinking, isn’t it?
The bridal industry teaches us that brides are young and thin, like paper dolls and princesses. Rarely are brides pictured as average or large and still embracing and rocking their days. I admit that it’s slowly changing. There are over 70 bridal designers that make their dresses in plus sizes now, compared to the 10 I had to look through the first time I got married 11 years ago. TLC channel has “Say Yes to The Dress: Big Bliss” all about large ladies looking for their dream gowns at Kleinfeld’s in NYC. Offbeat Bride never fails to show real brides in real sizes having a blast on their big day.
I hope that I will be able to relax and enjoy the reason for the occasion and not what I look like. After all, I’ve found love exists and size doesn’t have to be a misery. This “all about the dress” stuff has got to pass me by. With every day closer to our vows I need to own the phrase, “I am a fat bride” and not let it weigh me down.
I am a FAT bride. For all the words I use to describe myself, this one tends to flip from being positive to being negative. I need to empower myself to love the large dress and how it makes me feel. I need to get out of my body and see that beauty has nothing to do with the amount of flesh I have, but the way I hold my head and the happiness on my face.
I am a fat BRIDE. That’s right, the cosmos won’t shift if I get married, but I certainly hope he’ll rock my world for the rest of my life. I know I’ll be rocking his. So let’s do this. Get the music going, everyone in their places. Here I come, larger than life and utterly lost in the love I feel coming from his gaze. After all, a fat me is the perfect bride for this man.