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On August 4th 2021, I was married to the most wonderful of humans in the most beautiful of settings. It was the most sublime day and for the first time since I can remember I felt truly at peace with myself. The noise in my brain was gone and there was only one voice for pretty much the whole day which for this overthinking, perfectionist was blissful! If only the run up to the wedding had been equally as blissful.
We eloped, just the two of us, so the planning was pretty easy peasy being honest, but the difficulty for me was the wedding dress. Ever since we started planning to get married, I knew that this was going to be a problem for me. I initially wanted a long engagement partly because I didn’t want the pressure of having to find one quickly. Now here I was 6 months out from eloping and having to find a wedding dress - in a pandemic.
I have spoken in the past about how much I don’t enjoy online shopping. The choice is overwhelming, you never know what size to order so you have to order a few and then you have to wait until they return the money so you can reorder. I ordered and reordered and nothing fit. I had been warned that I’d need to go one or two sizes up for a wedding dress but even then they were too small. All my old thoughts started to creep back in. Looking in the mirror was upsetting, I felt like a failure and I felt ugly. Why? I kept asking myself that question and kept trying to remind myself that this dress didn’t define anything about me. That if I didn’t look perfect or gobsmackingly beautiful on my wedding day, that Andrew wouldn't suddenly decide that he couldn’t marry me. That he has to wake up next to what I look like every morning. He knows how bad I can look and I was, at the very least, going to look better than that on the day. But those reminders weren’t working.
While waiting on my returns, in a brief period where shops and fitting rooms were open again, me and my friend went trawling through the second hand shops of East London. Another downside to having little disposable income and not wanting to spend over a thousand pounds on a dress, was that I was shopping in online stores and contributing to the fast fashion epidemic. I was hoping to find a secret gem in the corner of a second hand store so I wouldn’t have to add “killing the planet'' to my guilt list. Turns out, people from the past were miniscule! Or maybe every dress was one that people from the past kept for 30 years hoping that one day they would fit into them again, eventually giving them to a charity shop and convincing us all that people from the past were miniscule. Whatever the reason, nothing fit me. I felt bad dragging my friend from shop to shop, even though she was a morale boosting hero, and then came the single most humiliating changing room experience of my life.
I had tried on the most beautiful dress, and like several others that day, it looked glorious from the front but there was not a hope of it fitting from the back. Then came a dreaded “Let me have a look at it, Love” from the assistant. And my gentle “Ah it doesn’t fit so don’t worry”. Then the curtains flew open. She pulled me out into the main area and began explaining all the alterations that could be done to it whilst pulling and prodding at the dress and my skin. She got another assistant over. There were clamps on the dress. Altering it would cost about triple the amount of buying it. All the time I was politely trying to say “It’s not for me thanks” while all the other customers stared at me with pity in their eyes. I wanted to die on the spot. Eventually the sales lady relented, realising that her hard push had not worked and she let me pack my back fat away. I didn’t try second hand shopping again.
The search continued online. Too expensive, didn’t come in my size or the style wasn’t right. Eventually I found one that actually fit and I think I got so excited I rang my Mammy and my friend declaring I had found the one even though the weird clumpy thing on the beading at the back was there but it fit! It fit! And it was lovey and it fit! My Mammy very gently told me that there would be no way to fix the clumpy beading and I should probably keep looking. I knew she was right but the thought of having to keep looking was horrendous.
I made the mistake of looking at Pinterest quite early on in my search. Every model and every “real” bride was clearly someone who had a fortune to spend on her wedding. I have to say if you do have thousands, or want to spend thousands on a dress, you can find a glorious dress and have a great experience. As I was planning my wedding from London, I didn’t know if me and my Mammy would get to look for my dress together so while I was back in Ireland, I booked us a bridal dress shopping session at a gorgeous boutique just so we could have a bit of that experience. It was fantastic. They had all the dresses in my size laid out. I tried on loads and the girl explained simple alterations that could be made. We had prosecco and I found my dream dress. But it was 1,450 euro. Hell to the no!
Every Pinterest model and “real bride” were also tiny - a bombardment of tiny white women with great teeth and thick, blonde hair quaffed to perfection. I would imagine looking the same as them in my dress and then order it only to be brought swiftly back to Earth the second I tried it on. I was left crying on my bed more than once. Obviously some brides will look like that but not ALL. There was no variation. No fat brides, no disabled brides, no brides with other skin colours, no brides who were midsize like me, no brides who had shit teeth or frizzy hair or lumps in weird places. Some fabulous women I knew sent me copies of Rock ‘N” Roll Bridal magazine which was great because there were brides of all shapes, sizes and styles in there. I also started to follow instagram accounts that showed a wider range of brides but it was almost too late. All the information that had been fed to me since I was little about what a bride “should” look like plus the Pinterest brides was overriding all the sensible thoughts of, essentially, it didn’t matter.
I think also because I was eloping, I knew that the only way people would be able to share in celebrating our wedding was through photographs. So there was an undercurrent of I must look good in all photos, despite me writing and learning extensively about photographs not being a truly accurate depiction of what you look like.
I finally found the dress on ASOS (zero points for supporting fast fashion) and I really liked it. The sleeves were balloon sleeves and the embroidery was beautiful. It skimmed my stomach so I knew I would be comfortable in it all day and it was the right length for trudging through the Scottish countryside. But, you know, there was the back fat. I put it out of my head thinking it wasn’t a problem but as the wedding was getting closer I knew I was
worried about it. I went shopping for pull-in underwear. I felt guilty for even thinking about looking for it, having sworn it off years ago. However, I went and no matter what ones I tried on, none of them really made that much of a difference. Something I had noticed years ago when I swore them off but had apparently forgotten about. I eventually settled on a pair which if I pulled them up in just the right way worked like a charm.
I had my dress. I didn’t let Andrew see it in the run up to the wedding, partly because that seemed like a fun tradition to keep and partly because I was so afraid he might say something that would make me hate it. On the day, we spent the morning playing laser tag with me wearing a frumpy jumper, a years old skirt and worn leggings. I had zero makeup on and my hair was a mess. Did I doubt that he loved me for a second? Or that he might leave at the sight of me? Did I worry about what our family and friends would think I looked like when I shared a video of us with them? Not for a second. Interesting.
The time came for me to put on my wedding dress. We actually didn’t have a lot of time before we were due to leave but we wanted to get some “getting ready” photos. I rushed into the bathroom to put on the pull in underwear (which I still wasn’t sure if I even wanted to wear) and I couldn’t get it to sit the way it had before but we were in a rush so I just left it and put on my dress. That was the last time I thought about what I looked like until we got to the lake where we were getting married. The underwear started to creep down my back so I had to fiddle with it but couldn’t quite reach it and the same in the forest afterwards. I knew that my back fat would be in the photos but I hoped it wouldn’t be that bad. I hated that I had that thought at all when, honestly, the rest of the day felt so magical. That was the only intrusive thought of the day and for me that was a record.
When we saw our photos, I was blown away. They were absolutely epic and captured every moment perfectly. There were photos where my back fat was showing which I haven’t shared until today. I hope one day I will look at those photos and enjoy them as much as the ones where I can pass as thin and smooth but honestly, the whole experience of finding that dress has brought up so many old thoughts that I am still, almost seven months post wedding, feeling the effects of it.
I wanted to share all this for those of you out there who maybe feel you don’t, or actually don’t, fit the stereotype of a bride to know that it is difficult to be a bride and there will be moments where it brings up a lot of shit for you but that even if you are not feeling great in yourself on your wedding day, it sort of goes to the back of your mind because everything else is so wonderful. People have said to me “It doesn’t matter what you look like on your wedding day, as long as you’re happy” while at the same time the first words out of their mouth about any wedding will be what the bride looks like so it’s difficult to believe them. However, for me, it really didn’t matter what I looked like on my wedding day because I was really so happy.
It’s the months before and the months since that have been the problem, and I think that’s where the work needs to be done. That's where the temptation to diet and/or the hours of endless bullying yourself will happen. Looking back, I think the best advice I can offer is to try to surround yourself with images of brides that look like you. It will be hard to find them but they are out there. Keep trying to speak positively to yourself throughout the experience. Ask your partner to leave you nice notes reminding you of the things they love about you. And keep reminding yourself that it doesn’t matter what you look like at the end of the day. It is one day. And what you look like is the least important aspect of it.
All Photographs by the amazing Seán Bell Photography