Dear Bridal Industry, we need to talk about “looking pretty” on our wedding day
Dear Bridal Industry, I will not allow myself to become caught up in your ideals of what a bride “should” look like. I will not become sucked into your standards of beauty, ones that are different from my own. I will not let you dictate to me what pretty is, and isn’t.
Speaking of which, here are more things I refuse to do…
“How can a dress make you fat?”: Judging my value by more than my clothes
Recently, I overheard a (rather curmudgeonly) acquaintance complaining, “These days, no one cares about who you are inside or what you do anymore: you can behave as hatefully as you want, as long as you wear the right shirt.” At the time, I rolled my eyes, and he backed down from such an extreme example; but when I returned home and was fretting about wedding things again, his remarks came back to me, and gave me a wee epiphany about wedding planning
Wedding weight loss: fighting pressure to lose weight for your wedding
All of my anxieties about my mother scrutinizing my weight all through the engagement process (“No wedding dresses are going to look attractive on you if you don’t lose a good 40 pounds!”) makes me almost not want to get married at all. How do I deal with it? How do I tell her to back off without pissing her off or giving her a brush-off answer?
6 ways to survive wedding planning with your self-esteem intact
Leading up to our wedding day, I felt terrible about myself. I’d gone and convinced myself that, during everything from my walk up the aisle to our first dance, I was going to resemble a huge, ungainly, lolloping mess, at which everyone would laugh. I felt like Mr Blobby in drag.
So, if you’re anything like me, here’s a little survival guide for keeping your self-worth intact while planning your wedding.