You Don’t Need to Lose Weight for Your Wedding

I originally wrote this post on how I wasn’t losing weight for my wedding back in March of 2017. I had a reader email me yesterday sharing how she made the decision to not lose weight for her wedding, instead got her dress taken out during her fitting, and how she felt so present and joyful on her wedding day. It reminded me that indeed, the peak of wedding season is here and I’m sure many other women are walking in her same shoes. Going for dress fittings and being told you need to be x size to fit into the dress. Or perhaps you haven’t yet been dress shopping, but can already feel the pressure to be a certain size. Or maybe you’re where I was a few short years ago, going about life with no signs of marriage in the near future. That’s okay too. You’re right where you’re suppose to be. I’ve added some thoughts that have come up being a year out from that wedding day and wanted to share this revised post today. I hope it’s is encouraging no matter what season of life you’re in.

I was that girl in college and high school who wanted a spring break body. As if my body the remaining 358 days out of the year didn’t matter as much as the one I trotted around the beach in for that one week in March.

I wasn’t the girl who always dreamt of her wedding day. At times I wish I was, because I think I would have enjoyed wedding planning more, but I grew up with four brothers. Throughout my teenage years and into my young twenties, I wanted to get married one day, but never did I dream about my dress or the flowers or any of the details.

But when I started dating Nick and marriage was in the foreseeable future, I would be a liar if I said I didn’t start to imagine how amazing I’d look on that day. The way the music would sound as a turned the corner, how the guests would rise, how my hair would gently move with the breeze, and most importantly – the way Nick would look at me as he watched his bride walk towards him. As cheesy as it sounds, I thought about ALL of that quite frequently.

I’d also be a liar if I told you after we got engaged I didn’t feel the pressure to look a certain way on my wedding day. We live in a world where weddings have been totally commercialized, the diet + fitness industry makes billions, magazine covers are monopolized by promises of 6 pack abs and Pinterest is flooded with bridal workouts. If anything, it’s expected that you tone up for your wedding day.

But during those first few weeks after getting engaged when those thoughts started to flood in my head, I made a decision to relentlessly push back.  Throughout our engagement, instead of reading bridal magazines or fitness articles, I chose to put good stuff in. I needed healthy messaging at a time where I felt vulnerable to diet culture. I listened to body positive podcasts and blogs, focused on self care instead of a strict workout regime, ate foods that made me feel good instead of foods that carved my body into a certain shape, and prayed daily that my heart + mind would be most concerned with becoming more like Christ so I could walk down the aisle on April 29th fully prepared to be the most loving wife I know how. And fully prepared to receive love from my husband.

I’ve heard women on the train or in the grocery store share about their eating habits with a friend or talk on and on about their pursuit to tone their triceps or lose those nagging 10 pounds. And all I want to do is hold her face and say thinness does not equal beauty. Marriage is not about the wedding. And a wedding is not about the size of your body. 

Diet culture is so invasive. It’s like a parasite. But marriage and your wedding is so much more important than your body size! I refused to pursue losing weight for my wedding because that would be me saying, yes you’re right diet culture, I am not enough as I am right now. I didn’t want to look back years from my wedding day and remember engagement as chasing thinness. I didn’t want to look back on my wedding day and remember thinking about my body. I wanted to remember engagement as growing closer to Nick, closer to God, and spending precious, joyful time with my family and friends. I wanted to remember the food we celebrated with, the laughter, the smiles, the conversations with those I love most.  I didn’t want to be distracted from all that because I was thinking about food and my body. I didn’t want to remember stressing out about when to fit in a workout or not being to eat blah blah food at such and such restaurant. Living like that would mean I would not be living in line with my values.

Yes, engagement and a wedding does only happen once. But I sure as hell didn’t want my body to be the focus. I wanted to look back and recognize the Robyn I saw in the photos. I wanted to look back and see my truest self. And I wanted my heart to explode because of the love and joy I saw with Nick and with our friends and family.

There is a huge difference in wanting to feel good and care for yourself and wanting to lose weight and shape your body. And the wedding industry {and the diet industry} are not concerned with wanting brides to feel good…they want brides to look good. Feeling good means sleeping enough, slowing down to enjoy this season, eating foods that satisfy you, laughing a lot, doing movement you enjoy, and caring for your mental, emotional and spiritual health. It means growing closer to your soon to be spouse and preparing your heart for the serious commitment you are about to make.

Being present in our lives cannot happen when we are distracted with things that will never satisfy. Whether that’s a body size, a salary, a career promotion or your reputation among many other things. Think about your values. Think about what matters to you most. What can you do today to better live in line with your values? For me, that meant not focusing on my body size during engagement and on my wedding day. A year later, what I can remember from my wedding day is feeling absolutely beautiful. Not because of my body size, but because of the way I had learned to perceive beauty. Throughout my journey to body acceptance, I had to shift how I recognized and understood beauty. And I had to continually remind myself of that learned skill during engagement and on my wedding day. You changing your body isn’t going to heal your body image issues because body image has nothing to do with your body. Body image is an external representation of an internal struggle. You have to heal the inside.

Me being at peace with my body on my wedding day doesn’t mean I looked at every single one of my wedding pictures and loved them. I actually didn’t really love my hair and the neckline of my dress after it was altered, didn’t fit the same as it did the day I picked it out. I didn’t pick out a dress with an off the shoulder neckline, but when altered, apparently I did. But you know what? None of that mattered. Looking back now a year later, I now realize even more than I did on that day how much my appearance did not matter. What mattered was the condition of my heart. Did I feel beautiful? Absolutely. And did I feel over the moon excited and joyful and fully present in my life? Absolutely. And did I get married? Sure did. That’s the stuff that mattered. And that’s the stuff I remember when I look back at my wedding pictures. In the photos, I see and feel my emotions and joy of that day in such a visceral way. And if a thought about my body or appearance does surface when looking at photos, I can observe that thought and healthily reframe it. Because those thoughts are the lies of diet culture.

You are enough just as you are, today, to be a fiancé. And you will be enough, just as you are on your wedding day, to be a bride and become a wife. Getting ready for my wedding didn’t mean shaping and molding my body to fit a dress or get the approval of others. Getting wedding ready meant becoming more patient, selfless, kind, and more generous towards my soon to be husband. It meant learning to understand him better, and him me, so on our wedding day we were best prepared to step into marriage. And that had nothing to do with my dress size. And it has nothing to do with yours either.

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