Day 181 - 159.8 Wedding Dress Story

I got to wear my wedding dress twice.

The first time was for our wedding, which was on March 18, 1995. We had planned an October wedding, but found a little yellow house that we got for a steal, and knew we couldn't live there "officially" without being married (we were attending our church regularly and even though we were living together, it wasn't official and all that).

So we planned a wedding in two weeks. My mom and my husband's mom called all the guests (we had around 100 people attend), we had a string quartet from the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, and a small cake & punch reception at the church afterwards. My sister and aunt are the flower makers/cake decorators in the family, so I had those bases covered (and everything was gorgeous). Mark has a friend who's a commercial photographer, so he took our pictures as his wedding gift to us.

My dress, I bought off the rack. It was a simple tea length, cream gauzy thing with 3/4 length sheer sleeves and a portrait collar, with a wide lace band around the waist. I think it was around $150 and was a size 11. I weighed about 150 pounds on my wedding day.

Since we had planned for an October wedding when we got engaged in July 2004, we had booked a big reception hall and couldn't get the $500 deposit back, so we had our Big Reception on our original wedding date, October 28. To get people excited about coming, we made it a Halloween costume party. Again we had about 100 people, but many there were those who couldn't make it to the wedding, so it was a different mix of people. Every single person got into it-- fabulous costumes, a jolly good time it was.

My husband and I went as a Bride and Groom. What else?

I barely fit into my wedding dress this time. I had gone through a really tough 6 months since we'd gotten married. I did all those wonderful stressful things that can cause weight gain--got married, moved into a new house, got a new job. On October 28, 2005, I weighed 165 pounds.

I was so nervous that I wouldn't be able to wear my dress to the reception. And of course, that just made me eat more. So when it was time, I put on the dress and it just barely zipped up. I had a ton of cleavage spilling out of the portrait collar, which no longer rested nicely against the outsides of my shoulders but now formed a V-neck to contain my boobage. When I compare pictures from my wedding and the reception, I can totally see the 15 pounds gained.

I could get that dress back on now and it would look great, I think (maybe a little tight around my waist), even though I'm still 10 pounds more than I was on my wedding day. I'd try it if it weren't for the $100 I paid to have it preserved and packaged in an airtight keepsake box.

But there's something about knowing I'm oh so close to my wedding day weight that is exciting.

Our next anniversary we'll be married for 13 years. By then, I'll weigh what I did when we were dating. Which was 145 pounds. Which, ironically (NOT!) is my goal weight. I wish I'd saved some of my clothes from the summer of 1993, which is the year we met. It would be fun to see how they fit. I think, though, it will be just as fun to buy new clothes.