The Art of Losing is Hard to Master

Like many brides before me, at the beginning of our engagement (a whole 15 months ago) I vowed to lose weight and get in better shape.

Don't get me wrong - I consider myself to be fairly thin, and understand that I am not overweight for my height and body type. However, I had gained weight in the years since college, and wanted to look more lean and toned. Not only that, but I wanted to feel better. We're talking about my wedding day, after all! I wanted to look as good as I possibly could, and be healthier to boot.

So, alongside Mr. CA, I started eating even better than we had been previously, and exercising.

The real kick in the butt was when I went to try on wedding dresses. I was shocked that the dresses I tried on had such tiny sizes. To give you an idea: I generally wear a size 4 in dresses. The dress I ended up purchasing was a size 10. A TEN.  What is the deal with that?? How is that possible? I honestly do not understand how their sizing is so different from regular clothing. Even though I knew the sizing was irregular, it made me really self-conscious and worried about my weight.

Nevertheless, I waxed and waned in my exercising over the next few months - going through spurts of sustained work-outs, then lapsing into indolence. I have a very long commute each way to work, and it is really hard to squeeze in time to work out. I'm out the door by 6:20am, and don't get back until around 7pm, when all I want to do is make dinner, eat, then go to bed. Working out was, unfortunately, not one of my main priorities.

Ultimately, I have maintained essentially the same weight over the last year. At this point, with the wedding looming in just a few short weeks, I am at peace with that. I will look like me on my wedding day. No, I won't look perfect. But I will look perfect to Mr. CA, and that is what matters.

Did you try to lose weight for your wedding? How successful were you? Were you also shocked at wedding dress sizes?

Searching for Dresses

As I have mentioned, I was afraid of indifferent to wedding dresses early on in our engagement. But, since I am a somewhat crazed bride, I of course had been obsessively checking wedding inspiration sites, and was thus exposed to many a beautiful wedding gown. The tulle! The silk! The eyelet! The lace! The white and cream and ivory! All things that I love.

And, as my wedding vision developed, I started to notice that I was gravitating towards certain types of gowns. Mainly, those gowns that were vintage-y, flow-y, lace-y, eyelet-y. Those are all words, right? Basically, I was drawn to the elegant, romantic, form-hugging lace gowns that make you think of tea-cups and doilies (in a good way).

Anyway, here is the look/ style that I was crushing on.

I loved most of Monique Lhuillier's designs - who doesn't?? They are so dreamy, and exactly the type of style I was going for.

 {1: Monique Lhuillier (Spring 2010)/ 2: Monique Lhuillier (Spring 2006), Via Elizabeth Anne Designs/ 3: Monique Lhuillier (Spring 2009), Via Martha Stewart Weddings}

{Photo: Lark Photography/ Dress: Coren Moore/ Via Style Me Pretty}

{Photo: Justin and Mary Marantz/ Dress: Jim Hjelm from Kleinfelds/ Via Ruffled}

{Photo: Karen Wise Photography/ Dress: Christina Kara of Blue/ Via Style Me Pretty} I have a major crush on this dress. Especially the big bow in the back.

{Photo: Simply Bloom Photography/ The Gown: Etsy seller Vintage Opulence/ Via Ruffled} This one sort of makes me think of a nightie. But I still love it.

{Photo: Ophelia Photography/ Vintage Wedding Dresses: Adorn Atelier/ Via Ruffled} Yummy lace-y long sleeves.

Yes, these types of dresses definitely fit the style of our wedding, as I envisioned it. It still makes my heart skip a beat, looking at all of these lovelies. 

What style of dress did you go with? Any particular fabrics that caught your eye? What do you think - did I end up with a similar dress?

Dealing with Dresses

Let me start by mentioning that I was not the girl who had her whole wedding planned by age 7. Nope. In fact, aside from the occassional "sigh I really need to marry Leonardo DiCaprio" (ah, to be a tween again), marriage didn't really cross my mind in passing until I was in high-school, and I didn't think about it seriously until college. But, even then, I was too busy with other things that seemed more important. Like my thesis, and beach volleyball, and finding a job after graduation. Marriage could wait; I was in no hurry. So, when I got engaged, I didn't have a massive binder full of wedding scenarios, budgets, and inspiration that I had compiled over the years.

I will admit, though, that I started subscribing to Martha Stewart Weddings about two years before we got engaged. Why? Who knows - I definitely didn't expect a proposal! I think it stemmed more from the fact that I just love looking at the pretty, pretty pictures. And we all know my obsession with florals. Every once in a while, I would rip pages out of the magazines - checklists, etiquette, wording for invitations, bouquets - that caught my eye, and I would file them away for later. And by "file them away for later," I mean I would stick them in a bookshelf where they gathered dust, and, after they got too dusty and old, I would toss them. Oopsie. But mainly I would browse through the magazines, and then they'd go out with the recycling.

In all my time spent leafing through the lovely mags, one thing that I didn't really look at, or care about, was the dresses. As in, the dress. For some reason, I just never really cared about wedding dresses. Don't hate me. Okay, actually, that's a lie - I did enjoy looking at the pictures of gorgeous dresses in the magazines. But, I never really looked at them purposefully, with the thought of "what do I want my wedding dress to look like." I mainly flipped past the dress ads; it just wasn't high on my list of interests! I would much prefer looking at beautiful flowers, and fun signature drinks, and funky, fresh stationary, than figuring out what type of fabric I wanted to swathe myself in on the big day.

Photograph via the Library of Congress

In retrospect, this may have been a combination of a few things:

1. I'm not much of a shopper. Shocking, right? Seriously, I hate trying on clothes, because I have massively-broad shoulders. Therefore, I hate how a lot of clothes look on me. This is why I love shopping online. Therefore, I think I may have ignored the fact that I had to figure out how to clothe myself for our wedding in a way that would not make me look like an ox.

2. Even though I had those gorgeous, spanking-new magazines, the main things I had to go off of (in my mind) in terms of what a wedding dress looks like were old pictures. Grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts. I mean, I know the styles are actually coming back full-circle now, and some of those older dresses are coming back into style, but I didn't really want to walk down the aisle in a big, shiny, puffy-sleeved dress in which you could hide a small village.

 Via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Those dresses scare me a little. Consequently, I ignored the whole dress aspect of the wedding, and concentrated more on decor, colors, etc. Wedding dress? Pshhh. Who thinks about THAT?!

Did anyone else ignore/ avoid the whole wedding-dress part of planning?