The Curse of the Pinterest Wedding

By the time Dai and I got engaged, two years ago this month, I had been living free from disordered eating behaviours for four years, and I believed that I was fairly comfortable in myself. Post-baby, my weight had gone up quite a bit (or at least, my dress size had - I don't own a set of scales), but I quite liked having a softer, curvier figure and I wasn't bothered by my stretch marks. Birth was the most incredible, awful, arduous thing I had ever undergone - it seemed only logical that it would leave a mark behind.

I thought I was pretty happy with myself and had avoided the traps and pitfalls laid by the industries who profit from getting women to feel badly about their appearance. I don't do diets, ever - my eating is intuitive. I only buy products that I enjoy applying and that don't hurt or make me feel bad about myself - so no waxing, cellulite creams or anti aging products but lots of beautifully scented skincare with natural ingredients (I love Lush, because they don't market to a particular gender, they try to be low-impact, and their products smell great and are a joy to use), massage oils, botanical indie perfumes and really pretty eyeshadow. 

However, the February before the shopping ban I discovered that the beauty standards of the dominant culture can get in your head without you noticing, and smack you across the chops out of the blue, leaving you in tears over the way you look. For me, it was the day I tried on my wedding dress.

I'd taken a risk and ordered a dress online, from a dress designer on Etsy. I was so excited when it arrived - it was beautifully packaged too, with pink and blue confetti hearts spilling out of the box as I lifted yards of tulle gently, reverently into my arms.

I'd thought it would take me months and months to find a dress. I wanted tulle. I wanted blush pink. I wanted a long train. I wanted buttons, not a corset-style lace-up back. And I found it the first day of looking. I'd never imagined myself in a strapless wedding dress, let alone a ballgown - too traditional - but on the model it looked like something from a fairytale. I remember catching my breath and thinking, I'd really feel like a BRIDE in that dress.

But when I tried it on, I didn't feel like a bride at all. I felt like a frumpy troll. What an idiot I had been, to buy such a feminine dress, when I was such a great ugly lump. The wedding guests would fall about laughing.

I rang my mum in tears. "I hate the dress," I sobbed. "It'll have to go back." But I felt sick. If I didn't feel happy in a lovingly handmade fairytale gown that ticked all my boxes, what would it take?

Luckily for me (and my dress), my bridesmaids came swooping to the rescue. They stuffed me back into the dress and took photos while I laughed and smiled with them. When they showed me the pictures, the troll I'd seen in the mirror was gone. The laughing woman in the photos was radiant and joyful. She wasn't the slim blonde model from the website, she was me, with my bad skin and more teeth than a happy beaver, but I was glowing, and I looked great. The dress looked great on me, baby weight, henna-ed hair, tattoos and all.

I realised I'd been freaking out because I didn't look like an airbrushed model. I'd swallowed the wedding propaganda hook, line and sinker, and I'd beaten myself up because I didn't think I looked how a bride "should look". I was so disappointed that I had nearly let poor self-image and stupid, stupid patriarchal beauty standards affect our big day, and surprised, too - recovered from disordered eating, I was usually pretty relaxed about my looks, and I was shocked by my own visceral reaction and the surge of shame and disgust I had felt. Unrealistic expectations and picture-perfect overstyled social media weddings had a lot to answer for.

The Great Dress Debacle was not the only occasion during wedding planning when I felt the pressure for things to be perfect, and I had to make it my mission to let go of impossible standards. As my experiences in motherhood, and my mismatched wardrobe (after my ill-fated spending splurge and clearout, when I fell off the shopping ban wagon), were fast teaching me, if you try to micromanage every detail and make everything perfect in every way, you're on the road to disappointment. I had to forget perfection and just get on with having a good time. Screw Pinterest weddings. I was going to aim for fun, memorable, and ending the day legally married to the man I loved. If there was something blue at my wedding, it damn sure wasn't going to be me.

So I didn't attend a bridal bootcamp. Actually, I didn't go on a wedding diet at all. I chose to do my own nails with funky wraps from Espionage Cosmetics, chose hot pink glitter Vans over high heels, my bouquet was... No, I won't tell you that, or there'll be no surprises!... and my biggest and most indulgent splurge was custom lingerie of my own design made by Buttress and Snatch, whose beautiful fripperies I'd coveted for years. Instead of panicking over everyone looking at me, I kept telling myself "they've all seen you before! They know what you look like!" and kept on doing what would make me and Dai happy, whether it would look good on social media or not.

Don't get me wrong, I still had wobbles. I nearly had a meltdown at a wedding fayre wishing we could afford an events designer to make the reception hall into an enchanted forest (with white blossom trees on the tables, tea lights in glass globes hanging from their branches, and gold lace table cloths... It WAS beautiful, I admit), but there was just no way we could shoehorn it into the budget. Instead we planned our own decor for the cost of just one such arrangement, with dried flowers from a local florist, beer bottles we rather enjoyed sourcing ourselves, wooden rounds handmade by a friend working in woodland management, and little succulents in pots. 

When you plan a wedding, you'll never please everyone. Assorted relatives offered "helpful" criticism during the planning stages, and we had to learn to shrug it off and carry on regardless. I eventually came to realise that everyone's 'perfect' wedding would be different. This one was going to be chaotic, colourful, quirky, utterly imperfect (trying to coordinate wedding outfits whilst still breastfeeding multiple times a night led to little quirks such as the groom's buttonhole clashing with the bride's hair ornaments... All you can do then is own it like you did it on purpose) and OURS.

I could have sweated over every detail. I could have bought matching floral robes for the bridesmaids for a single getting-ready photo. I could have hired a car for a grand entrance, got hair extensions, dieted into a smaller dress, fake tanned, mani-pedi-ed, Wonderbra'd, freaked out about every pimple and pore. Blown the budget on a candy floss machine and a temporary tattoo station and a photo booth and a doughnut wall and a personalised cocktail menu and vintage tea cups as favours... And it still could never be perfect, because there's rain and mud and breast milk, ill-timed farts and stray eyebrow hairs, and who the heck would I be trying to impress anyway? Strangers on the internet, or my friends and family who love me already and really wouldn't notice the lack of a rose gold balloon arch? 

My friend Topaz noted in the bridesmaid group chat that I looked "like a majestic jellyfish queen" in my wedding dress. Indeed. And what more could any woman want? 

As it turned out, I was grateful I chose to take the philosophical approach. Our wedding was planned for May 6th, 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic was newly devastating the country. We don't know yet when our wedding will happen, or what it might eventually look like, but all I can do is continue trying not to get my knickers in a twist over things that are out of my control.

Thank heavens for wedding insurance.