Shedding for the Wedding

Every bride dreams of her big day from a young age. Somewhere, a long time ago, a younger version of me planted a wedding seed in my own head. The little seed came with preconceived inherent ideas of what Wedding would be like, what we would eat and, of course, the dress. Poor, little, innocent BB had no idea what was really in store when the seed finally came to fruition and exploded in my head.

The last couple of months have been a bit of a crazy whirlwind. Milestones are flying past at break neck speed. We’ve past the six month to go mark and in a couple of days, we reach our one year Engagey anniversary. As soon as we reached the 6 month mark, time seemed to speed up. I’m almost at the point where I can see a big Masterchef clock counting down in minutes and seconds above my head wherever I go. The Wedding train is well and truly hurtling towards us and, whilst I’m still enjoying the ride, there’s not too many more stops left before we will arrive at our matrimonial destination. Add to this overwhelming, super powered time vacuum, a new player has entered the game.

Engagey was first, my darling Engagey, so young and fun, of course we have Wedding who has been present throughout, and now we have the Moon. The Moon has been loitering for some time, existing more as a vague and fluid concept rather than something with real presence. But once Moon arrived on the scene, it certainly asserted itself in an undeniable fashion and firmly entrenched itself in our lives. Moon is amazing. It holds such promise for both of us and, at times, can overshadow even Wedding. More on Moon another time.

http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/brides-8217-extreme-wedding-preparations-nose-tube-diet-173800919.html

But the issue at hand is one I’m sure is quite common amongst most brides. We gotta whip that bridal booty into shape! Must start “Shedding for the Wedding.” For me, the moment took place over 6 months ago, in a time filled with excitement and joy - the day I found my dress. Sitting in the boutique, listening to the lady explain the details and the schedule of the dress making process, the exultation and jubilation soon turned to anxiety when she suddenly stopped, and asked me one simple question... “How are you feeling at the moment?” Easy! “I feel amazing! Overjoyed! Super excited!” I replied. “No, love….how are you feeling? As in about yourself.” Now, say this out loud whilst looking in a mirror, peering down your own nose at yourself. With a slow glance up and down that sears through your clothes and leaves you naked, ask yourself “how are you feeeeeeeeling?”

Suddenly, I felt stripped and vulnerable as my self-esteem started to seep slowly from my being. In that look she gave me, that slow scan of my body - she could see every lump, bump and dimple, she could smell the calories I’d consumed at lunch, and she immediately knew that I was a girl who was partial to a good meal and great wine, not to mention the occasional beer. I looked at MOB for support, reassurance that I hadn’t been living in some parallel universe where I was a fatty boomba. She looked back at me, sensing my panic, she understood what was going on, and gave me a nod of encouragement. Eventually I replied cautiously… “Good?” now completely unsure if that was the right answer. Well, I was good. Now I feel like shit. Ha.

“Do you plan to lose much weight or perhaps just tone up?”
“I’m not really sure…I guess I’ll tone up a bit.”
“Great well we can give you until July to do what you need to do before we take your measurements. Is that enough time for you?”
“Yep.” Shit.

So, 6 months down the track, I now have 1 month left until July when I need to walk my svelte, toned self back into that boutique for another round of ego battering. Can not wait. The problem is, how the F do I do it. I’m already quite an active person. My week looks a little bit like this. Monday  5:30pm -  freestyle Spin class, Tuesday 6:00pm  - RPM, Wednesday 5:30pm -  Ashtanga Yoga, Thursday 5:30pm – RPM, Friday 5:00pm  - Pump. Add to this, brisk walks or runs with two very lively Staffy’s 7 days a week, rain, hail or shine. There’s even the occasional Saturday morning run or another class thrown in there. At one stage, I was doing double sessions, hitting the gym up at lunch time or walking through the park when the weather permitted. I got tired of that pretty quickly.

Then I stumbled across a story about a woman who had stuck a feeding tube down her nose in order to shed a few unwanted kilos before her big day. OMG. This is pure insanity. It involves the “patients” carrying around a solution in a bag, which delivers fats, protein, and water (no carbs) through the nasogastric tube into the stomach. Patients consume about 800 calories a day, and no actual food ever passes their lips over the 10-day period.

 source: http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/brides-8217-extreme-wedding-preparations-nose-tube-diet-173800919.html

A doctor speaking out against this idiotic diet put forward some alternative solutions for a quick weight loss: “Why not a medically induced coma/anesthesia for weight loss?” he wonders. Why not a10 day cocaine binge? Which he suggests would work just as well, and probably be more fun.
So, whilst every bride wants to look amazing on her wedding day, it could be that last chance to show off a hot rig before it is wreaked havoc upon by childbirth or a job in administration, coupled with a stubborn metabolism that shows no signs of ever getting back to those carefree, eat what you want, nothing will happen days.

But guess what? A skeleton in a big, ill-fitting dress is not pretty, sexy or beautiful. Like marriage itself, maintaining a healthy weight is long term, there’s no quick fix, and no cheat sheet that doesn’t come without kidney damage, headaches, dizziness, vitamin deficiencies and dehydration.

Yesterday I had two chocolate biscuits.

The thing is, there’s enough to stress about other than how many calories are in a cup of green tea. The last thing anyone is ever going to think of the bride at her wedding is that she would’ve looked soooo much better carrying a little less junk in the trunk.

Bridal Olympics

The last couple of months of engagement have been blissful as our little life carries on pretty much on track. This is what we wanted, the time to sit back and enjoy just being engaged. Not that there is a lot of ‘sitting back’ going on. As I said, life continues on its own trajectory, and we find ourselves pretty preoccupied with day to day life at the moment. However, there is a sense of looming for me. It’s coming.

As the time ticks by, the milestones are reached and things continued to be metaphorically ticked from the list, it feels like Wedding is building swell, a mega force, and I’m caught in the undertow as it drags me out to sea, quietly and peacefully.

I find myself in quiet moments, at times, absolutely terrified of the magnitude of the task and the occasion ahead. In a few days time, we’ll find ourselves at the 6 month mark. That’s 6 months to go. 6 months is such a short time when converted to wedding hours. And even though I’ve earnt myself the tag of ‘relatively organised bride’, I’m apparently not in the upper echelons of the ‘ultra organised bride’. Which sounds distinctly like a challenge to me. About time I stepped it up a notch.

It’s funny that no matter where you are, or with whom, Wedding is always a popular and familiar topic of conversation. Just today, while at a training course with a grand total of 3 people, I struck common ground with both other participants on the topic of bridesmaids dresses. One lady told me her daughter had recently become engaged, opening up a plethora of conversation topics for the duration of the 3 day course, the other – a bridesmaid herself, caught deep in the midst of (seemingly not unusual) bridesmaid dress angst. At work, my boss is attending a wedding in a few weeks time and is quite close to the bride and her planning process. We have some friends who are getting married just a week before us, so wedding chit chat and the exchange of experiences and feelings to date is fairly prevalent whenever we get the chance to catch up. I have an old colleague that has recently become engaged and is scrambling to organise a wedding by October. She likes to contact me via Facebook to ask me all manner of  wedding planning questions ranging from quite specific to very random. Add to this, the thousands of people we come into contact with over the course of each week, who are already married and relish the opportunity to impart their own wisdom and experience, regardless of their connection to myself or fiancé. So, even if I wanted to escape from the wedding mania, I can’t.

While we’re on the topic, I’ve decided that wedding planning should be a sport in the next Olympics. I’m ready for London if they’re keen. Even better, it should get an Olympics all of its own. The Bridal Olympics. You have to agree, it would be a spectacle filled with fierce competition from brides to be, who are in well and truly under the influence of acquired situational narcissism, battling it out for the best venue, best DJ, best dress, best flowers, best honeymoon, bridal waltz, bonbonierres, bridesmaid shoes, hens night, etc.

Of course, everyone thinks their wedding will be/was the best and that’s completely 100% understandable, that’s how it should be, but I’ve certainly come across some brides who are particularly aggressive and somewhat standoffish at the same time when in the company of another bride to be. I’m sorry but I just don’t get it. There’s plenty of weddings to go around, and the only thing you should be worried about, is that you are totally in love with yours.

I recently asked a friend of mine if she had experienced a similar thing when she was in the bride to be boat over 4 years ago. She said she didn’t really have any immediate friends getting married at the same time as her but that she knew where I was coming from. She said she had felt a similar thing from married woman, who would ask her how the planning was going only to turn their noses up and make disapproving noises and accompanying faces when she replied, not what they did/had, and so, therefore, not the best she could do.

OK, I’m not completely innocent here. I can’t say I haven’t raised an eyebrow or two when I’ve been privy to the details of the impending nuptials of my acquaintances that weren’t 100% to my taste. It’s hard not to judge when you’re so deeply entrenched in orchestrating your own dream day. Of course, tastes and budgets differ and that’s absolutely fine. It’s when someone steps up the plate to question my vision that I start to get a bit irked. Especially when the person in question is a) not a close friend b) very very different c) unaware that they are very very different and persistent in trying to play the game at a higher level than their intelligence and skill will allow. This particular person came to me for advice, somewhat at a loss of where to start, as all BTB’s can understand. At first I felt humbled by her plea for help, that she chose me to come to for advice, she must’ve heard about my ‘relatively organised bride’ ranking, word had spread, I get that. First things first, I told her she had to start with a venue. It was to be the cornerstone for the rest of her planning, especially since this particular case was dealing with a tight timeframe. I was sceptical she would find one in such a short time but she replied almost straight away. “Found one!” Hmm, this instantly aroused my suspicions. Booking a venue in Perth 5 months out? Obvs onto a winner.

As the conversation continued, she asked if I would share a sort of checklist with her, to make sure she had covered off “all the main things” in her initial jottings down/ripped out to do list from her ‘Cosmo Bride’. Of course, I obliged, more than happy to share my tailor made spreadsheet with her. I questioned leaving all of the figures in there, what does it matter if someone else knows my budget? But decided to take out the cost of a few big ticket items, including my dress. Luckily. Her response came moments later… “You’re paying over 4K for a photographer??????” Oh dear. Deary, deary me. Oh dear. Thank god I took the price of the dress out. You see, I wasn’t dealing with a knowledgeable bride to be and I don’t know her well enough to have a category for her but I soon realised that if we were in the Bridal Olympics, she would be in the Special Bridal Olympics. A completely different event altogether, and it would be completely unfair for me to compete with her. Of course I would win, but I soon realised weren’t on a level playing field.

This was despite her best efforts to try to get me to later send her some pics of my bridesmaids dresses so she could “get some ideas. Don’t worry I’m not going to copy them.” Unfortunately, right at that moment, our server crashed and I was unable to send her the entire blueprint and game plan for our wedding for her “not to copy”.

She continued on over the subsequent days and weeks with more questions as to the progress of my planning and asked if I was ‘stressed’ amongst other things. I replied in earnest, telling her that I was loving the process and that I had recently had a marvellous realisation that I was falling in love with fiancé all over again, caught up only in the fact that soon I would be standing side by side with the man I love, looking into his eyes, and pledging a lifelong commitment. And that honestly underpins every decision I make for wedding from this point forth. I play our selected bridal waltz song every now and then, and it sends me crazy with excitement. I can now see the day clearly, how it will be and, most importantly, my fiancé will become my husband. She assured me she agreed and felt EXACTLY the same, that when she thought about her fiancé, she felt all “mushy”. Hmmm, mushy. Not exactly the words I would use (ever) but that’s it. That’s the essence of the whole thing. No matter what you’re budget, you’re timing, or how badly you’ve been ripped off by your photographer, the thing that all of us have in common is the feeling of excitement at beginning the next chapter with your favourite person. In the meantime, it’s game on bitches.