It sounds as if you’ve been doing the right things all along: eating healthy, working out to become fit and strong. In your case, that extra poundage is money in the bank for coming hard times.

I had the opposite problem. When I designed and my mom made my dress I weighed 10 pounds more than on my wedding day. I was nice and curvy and womanly and felt gorgeous in my dress. But I got African mono 4 months before the wedding and was so sick I lost those 10 pounds and my dress which had a lace up back bunched up funny over my butt because of the extra fabric.

Fortunately my mom is an amazing seamstress and was able to fix it and I still looked fantastic in it. I’ve also gained the weight back and am thankful for that. My husband’s glad I have those curves back!

Long before I got engaged, I decided it was time to “get healthy.” I consulted with a nutritionist and started working out with a personal trainer. I did the whole grains, low fat, more fruits and veggies; I did my prescribed mix of aerobics, weight training and stretching.

And I enjoyed it. I really loved working out; I loved lifting more weight and being stronger, and going farther and harder on the elliptical.

I never lost a single pound. I did lose some fat and did gain some muscle, but I’ve got lots of fat. I was rather expecting some of it to, you know, go away, because I was Eating Right and Exercising. It works for some people, and more power to them. But not apparently for me, not for weight loss. For health? Sure. But health != weight.

With a new, longer commute and a baby, I can’t do the gym anymore; I’m trying to figure out how to fit some kind of fitness routine back into my life. Chances are great I’ll contract cancer around age 50 and I want to be in fighting trim for it. But long before my wedding, I lost any expectation that I could really sculpt or change my body shape. I bought a plus-sized halter top gown with princess seams that flattered and fit me as I actually am.

IF I get engaged before I finish losing the weight (which is a possibility – I have 100 lbs total to lose: it’s going to take a while!*), I won’t change what I’m doing. This journey and goal was set before any other and I am going to honor the commitment no matter what else is going on.

*For the record, I have so far lost 31 of those lbs, in about 5 months. I just broke my plateau, and I’m very happy about it.

Yes, I’m one of those brides who isn’t trying on dresses until January because I’m hoping to be down 15-20 lbs by then (which is a completely healthy rate of loss). I don’t want to try on a dress and have to imagine what it will look like 20 lbs from now, or have to try on dresses I really don’t like because they will flatter my figure. I am also going about it in a completely healthy way. I’m not starving myself, I’m not taking dies pills, I’m just eating right and exercising. I don’t have a complex, I don’t think I’m every going to be a size 2, nor do I want to. I just want to be healthy, be able to walk around for a week on my honeymoon and be ok, be able to look at myself in my wedding dress and be proud of my accomplishments.

I think you guys are looking at it all wrong. It isn’t society or the covers of magazines that motivate most of us to lose weight, I really believe that. I think it is a desire to be healthy, and a wedding is a commitment to someone that you will take care of them for the rest of your life, and you can not take care of them if you don’t take care of yourself.

My fiance is also on this weight loss journey with me, and he is doing it for himself also, and because we want to be healthy for each other. Sure, ‘skinny’ photographs will be great, but they aren’t the reason we’re doing it.

For some reason, wedding photography has slowly become less and less about recording a moment in time, and more and more about preserving an image that has little to do with reality…at least in the minds of all too many of the subjects. Over and over again I see and hear brides talking about how they need to lose weight so they’ll look good in the pictures.

The crazy thing about that is that any photographer worth his/her salt will know how to use angles and lighting to get the most flattering pictures of everyone involved, just as any designer/dressmaker/tailor truly worthy of the title will understand that it is the job of the dress to fit, flatter, and show off the wearer rather than the other way around.

The myth of the One Perfect Day intersects here with the cultural admonitions that any scrap of fat is going to cause you to DIIIIIIEEEE horribly causing otherwise perfectly rational women to go completely off their rockers and enter into scarily unhealthy behaviors in hopes of being able to point to those photos one day and prove to everyone that they really were completely socially acceptable for at least this one occasion.

Choosing to eat reasonably from a wide variety of nutritious foods is great. Finding an activity that exercises your body and makes you feel good about yourself is fabulous. If that makes you lose weight, that’s cool. If it doesn’t, that’s also cool. If it makes you gain weight, then that’s cool, too. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, move your body, and then let the chips (chocolate or poker, as you prefer) fall where they may. Get a gown that fits you, choose a photographer who knows how to use his/her equipment to show you off to your best (which isn’t necessarily your thinnest) advantage. Let go of perfect and find a way to appreciate who and what you are now, complete with the waistline you turn out to have.

Take care of yourself, inside and out. That never includes purging.

Besides, the best looking brides I’ve seen have been so not because they fit some arbitrary ideal of beauty on the outside, but because of the happy glow from within. It’s hard to get that glow while following behaviors straight out of the eating disorders handbook.

Personally I have no interest in losing weight for my wedding, but I will admit that I’m trying to maintain my current weight. If I outgrow the dress I just ordered, I can’t afford another one!