Wedding Dress Weight Loss: Everything You Need To Know About Fitting Into Your Dress
Many times we answer the phone or emails, and they start a little like this.
I'm thinking about losing weight before my wedding? or I want to lose weight before I start wedding dress shopping?
So if you're at all worried about your body size and shopping for a wedding dress. The today's blog is just for you!
Here is our bridal styling blog, where we will give you, our expert advice with everything a bride needs to know about losing weight and starting shopping for their wedding dress.
We have seen a lot of brides come through our doors at Wedding Belles Love, so we have seen and spoken about this topic quite frequently with our brides, so hopefully some of information will guide you through your journey. We will talk about cut off points, shredding, crash diets, if these are good ideas or not and your ideal weight for your weight, all of these have a time to ensure your wedding dress fits you properly on your wedding day. Our main goal is that we want all brides to walk down that aisle feeling beautiful and confident!
We understand that leading up to your wedding day, you want to look your absolute best. When it comes to your skin, your hair, your nails, your body, your makeup, you name it, you want to look flawless from head to toe on your wedding day. After all, all eyes will be on you as the bride! We understand that in the world we live in today, filters on photos, it can add even more pressure to look a certain way or have a certain body image on your wedding day.
So if you have begun planning your wedding, even started to google, then you have no doubt seen posts or listened to podcasts about “shredding for the wedding” these are about getting into the best shape possible in time for your wedding day. Or are they? Here are our thoughts and advice on the topic of losing weight before your wedding day as the wedding diet culture which can be overwhelming and rather unhealthy.
Make Healthy Changes Early
We are confident that we can help brides to feel confident and beautiful when finding their wedding dress regardless to body size. So we would never tell a bride that they need to lose weight. But we also know that there is a lot of pressure to lose weight or get into shape before the wedding day, so we wanted to give you our best bridal styling tips for feeling confident and comfortable on your wedding day.
Do we absolutely fully support you in making healthy lifestyle changes? Oh Yes We Do!
We want all brides to feel their best on wedding day. We don’t recommend doing a crash diet just a few months or weeks before your wedding day. It’s certainly not healthy for your body to be put in complete shock and expect crazy changes just months, weeks or even days before your wedding. If you go the “shredding for the wedding” path, you’re giving yourself such a small window to achieve something. Sometimes if you do not get the results you were hoping for you are extremally disappointed. This could add more stress to your wedding planning, as well as feeling a little deflated when trying on your wedding dress when it arrives.
We definitely encourage you to consider starting sooner rather than later, weight loss doesn't happen overnight. Think about your routine and what goal you would like to achieve and try and start as soon as possible if possible at least 12 months in advance.
12 Weeks Before Your Wedding Date, It's Alterations Time
If you follow us on social media, you possibly know that we encourage all brides to shop around 12 months before their wedding date. This allows for their wedding dress to arrive and 12 weeks for alterations.
Wedding dresses are ordered based on your current body measurements. Wedding dresses that are ordered in, the bridal stylist will follow a chart provided by the designer with full training on how to use them, wedding dresses are ordered to largest part of the body, then the other measurements can be tweaked at alterations. Women normally fluctuate throughout the month, we measure your waist, hip and bust to get you into a close fitting wedding gown. From there, the alterations process will get your wedding dress into the best fit for you. For more,
be sure to read our post on what happens after your wedding dress arrives in the store.
We encourage brides to begin working out or healthy eating, whatever journey you start to take, as early as possible in your wedding planning stage. Wedding dress alterations begins about three months before your wedding. When you're at that three month mark, and you're not happy with how you look and you're going to do a “crash course, shredding for the wedding diet,” it can cause quite a few problems in many ways.
Pre-wedding crash diets add stress into your life to lose weight quickly, and it creates problems with the alterations. If a wedding dress is altered your wedding dress three months before your wedding date and then you come back one month before your wedding for your final fitting and your body has fluctuated a lot, this means extra work for the alterations which comes at another cost to you to alter your wedding gown.
You may be thinking to yourself “why can't you just do my wedding dress alterations one month before the wedding?” But unfortunately, this is not how alterations work. Your seamstresses will need time to be able to do the work on your wedding dress, as well as many other brides’ dresses, with only one month before the wedding certainly does not leave enough time to get you back in to check alterations, for your final appointment and make any changes if needed.
Shopping For The Right Size Dress
Wedding Belles Love, we hear quite frequently from brides who are shopping for a wedding dresses that they are working to lose weight, particularly in those areas that many women and brides are insecure about, their arms as well as stomachs. We often hear from many brides who are searching for their dream bridal dress that they want to order their wedding gown in a size smaller than what their current measurements fit at the time of ordering so that they will have motivation to lose weight prior to their wedding. We always offer our brides to chance to return to try on our sample wedding dresses in their chosen size, so not to stretch their own and to see how far off their goals they are.
Some brides put off wedding dress shopping until they have lost a certain amount of weight or started their diet.
We do try to discourage this plan to wait to shop and order your wedding dress until you lose weight because life happens. What if you aren’t able to lose weight before your wedding dress is ordered as easily as you think? Or you just get busy with life, family, and wedding planning and don’t have all the time to work out like you planned? The longer you wait to order your wedding dress the less options you have, you might not be able to order your dream wedding dress in time for it to arrive, you could be limited the options from the designers or the alterations could be fully booked, so you are at a disadvantage.
Wedding Belles Love would rather you work on feeling beautiful and confident in your own skin, we try to promote this as much as possible within our boutique with our brides. Everybody is beautiful regardless to shape. Each one of our brides is beautiful in their own right.
The way you are right now is because of life, things might happen and it's possible that you may not lose the weight or get as toned as you hope before your wedding.
When Is A Good Time To Go Wedding Dress Shopping
Wedding Belles Love will find you a wedding a dress where your confidence will shine through and you will feel your most beautiful, when you were feeling less confident walking through our doors, then looking in the mirror and seeing how confident you become in your wedding dress, this is an incredible feeling this is your wedding dress, you will absolutely know you've found the one. So if life happens and you don't reach your goal weight or what ever you wanted to achieve, it does not matter, you have fell in love with your wedding dress that made you feel all the thigs you were searching for. You felt amazing, beautiful and radiant in your wedding dress.
So Take Care Of Yourself
Start all of your healthy habits early and build them up over time, put your systems in place, whether you are working out or changing eating habits, your work routine, been able to maintain your habits making small changes will increase your confidence a little at a time, this will reduce your stress levels leading up to your wedding day, making the planning more enjoyable. Keep a mental heath check during the stressful periods is just as important as a number on the scales.
keep smiling, keep the radiance shining through, you are more than beautiful.