All of my life I have dreamt about my wedding day. I love a good party and viewed this at the ultimate opportunity for a bloody good shin dig (as well as celebrating our louurrrvvvee of course!). That’s partly the reason why I was so distraught at not being able to find gorgeous special dresses in my size and in the style that I wanted. I knew I wanted something vintage inspired – and not white. Various recommendations were given to me including a few boutiques in London and one in my nearest city, Birmingham.
In Summer 2011 my sister and I visited the Birmingham boutique – whose website and reputation is very pro-plus-size. (I won’t name and shame here)(not this time anyway). When we arrived at the boutique the entire place stank of the food the designer had been eating. She made us feel quite unworthy of being there. I was told that I had to wear a corset to achieve a good shape for any dress and I was promptly forced into one. One thing I did learn from this experience is that corsets are not for me – they give me a smaller waist for sure, but they simply move any bulge from that area up and down so that my body shape was utterly contorted and I couldn’t move. Then, with bulging shoulders and something god-awful going on at the bottom of the corset, she tried to squeeze me into a too-small fishtail number. How I didn’t cry I do not know (I’m such a cry baby …).
We left. They had said ‘get in touch to book in for measurements’. We didn’t.
I think in retrospect it was this experience – being made to feel like my size was something that needed to be concealed or improved upon (in a smelly, rude environment) – that stopped me in my dress hunting tracks. It wasn’t until this January (2012) that the sheer panic of the BIG DAY approaching at some speed forced me to start looking again.
Hours, days and weeks were spent trawling the internet looking for something 50s inspired that I could get in my size. The below dresses are the kind of thing I was after:
To be continued .....
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