I am a terrible golfer because I have boobs and struggle with figuring out the difference between swinging a bat and swinging a golf club, so that’s out. I couldn’t fit into his basketball jersey in high school, so he never pressured me to wear it. We both worked through college, so money was never really a huge issue. I mean, yeah, I have done absolutely nothing to trick this boy into liking me.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. I did, briefly, pretend to like Guinness to impress him. It was his favorite beer at the time, and whenever he mentioned it, I knowingly nodded my head in agreement.
Like yeah, I’m Irish, obviously I like Guinness.
One night during college we met some friends at a bar, and while I was in the bathroom, he ordered me a pint of Guinness, like the gentleman that he is. It was thick, frothy, and disgusting, and I choked it down, sip by painful sip. It was, to date, my greatest performance. The car ride home was long and warm, and every coffee-flavored burp brought me dangerously close to losing it, until eventually, I leaned my head out the window and vomited dark brown ale down the side of his car and into the open window slot.
From then on, that car smelled like puke every time you opened the window. That was officially the last time I pretended to like something for a boy.
Andy asked me to marry him when we were twenty-three years old, in the dark . . . in a cemetery. I didn’t even know you were allowed inside cemeteries after dark, but apparently you can make arrangements for such a thing with the creepy guy who digs the graves.
At the time of our engagement, I was working as a wedding planner for a prestigious local golf club. It was a high-pressure job with horrible hours and emotional brides that had the capability to treat you very badly in the name of stress and anxiety. I didn’t blame them, weddings can be terrible. They cost a lot of money, they take a long time to plan, and without fail, they almost always result in family drama or loss of friendships. I planned the nuptials of beautiful women with unlimited budgets, and I can assure you that under the best financial and relationship circumstances, weddings turn people into awful flaming garbage monsters.
There was no scenario in which getting married wasn’t going to be horrible. It was for this reason that I begged Andy to elope. He said no.
I wasn’t always a jaded, grumpy wedding hater. Once my mother backed away from working as a buyer for my grandmother’s bridal salon, she took over doing the books and inventory in a small office above the showroom. On Fridays after school, I would sit at the alteration tables upstairs and listen to the old Greek women laugh and gossip as they sewed intricate beading to white silk and lace. They paused every few minutes, assessing the work I’d been doing stitching spare buttons onto scrap pieces of elastic, and cooed my name approvingly into three thick syllables.
“That looks good, Breet-tan-neee.”
I loved nothing more than tiptoeing through the fitting areas, sneaking glimpses of gushing brides being fawned over by their eager mothers and best friends. They’d catch their reflection in the mirror and sigh, and you just knew it was the very first moment they felt like a bride.
After the shop closed for the night, I put on long lace veils and marched up and down the staircase through the center of the showroom, smiling appreciatively at the well-dressed mannequins who lined my procession, finally stopping at the top of the steps and turning to meet my groom, who, for the majority of fifth grade, was Bill Murray from Ghostbusters. That’s right, Mom, I was going to marry a doctor.
Eventually, my grandmother got cancer and was forced to sell the shop. It was heartbreaking. Every dreamy feeling I had about getting married came from those halls, and I always assumed that one day I would be standing in that shop, wearing a wedding dress of my own.
When Andy and I told my parents we were getting married, long after the shop had closed and my grandmother passed away, my mom ran out of the room and returned carrying a big beautiful white box. There, underneath the yellowed tissue paper, was a champagne-colored silk gown with long sleeves and a beaded bow on each shoulder. It was a dress that my grandmother had saved for me from her store to wear on my wedding day.
It was also a size 8.
God bless my bridal-shop-owning grandmother, Jeanne Erausquin, but the last time I had been a size 8 was at my preschool graduation.
I spent the next week tracking down one of the few living Greek seamstresses from the shop, Angela, and desperately shoved the dress into her frail hands, pleading with her to make it fit my body as beautifully as the gowns she’d sewn in the past.
She wore all black, having lost her husband a few months prior, and tearfully shook her head no when I invited her to the wedding. She was still mourning her beloved Peter, and wasn’t attending any social events for the rest of the year.
She stood well below my shoulders as she buzzed around me taking my measurements and scratching numbers onto a small scrap of paper.
She then laid the yellowed gown down across her cleared kitchen table, turning the skirt inside out and pulling at the seams of the bodice, and after I watched her work for about ten minutes, she gently folded the dress back into the box, pressed it into my hands, and shook her head.
“No,” she announced.
“But what if we—”
“No.” She cut me off. “You are too big.”
She smiled warmly and waved from the porch as I walked out of her house, opened the trunk of my car, and shoved the package in with the nonchalance that a dress with nothing more than sentimental associations deserved.
For the wedding that I didn’t want, to the man I desperately loved but still wasn’t sure I was supposed to get, I realized I would have to endure the unthinkable. I would have to go wedding-dress shopping.
Even though I understood bridal sizing was the work of the devil and most shops offered a very limited inventory of plus-size gowns, I was still totally blindsided by how dehumanizing and difficult the process actually was.
I’d arrived at my appointment with my mother and maid of honor, wearing every single piece of shape wear I owned. It was like a torture expert had forced three hundred rubber bands around a watermelon.
The bridal shop in question had none of the personal magic of my grandmother’s, and instead was just rows and rows of small stalls that opened up to a large shared mirror. It was like a slaughterhouse, but with tulle. My attendant, Michelle, wore a tight black suit with scuffed-up black heels; she had black drawn-on eyebrows and a face that looked positively exhausted at our 11 A.M. arrival. She told me I could select up to four gowns to try on, all of them the standard sample size of 8 or 10, and to let her know when I’d found something I liked. And then she disappeared into a back room, to silent-scream, I guess.
This was supposed to be a major life event with all the quirky romance and humor of a Nora Ephron movie. I was a bride searching for my wedding gown; where was the champagne, girl talk, and upbeat female-themed ukulele music?
The reality is that there is nothing at all rom-com about waddling out of a dressing room as a size 18 woman with a size 10 dress chip-clipped to the front of your body like a paper doll.
The thinner women around me burst out of their rooms like Disney princesses, spinning around and beaming at their smiling entourage of supporters. When I stood in front of the three-way mirror, it was like I had a tiny dress floating on the front of my body, and the back was just a sea of nude-colored Spanx and back fat. There was no spinning or twirling, just my mom and Michelle, biting the insides of their cheeks and turning their heads curiously to the side in consideration.
“Imagine this dress coming down the aisle,” I explained, “but with my actual human body inside it.”
I fell in love with a champagne lace ball gown reminiscent of Grace Kelly, and I had to order it ten sizes larger than the sample, a task to be completed, might I add, without my ever actually trying it on. I don’t even decide on ice cream at Cold Stone without trying at least five different samples, but here I was, spending over a th
ousand dollars on a dress that I had never been inside of.
Seven months is a long time to wait for that “Oh my God, I’m really a bride” moment. But that is how long it took for the dress to arrive from the designer, and when I finally put it on and it fit—even a little loosely moreover— it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Even Michelle wiped sweat from her forehead in relief, taking one of her eyebrows right off with it, and joined me in the absolute excitement of being just another normal, blissfully happy bride in a dress.
All brides deserve this moment, and yet there are very few things in life as defeating as wedding-dress shopping for someone over size 14. Maybe joining an adult dodgeball league? That was unexpectedly violent. But dress shopping definitely ranks right up there with it.
I am officially the last person my friends call to tell me they are engaged, not because they don’t like me, but because I’ve been known to scream things like “don’t do it, weddings are stupid!”
I remember waking up the morning after Andy and my wedding extravaganza and realizing just how much money we’d spent the night before, and how little we had to show for it. I mean, yes, we had a marriage, but that part cost only a hundred dollars. Everything else we’d paid tens of thousands for was now only tangible in photos; the Rat Pack impersonators, the Chinese takeout buffet, the dark red rose centerpieces . . . all of it consumed and gone by morning.
I’ve never asked Andy if he regrets having had a big wedding, though he’s the one who’d pressed for it. Andy’s brother, Jason, is nine years older than he is, making Andy the fifteen-year-old best man at his wedding in 1996. Since then, he’d always been desperate to replicate the same type of lavish affair. In his mind, by doing so he’d make his parents proud. I’ve long suspected some Brady Bunch–level jealousy there, but Andy insists that there is none.
Sure, Jan.
The compromise to this two-hundred-guest blowout at home in Ohio, Andy promised me that the next year we would fly to Vegas with some of our best friends and renew our vows in front of Elvis. Which was my version of a dream wedding.
The problem with this plan was that it never happened, because Andy kept knocking me up. For five years I was either pregnant, breastfeeding, or nursing a fresh set of episiotomy stiches, keeping me from the wedding I had been promised. I mean, I guess I could have gone between babies, but who wants to go to Vegas to get hitched while their nipples are leaking?
Then, six years ago, seven years after our first wedding, Andy and I were sitting in LaGuardia Airport at 4 A.M. waiting for a Dunkin’ Donuts to open. I’d flown in to New York to host a women’s event with Gavin DeGraw, and Andy tagged along for company.
It’d been a pretty grueling turnaround, with a late-night concert and then an early-morning flight, but when you have three small kids, you almost never turn down the chance to sleep on clean white sheets or to have sex in a bed without the fear of someone banging on your door.
As I sat across from a coffee machine, mentally willing the darkened kiosk to open, Andy turned to me and kissed me, and before I could realize what was happening, he knelt on the floor in front of a rabbi and the guy running the vacuum in the gate area next to us, and he asked me to marry him, again.
This time around, the wedding happened on my terms. I booked a campy boutique hotel in Las Vegas that streamed complimentary eighties porn in every room, which is actually my favorite kind of pornography. It’s sexy seeing normal people with overbites and bushes of hair all over their bodies, instead of the barely legal robot porn you can watch on the Internet these days.
I invited all my most fun friends, planned burlesque bachelorette parties for the girls, and booked gambling and golfing for Andy and his boys.
And when it came to the dress, I threw every fat-girl fashion rule out the window and ordered a white tulle vintage Marilyn Monroe gown cut clear down to my belly button, which, after three kids, sits far lower than it would have for my first trip down the aisle. There were no dressing room indignities. There was no waiting seven months, no princess fantasy bullshit. I wore what made me feel like the hot, sexy wife I was, for the man who I knew was waiting for me at the end of the aisle and who I knew was going to be thrilled to take that dress off me at the end of that super-fun night.
Andy and I were married under the neon Vegas lights by a hairy-chested Elvis in a white bejeweled jumpsuit, promising not be a hound dog and to love each other tender, until death do us part.
It’s so easy to forget, in the tsunami that is planning, that a wedding is inherently only supposed to be about the two of you. It’s about marrying someone you love, with even more people you love around you, showing them just how awesome it is when two of their favorite people join together.
And that can look however you want it to look, at whatever dress size you are, with whomever you choose to love. You are not stuck in a rom-com as a third-wheel sidekick to anyone else’s happy ending (read, Julia Roberts’s fat friend). Every part of your story is the important part; from the engagement, to dress, to the vows. There is a lid for every pot, a match for every sock. Even chubby girls get the guy. The hot one, too.
I can’t talk about weddings without bringing up the dreaded issue of bridesmaiding and bridesmaid dresses. Especially since I can now be all Yoda and reflective about this, as most of my friends are past the wedding stage of their lives and have moved on to babies or divorce parties—two stages I find to be infinitely easier to shop for. Bibs or vibrators, it’s so simple.
A few pounds of flesh are always demanded anytime you accept the honor of being a bridesmaid. You agree to help the bride with the planning, to help throw the shower and tag along for any prewedding appointments where your support is needed, and lastly, you agree to walk down the aisle and wear the dress.
Every time I’ve been asked, I always frantically scream “yes!” as being chosen and important is exciting. Who’s special? I’m special. Sorry, lady handing out programs, you didn’t make the cut.
And then that enthusiasm starts to wane as soon as my bride-to-be friend calls and she only wants to talk about how her future mother-in-law wants to wear white, and the caterer didn’t have the right shape of chicken, or about how stressful her life is, and I realize that I’ve signed up to be an indentured servant to a temporarily narcissistic bride zombie who only reaches out to me when she needs something and all the other bridesmaids have started screening her calls. I have to listen to all of this, mind you, while also agreeing to buy and wear the dress.
A dress I have very little input in selecting and purchasing at a price point I cannot control. Let me just say this: I love my friends very much and have been honored to stand beside them in their amazing weddings. But let me also say this: I have never worn a bridesmaid dress I felt beautiful in. I’ve never worn a bridesmaid dress I felt confident in. And I’ve never worn a bridesmaid dress twice. That whole “you can wear it again” thing.
Totally.
Made.
Up.
Now, I am not above criticism myself here. The dresses for my wedding were strapless and cost over $150, and I rationalized all that away by reminding my bridesmaids that they were black vintage-cut gowns they could totally get a lot of wear out of in the future.
But as brides, they fail, I think, to understand one thing. Bridesmaids are people standing up beside you; we are not props, eye candy, or Pinterest projects. We are your foundation for this next big step in your life. We are the people you are going to call to catch up with when you get back from your honeymoon, and celebrate with when you buy a new house, or decide to become parents, or get that amazing new job. We are your people. Show us the respect we deserve, and let us feel confident and comfortable supporting you on your biggest day.
Also, I mean, we’re going to be the ones holding your dress for you every time you have to pee. Be nice to us. As such, I thought I’d share some rules. Feel free to make copies and pass them along to your newly engaged friends.
7 Rules for N
ot Being an
Asshole to the Fat Bridesmaid
1. Do not ask her to lose weight for your wedding. If she wants to on her own accord, fine, I guess. But that is not a logical demand you get to make of another human. You are her friend and the bride, not the casting director for the movie Black Swan.
2. Just decide on a color and let the girls pick out their own dresses. This is totally a fun trend right now, and it’s a great way to make sure that every girl is wearing a dress she loves.
3. If you don’t want to let each girl pick out her own dress, then let the biggest person in your bridal party have the biggest input. It is not fun to find out, in front of everyone at the bridal salon, that the dress the smaller girls picked out does not come in a size big enough for the largest girl.
4. Do not put her in a different dress from the rest of the bridal party. This does not feel special, it feels like an afterthought, an accommodation, or that we’re too fat for the normal dresses, which we are, and you don’t need to highlight this for the entire guest list.
5. Consider the alterations. I have no doubt your friend is willing and excited to buy in to your big day, but try to remember that oftentimes it will be at a larger expense than smaller members of your party. Plus-size dresses not only sometimes cost more, they are also pricier to alter, and might require super-expensive undergarments.
6. Do not automatically make her walk with the only fat groomsman. Size doesn’t bond people the way an obsession with Game of Thrones does.
7. And lastly, please don’t do any of those group pictures where everyone has to jump in the air at the same time. It’s incredibly unflattering to 98 percent of the population, the exception being small children or dogs catching Frisbees.
CHAPTER 7
Brittany with the Good Hair
“Is that your natural hair color?”
I’d like to take a moment to go over some rules I have regarding hair, specifically, when it is and isn’t appropriate to ask someone if they dye theirs.
The Clothes Make the Girl (Look Fat)? Page 8