Wedding Dresses, Bridesmaid Dresses, Flower Girl, Gowns, Tuxedos, MN

How many times have we all been tempted to rip out the pictures of ultrathin models from fashion magazine? Yet more than half the women in America wear plus-size clothes size 14 or larger. Still, it took a family crisis for us to realize how to love the bodies we were born with.

The thing is, our family’s physical heritage tends to run large. We’re descended from sturdy peasant farmer stock – tall men with broad shoulders and tall women with big hips. This is great when you’re plowing fields and having lots of babies to be farm hands, but it can be a disadvantage in our time of highly processed foods and much less physical labor.

It all started when our cousin and her sweetheart decided to get married. Since we live close to one another, she asked almost everyone to be in her wedding party (and we’re big in numbers as well as in body size). This joyous prospect started to sour, though, when our cousin became a bridezilla over the issue of how to lose fat to get ready for the wedding.

Our family fights over losing weight finally reached such a point that Celia and her fiance Frank (who’s no beanpole guy, either) thought they might have to elope because nobody was talking to anybody else. That’s when Celia’s mother, Aunt Marge, got into the act in a great way.

Marge talked to one of her friends who runs a bridal shop in a large Midwestern city. Marge’s friend told her that she sees this problem all the time, and that she knew just how to fix it. The bridal shop owner loaned Marge one of her dress catalogs that showed how beautiful and becoming a plus size wedding dress could be. She also sent along some information on how to determine body types and what styles of gowns look best on which body types.

Then Marge got all the ladies in the family together on the pretext of a gathering to look at party jewelry. We looked at jewelry all right, but she also showed everyone her friend’s catalog with those stunning bridal gowns in them. Celia couldn’t believe her eyes, and neither could the rest of us.

Marge, who is a fabulous seamstress anyway, got out her tape measure and measured everyone of us right then and there! We each wrote down our measurements and decided on what body shape we each have. We haven’t had so much girlie fun in ages!

The end result was that we all got to choose a gorgeous dress for Celia and Frank’s wedding. Celia herself was one of the most beautiful brides any of us have ever seen, wearing a gown that fitted her perfectly and made her look like a queen. And it all came about because we decided to love ourselves and our bodies for the big, beautiful, fabulous women we are!