No, you don’t have to lose weight for your wedding. But I understand why you’d feel pressure to.
I felt pressure to be smaller for my wedding. I felt pressure to try to cut out foods or work out excessively to achieve a body size that I haven’t been in years.
And no one overtly walked up to me and said “Hey, you should try to lose weight for your wedding!” But they didn’t have to. Look at any wedding magazine, popular wedding social media profile, watch any wedding TV show or simply talk to another engaged woman. She feels it.
I had more than one person express a comment about my weight during this process.
The point of this post isn’t to discourage you with all the negative talk that can happen when you get engaged. The truth is — this pressure to be thin and small is real whether you’re getting married or not. We know this.
I had to decide from the beginning if I was going to give into our culture’s pressure to be thin and perfect on your wedding day. I had to ask myself:
If I try to change my body for one day of my entire life, will I be acting in line with my values?
For me, the answer was no. I wanted to be preparing for the day that Josh and I would become one before God. And I couldn’t honestly do that if I was only concerned with my appearance. I wanted to prepare for the rest of our lives together — not just one day. I decided instead to continue eating foods that were enjoyable and nourishing, moving in a way that felt good and praying that God would prepare my heart for our marriage. And I couldn’t have done that if my head was full of food and body concerns.