sad

So the wedding was amazing. Incredible. So full of love, just...amazing.

But then I had to do something that made me sad. Even as I was doing it, it made me sad. And it made J sad, which made me sadder.

I looked at the first photos of the wedding, just a couple of days later. My first thought was: "wow, those flowers are great." My second thought, almost concurrent with the first was: "I'm not thin enough". I hated myself for thinking it. But I couldn't stop. I'd wanted to look thin, willowy. I'd wanted to look like someone J could pick up and spin around. I'd wanted to look like this:

(picture of the Sarah Seven dress I originally fell in love with, from here)

It's not like I didn't know what size I was before the wedding. But I'd just thought: "There's nothing I can do about this. Push it out of your mind." And I did.

I said this to J and he was upset. He said I was the most beautiful woman in the world, and that day, he thought I looked just incredible. And he said to stop saying otherwise, because it was upsetting for him to hear it.

But it's like a scab. A horrible suppurating scab that you can't stop picking at.

Last night, I went to slimming club. I got weighed, and I hadn't gained too much on honeymoon. But I did a recap of how much I'd lost before the wedding.

In the past year, from my current weight with honeymoon gain, I've lost 6lbs. This year, after gaining 7lbs at Christmas, I lost a stone (half of it the 7lbs from Christmas) before I had to start maintaining in June. I lose slowly because I go out and see friends. I've always known why I lose slowly. But I tell myself - trying a bit harder, turning down a few drinks. I could have been half a stone lighter or more.

I was disappointed with myself. My BMI when we got married was 'obese'. I hated myself for not trying harder, for still having that appalling label attached to me, which upsets me so much. Four lbs lower and I'd have been merely 'overweight'.

I wanted the way I looked on my wedding day to be something I could own and feel proud of. To be something like the way I might look for the rest of my life. I still want that, if I can just stop thinking like this. You don't need to tell me that there are more important things in life than half a stone on your wedding day. I know. I get it. But I still felt like I'd let myself down.

J tells me that no one cares about my weight, I looked gorgeous and that's what people see. A happy, beautiful girl. He said I looked thin.

I hate myself for picking this scab and upsetting myself and J.

I wish I could say 'I looked amazing, I looked like me'. J says I looked like me. I say: "I don't know what I look like, or what I'm meant to look like. So how can I know?"

Has anyone ever said they felt truly gorgeous? Why can't I just own it? I hate myself for making us both sad over this when the wedding was pure happiness.

whew

Well, dear reader, it's been more than a month since my last post. In that time, I've got married, traveled to the furthest reaches of the British Isles for a honeymoon in the Outer Hebrides, and today, returned to work with an extra ring on my finger and a desperate desire to check Facebook for new photographs of the wedding every five minutes.

There will be recaps, I'm sure of it. But it's quite hard to digest everything now, or to know where to start. I just received the 'taster tape' from the videographers (oh yes, we had them in the end - an interesting story) and it made me feel nervous and gave me butterflies in a way that I never felt on the day.

So what do I tell you in this post, while I collect my thoughts? I think I can tell you that the wedding was better than I ever thought it could be. People seemed to have an amazing time. Everything went well - and the one thing that didn't initially look like going too well (a rather destroyed wedding cake) eventually turned out fine. And I wouldn't have cared either way.

Everyone arrived safe, had a ball, and got home safely. The details were ultimately, quite important - but they weren't flippantly decorative - everything had a meaning to us. Our friends were amazing, our families were amazing. The venue, the suppliers - everyone - was amazing. I'm sorry if this makes boring reading, but this is a topline view. The details are interesting, I promise.

But in order to tell you about some of the details, I'm going to have to come out of the blogging closet, as it were. The bloset. I don't see that I can do this without posting pictures of myself up here, or pictures that would identify the wedding and ourselves. So I'll be doing that. But understandably, because there are some things written about here that aren't yet fully public, I can't do it just yet. So there might be some posts about 'feelings' before there are posts about pretties. I hope you can forgive me.

Oh and an interesting one. Before the wedding, those of you who follow me on Twitter might have seen an attempt at being amusing with the hashtag #atw - or 'after the wedding', where I talked about the daft things I would no longer be doing in the days following the wedding. What I did not anticipate doing two days after the wedding, was sitting on a desolate beach on Skye, bawling my eyes out with the most intense sadness for the wedding that was over. I'd heard about the post-wedding blue. I never thought I'd get them. But in the end, the wedding got me good and proper. I've never been as in love with a day as I was then.