London - The average bride spends £1 000 (about R13 000) on her wedding dress, wears it for 12 hours, then stashes it in the loft for the rest of her life.
And there it remains, a haunting reminder of the svelte young bride she once was as time and children lay waste to her figure.
But how many women would be brave enough to try on their wedding dress again? We challenged four writers to be a Bride Revisited - with surprising results.
“I'd no idea how much my cleavage had sagged”
Jill Foster, 38, married Robin, 42, in December 2009. They live in South-East London with their eight-month-old twin daughters. She says:
Oh, the agony I put myself through to get into this dress on my wedding day. If only I’d known then the surprising secret that sees me slipping into it so effortlessly today.
Robin and I had planned a winter wedding at Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire. I knew exactly what I wanted dress-wise: beautiful lace and a delicate diamante detail that would catch the candlelight.
The dress I chose was only the second I tried on. At £600, it came in well under my budget and though it was a little tight around the hips and bottom, the lady at the little shop in Leeds assured me every bride-to-be loses a few pounds before the big day.
However, the chocolate and cheese lover in me had other ideas. Over the next ten months, rather than reach my desired 12st or less, I put on weight.
To my horror, when I stepped on the scales a month before the big day, I was 13st - way too much for my 5ft 8in frame.
Drastic measures were needed. I cut out alcohol, chocolate, junk food and reduced my portion sizes by two-thirds. Every night saw me lunging and stretching to a Davina McCall fitness DVD. It was hell. But it worked. I managed to lose 12lb.
As I walked down the aisle on that freezing cold Christmas morning, with the sun streaming through the windows, I felt beautiful. But just three weeks and a honeymoon in South Africa later, several pounds had crept back on. I’ve never tried my wedding dress on since.
Today, it’s a different story. The dress slips over my hips without a problem. To my astonishment, there’s even a little bit of give around the middle but - less desirably - also a lot more room in my sagging cleavage.
I’m more than half a stone lighter than on my wedding day, yet I’ve been scoffing butter, cream cheese and chocolate, and I haven’t clapped eyes on Ms McCall’s DVD since.
The secret? Breast-feeding and bringing up twin babies. It’s exhausting, but, like a course of free liposuction, the weight has melted away.
It’s not a diet I can recommend to other brides, but at least when I’m carrying an extra 30lb, it’s in my arms, not on my bottom.
“Oh, how it brings back memories of my dear dad”
Clare Godwin, 40, married Sam Mountford, 38, in August 2006. They have two children and live in London. She says:
As I step into my beautiful ivory satin gown, six and a half years melt away.
Well, nearly. Holding the dress in place so the corset lining and outer zip can be done up, the fabric feels as luxurious as it always did.
But suddenly I no longer feel like a glamorous bride, but a banger sausage being squished into a chipolata’s skin.
The corset’s hooks and eyes struggle to constrain me and then, horror of horrors, the zip gets stuck.
It takes a good five minutes of brute force before an assistant manages to pull it up.
Joking aside, there’s more to why my dress no longer fits than children and approaching middle age.
Many brides lose weight to look good for their weddings, but in my case there was a more poignant reason why the pounds dropped off.
When Sam proposed in April 2006, we envisaged a bash for the following spring. But a couple of months later my dad collapsed at home. He’d been diagnosed with a brain tumour three years earlier and, following treatment, it had lain dormant. But we’d always been told it would reactivate at some point - and when it did it would be terminal.
Tests showed he’d entered that phase and when we asked the consultant about our wedding plans, he was unequivocal - have it soon.
So we arranged our big day in just five weeks.
When I tried on my dress, which was simple but sophisticated with its pleated fishtail train, I felt like a woman in control rather than the frightened little girl who had been inhabiting my body since the news about my father had hit home.
I loved the dress from the moment I saw it. Eager to help, staff at the London store where I spotted it offered to alter the sample gown because I’m tall, adding a matching shrug.
The total bill came to £1,300, but it would have been nearly twice the price - and well out of my budget - if I’d had it made to measure.
On the big day, I travelled with Daddy from the local hospice, where he was being cared for, to the church.
Struggling to hold my emotions together, much of that day is a blur. Not a man who gave easy praise, Daddy probably told me I looked “very nice” (Sam loved the dress), but I know how proud he was of me.
As I was of him. That day was a struggle for him, physically and emotionally.
He died that November - three months later. My wedding dress might have been bought in haste, and it might no longer fit me perfectly, but still, it invokes memories of a special day I will be forever grateful I was able to share with my beloved father.
“I was skinny - and life felt mine for the taking”
Shona Sibary, 41, married Keith, 45, in August 1999. The couple have four children and live in Surrey. She says:
My wedding dress has been stowed under a bed for 14 years. The thought of retrieving it is to resurrect a part of me I’m not entirely sure still has a pulse.
Photographs from the day - and it was a glorious day - show me brimming with happiness.
I have no worry lines, no flab, no puffy bags. With Keith by my side, I look as if I can take on the world. Today, I haven’t got the energy to take on a pile of laundry, let alone the world. Being reacquainted with my wedding dress is a bittersweet experience because it reminds me of a moment in time when anything was possible.
I never had any illusions about spending thousands on something expensively designer. Perhaps it was because I had given birth to my first child Florence eight months previously, but all I wanted was to look sexy and skinny for my husband.
And in this dress - an off-the-rail sample from Pronuptia costing just £150 - I achieved that.
Putting it on again is an unsettling reminder that I am now a frumpy, middle-aged mother with three more children added to the brood and another stone-and-a-half added to the scales.
I expected to have a little trouble doing up the zip, but I am horrified to discover that the dress won’t come together at all.
The lovely halterneck that once complemented my young, sculpted shoulders and upper arms now accentuates my bingo wings and makes me feel as if someone is strangling me.
Or maybe I’m just having a panic attack as it dawns on me how much my body has changed.
My wedding day was a brief moment in time when expectation exceeded reality. It would be impossible to look that good again. Even if I could do up the dress.
“Good grief! Even hands get bigger with age”
Anne Atkins married Shaun in July 1983. They have five children and live in Cambridge. She says:
My dress was the only thing I chose for my wedding. I’d handed over all the arrangements to my mother: I was barely 21 and didn’t have a clue.
I fell in love with my dress in a shop: there was chiffon floating over it like a medieval dream. It cost £375, which was scandalously expensive - in today’s money, it would be £1,800.
So, a family friend offered to make my dress as a wedding present - I sketched the shop one as best I could. We ordered 25 yards of silk to make a train long enough for King’s Chapel, Cambridge, where we got married.
I wore it once after the wedding, to a friend’s 21st birthday dance.
My daughter Serena is getting married in June and I unpacked my wedding dress to retrieve my mother’s embroidered silk veil, which I wore, to pass on to her.
I was sad to discover how discoloured the dress was, but despite the stains, I was excited at the thought of trying it on again.
Despite five children, I’ve remained the same size. It still fits perfectly, as if it was made for me only last week.
Curiously, however, I had to squeeze my hands to get them through the snug wrists. I didn’t know hands grow over time. - Daily Mail