My Big Fat Low-Fat Wedding (34 page)

“Are you all right in there?” Lara’s voice seeps through the closed door.

“I’m fine!” I shout, feeling like a true winner. The control pants are on and they fit snugly up to my waist. “I’m putting on the top bit now!”

“Hooray!” Lara yells and I hear her clap her hands a few times. “When you have that on there’s only four more control pieces that I can help you with.”

Did I just hear her correctly? Did she honestly say four other pieces of this dreadful underwear? What could those pieces be? The dress I’m wearing is strapless, surely all these control bits will show and make me look lopsided and squished up.

Whatever. I trust Lara. She knows what’s best. After all, she has been running a bridal shop for years and years. Who am I to question an authority on underwear such as her fine seamstress self?

I do have one question though. Right now I have no idea which way up this control top goes on. It’s a sort of tube top thingy, so I figure I can just shove it over my head and stick my arms through.

That’s exactly what I do and it’s probably exactly why I get stuck. “Oh fiddle sticks.” I mumble and peer at myself in the free standing full-length mirror. These mirrors are everywhere around the bridal suit. The owners know that a bride needs to look at herself wherever she might be on the day of her wedding.

I look like I’ve become half caught in a trap. My lower half is sucked in by the control shorts, but my upper body is a sight to behold. The control top has become stuck just below my armpits like a suffocating rubberband. My arms are slightly forced outwards and my breasts are being squashed down. I look like a wonky seal who’s become trapped in plastic bag cast offs and stranded like a beached whale!

Getting un-stuck from the control top is a nightmare process. Once I figure it out and get the thing on properly I’m so proud of myself I could scream.

I exit the loo not caring at all what Lara thinks of me in this flesh coloured underwear. She helps me into the final control pieces without complaint from me.

Then comes the dress. As I step into it Lara lets Nicola back into the room.

“Oh I love this bit!” My cousin is enthusiastic in her renewed picture taking. “I always cry the most when the dress is first put on at every wedding I do!”

I don’t know why she’s so emotional. I for one am quite grateful for the emotional divide that’s lingering in my heart from yesterday. I can barely breathe wearing control underwear and I’m hoping they don’t spoil the entire wedding ceremony for me.

Lara sashes me up at the back. We’d gone with a proper tie-up corset dress in the end, and Lara did apologise for making me try on all those cheap zip-up gowns.

After she’s finished tying me up so tightly that I almost can’t breathe, I’m allowed to turn and look into the mirror.

Renewed tears spring into my eyes, but they are not tears of joy at seeing myself look so beautiful. They are tears of sadness and contempt at the woman who stares back at me in the reflection.

Who is that girl who’s trying to look thin? Her waist is cinched in so tight that her massive boobs stick out ready to poke out eyes everywhere. Her hips are ridiculously large now that her middle is bound so tightly.

When I walk out the door of the bridal suit I’m choking, but not on my tears, I’m being strangled by my stupid boobs that are shoved up almost into my neck.

“Slow down, Em. You can’t walk down the aisle that fast!” Lara calls out to me. I’m not hearing her though because I’ve picked up my skirts.

I have no intention of walking down any aisle that will lead to the man I love seeing me like this. Instead of heading through the ceremony doors I walk straight out of the wedding venue entirely.

Our wedding has been called off and this time it’s been cancelled by me.

Chapter 22

If I thought I’d spent all my tears crying yesterday, I’d be wrong. I’m perfectly capable of crying my eyes out today as well.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not even sure why I’m crying. Is it because I look like a weirdo in my wedding dress? Is it because I still can’t believe my friends abandoned me yesterday, only to confuse me by coming through for me in the end?

I think my tears are a culmination of everything.

I’ve been so utterly obsessed with losing weight for the wedding. Today’s wedding that I’m supposed to be at right now. I just can’t bear it though. The thought of walking down that stupid aisle with everyone looking at my oddly shaped body. And me staring back at them not knowing why they suddenly decided to show up after cancelling.

“Aw, dearie. Did you get left at the alter?” An old lady has asked me this. I don’t blame her for being curious. After all, I am sitting on a bus wearing a wedding gown.

I’m officially a bride, unlike the last time I’d paraded around in public wearing a wedding dress that I’d been sewn into.

“No, I’m just…” I can’t bring myself to answer the old woman through my tears.

“He’s not worth it, love!” Some bloke bellows from the back of the bus. “Marry me instead!”

Sod it.

I bunch up my skirts into my fists while holding onto a small piece of tissue for my tears and runny nose. Hopping off the bus at Barnards Green, I decide to walk the remaining half mile home.

It’s not easy walking quickly along the pavement wearing such a big gown. I’ve had to bunch up the train of the dress in one arm while keeping the tissue smashed to my face due to all of its leaking waterworks.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Goes a car horn.

I look up in time to see my fiancé pull up to the curb driving his mate Vince’s brand new Range Rover in pristine white. “Need a lift?” Callum says, rolling down the window.

I bow my head. “You’re not supposed to see me in my dress.”

“What? Not ever?”

“Oh you know what I mean.” So many tears gush from my eyes at this point I fear dehydration on the spot.

“Get in the car, honey.”

“It’s not a car, it’s a four by four and I don’t want to go to our wedding right now.”

“You don’t have to marry me right now. I’m taking you home, silly.”

His words gnaw at heart. “I do want to marry you! I just don’t want to marry you in this dress… or at that place… or with all those idiots—”

Callum hops out of the vehicle and helps me into the passenger seat. He drives us both home and also helps me shift the dress I’m wearing in through the front door. Somehow I manage to find a decent way of sitting on the sofa while Callum makes us both some tea.

“Aaahhh,” he breaths out a sigh of relaxation as he sips his brew moments later. “That hits the spot nicely.” He sets his cuppa down onto the coffee table.

“So how was your stag do?” I glance up at my dapper groom after setting down my own cup of tea. He’s wearing the dark grey tuxedo we’d picked out for him. He looks absolutely amazing. He looks ready to marry and here I sit asking him about nonsense. “Sorry, I meant to say you look amazing.”

“So do you, babe. You look like a girl I could marry.”

“Funny.” I smile stupidly. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

“So why don’t we go back to the venue then?” Callum reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out his phone. “I’ll call ahead and make sure all the idiots leave. We’ll get married on our own, honey.”

He’d do that for me?

Scooting closer to my dear, darling man, I press his phone down into his lap. “One or two idiots will have to be there as witnesses. And someone has to get us to both say I do.”

“I think the new phrase is I will.” He kisses my wet cheek.

“Will you though? After I left you at the alter?”

Callum smiles. “I’d let you leave me at the alter one hundred times if it meant you’d eventually marry me just once in the end.”

“Oh, Cal.” I sink into his arms and we both become smothered in the folds of my dress. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I look so stupid in this dress. I don’t know why everyone treated me like crap yesterday.”

My fiancé sits up looking surprised. “You most certainly do not look stupid in that dress. You couldn’t look anything less than gorgeous in anything you wear. Not to mention how beautiful you are stark naked.”

Before I know what’s happening he leans in and bites my neck like a wannabe vampire.

“Oh stop it.” I giggle and let him continue his nibbling for a little while longer. “Okay, stop it soon.”

He pulls way eventually, but I can tell he’s a bit reluctant to do so. If it were up to me I’d rip off this blasted dress and give him a bit of nibbling in return for the rest of the day.

“I guess all the wedding preparations finally got to me.” I try to lower my head, but Callum tips my chin up with a finger. “I’m so sorry, Cal. I tried to take all of your mum’s aerobics classes. I tried to keep eating right. I’ve been absolutely manic about my body shape and now that today has finally arrived I don’t even like how my stupid body looks in this thing!”

I punch the puffy fabric of my dress with both fists. The soaked tissue flies out of my hand so I grab a clean one from the box on the coffee table.

“I love the way you look in your dress.” Callum brushes tears off my cheek, so I don’t even need to use any more tissue. “But if you don’t like it then why not take it off?”

“Why? So we can have a quickie?”

“What…? No… well…”

Dropping my tissue, I palm his cheeks. “I think you mean yes.”

“I think you might be right.”

***

It takes about fifteen minutes to get me out of my wedding gown and all of the control underwear pieces. This in no way lowers our raging libidos and loved up hearts. I want this man and I want him more than ever by the time we’re both fully naked and lying together on the sofa.

He makes quick passionate love to me and when we’re finished I’m left gasping and laughing.

“What’s funny?” Callum strokes my hair.

“Maybe you should have just fucked me thin.”

“Come again?”

“Yes please!” I wrap my arms around his shoulders and pull him close.

“You know what I mean.” Callum growls into my neck. “Fuck you thin, babe?”

“Yeah!” I sit up and my fiancé tumbles off of me and to the side. “Sex is great exercise, plus it’s a great de-stressor. Although, I suppose I wouldn’t want your mum to feel left out.”

“Oh what?” Callum practically screams into my ear in outrage.

“Ha!” I laugh out loud. “I didn’t mean that, you silly sausage. I just meant I wouldn’t need to take your mum’s aerobics classes if I got enough sexercise with you all the time.”

I expect my fiancé to join me in my laughter, but instead he gets up off the sofa completely. “I’ll be right back, honey. There’s something I want to show you.”

Too curious to wait, I join Callum upstairs. After putting on my dressing gown I notice my fiancé is wearing his bathrobe as he enters the bedroom. Only his dressing gown, and his hair for that matter, are covered in dust.

“Did you just crawl through the attic?”

“I did indeed, and I found this.” He’s holding a musty old photo album.

Together, we sit on the edge of the bed. “I thought your mum said all your old photos were lost in the house fire.”

Callum shakes his head. His facial features look worried. “There never was a house fire after dad died. That was all in Mum’s head.”

Oh my. This is interesting news.

“She threw out all our old photos and home videos, but I was able to save this one.” Callum opens the book.

“Is that you?” I smile grandly. “You were a fucking adorable child!”

“Thanks, babe. That means a lot to me considering I was also blatantly a very fucking fat child.”

“Don’t say it like that. You were delightfully chubby.”

“Now do you see how it makes me feel when you call yourself fat?”

I look up at my darling fiancé. His eyes are brimming with tears.

“Dad was overweight too. He drank at least ten pints a day and he was a smoker.”