Lou Pops

Being a 5ft 1in size 16/18 bride with humongous 36GG boobs I always knew that I was going to struggle to find a wedding dress that flattered my figure. I didn’t want a gown that was going to make me look wider than I am tall and I certainly wasn’t interested in a strapless gown. I’d worn them before and spent most of the time with pulling them up, worrying about back fat rolls and generally being uncomfortable so knew that I wasn’t going to stand for this on my wedding day. I wanted to be comfortable, as all brides should be. After visiting a couple of bridal shops in my local area it did become apparent that the only option for a ‘bigger’ lady was the dreaded strapless gown I wanted to avoid. I also have issues with the tops of my arms and have a huge tattoo on my back that I love but I felt like it should be covered for my wedding day, I wished to be a demure bride (until I opened my mouth that is!) The solution for this seemed to be teaming a strapless dress with a separate bolero style cover up which I didn’t care for much as, at the end of the day, it was still going to be an uncomfortable strapless dress.

After a horrid ‘Pretty Woman’ experience in one of “Yorkshire’s most respected bridal retailers” where “the team are very experienced and offer and exceptional shopping experience” (according to their website that is – I beg to differ) where I was looked down upon after asking to see the gorgeous lace Elie Saab dress that I had gone in to view I vowed never to step foot in a bridal shop again. I was told to have an open mind and was given a shocking grey, yes GREY, A-line shiny cheap looking strapless dress, I wouldn’t even call it a gown, to try on which the assistants all cooed over. I vowed not to go back to any bridal shop as they clearly didn’t know what they were talking about. In my head I visioned a beautiful lace long sleeved gown with a fitted bodice and button up back (before Middleton got her dirty mits on one might I add!) but where on earth was I to find such a dress in a town that seemed to have a very backwards view on anything bridal?!

Then came Mooshki! I discovered House of Mooshki on the Love My Dress blog, emailed the lovely Vikki and travelled from East Yorkshire to County Durham that very same weekend. Within a couple of hours (that’s all it took as I was quite an easy bride to please) my design was done and dusted, most fabrics picked and I left a very happy bride to be with the reassurance that as a curvier bride I COULD wear what I wanted on my wedding day and not have to go with a dress I didn’t like just because some snotty sales assistant said that’s what ladies of my size SHOULD wear.

For any bride in this predicament I would fully recommend seeing a dressmaker as opposed to looking in the shops. Dressmakers are experts at what they do and they know how to flaunt your curves and make you look fabulous! One of my main worries was not being able to wear a bra with any wedding dress that I picked but I was reassured by Vikki at Mooshki numerous times that with my dress I wouldn’t need one. I was still quite dubious about this and for my final fitting I spent a fortune on a selection of strapless bras but it turned out that Vikki was right, I didn’t need one and my boobs looked fab! My waist was pulled in inside the beautiful structured bodice and the tulle skirt skimmed my (big) bum giving me the perfect hourglass figure – I felt a million dollars. Gok Wan would’ve been proud!

Moral of my Mooshki story – from one curvy bride to another, please don’t feel the need to cover up or to hide your body on your wedding day. I wanted to lose 4 stone for my wedding as I was worried about how I would look in my dress but I actually ended up putting weight on in the run up to my big day. This didn’t matter as Vikki and I had designed a dress that fit my body perfectly. If you have the beautiful dress that YOU want and it fits your figure and compliments you where it should, you will look amazing and feel like the princess that you should on the most important day of yours and your husband to be’s lives!