Is this deliberate or am I just para? (long sorry)

[whimsicalmess]

bit of backstory, I am big and ugly I always have been have been with on person(but am getting married, wee!) but just no confidence whatsoever, no self esteem.

My DM was in her day was a good figure, pleasant looking like pretty but not beautiful if you get me? But my god she bangs on about it all the time I think is this her way of coping with agieng, but she always comments on the way I look/size all the time, she will say you're a beautiful girl but I feel its disingenuous and feel like there's a but coming.
An in comments conversations about looks its always quickly about her etc

I feel like either, shes finding it hard to deal with the fact she produced a very ugly daughter and shes lashing out or god knows...what goes through that mind lol. Shes on about going to try on dresses soon with my MOH which tbh I'm absolutely dreading tbh, if something doesn't fit right she won't be able to help herself and I'll be shaken to the point I won't want to get married at all.

I wonder if this is just me , and I need to man up but how?

i know how ridiculous this sounds but I'm having a wibble. need some stern talking too.

Weddings are a really stressful time. I have always been quite confident but a bit 'boyish' i.e. a real jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. The thought of wearing a wedding dress brought me to tears as I thought people would point and laugh!

Take a good friend with you and when she tells you a dress suits you and you look lovely - believe her!!!

You will find on your wedding day that there will be a lot of goodwill and love from the people around you. Don't stress about the details. The point of the day is to get married to the man you are going to spend the rest of your life with and who would probably think you look stunning in pyjamas and a hairnet.... don't opt for pyjamas and a hairnet.

I've also been the friend who has taken the bride-to-be shopping for the dress and heard the sobs from the changing room. She looked beautiful in a number of dresses but couldn't see it, and wouldn't believe it.

Don't be the same. Take someone you trust and believe them when they say you look stunning.

BTW, many dresses are corseted, which gives fantastic curves with girls with a bit extra

Have NC's as this post and my others (not that there are lots) could combine to "out" me, apols.

My DM was "beautiful" - it was the first and often the only thing I would hear about her when I was little. Unfortunately, I was - at least as far as my DF thought and often said - hideous. Neither of them ever, once, reassured me on this point - not during an hour-long crying fit I had about it at 6 (that they found hilarious), to another one I let them witness at 15. I can't count the number of times I cried about it when they weren't around to see or hear it.

It took a lot of therapy and a very scary illness in my late 30s for me to stop thinking, every day, that I had been saddled with a horrible, hate-inspiring face. Having a boyfriend/fiance (congratulations! He is very lucky) doesn't, IMO, fix this by itself. I went through decades thinking I that some boys/men were just such noble souls they could see past the monsterism. When I said that out loud to my therapist I realised this was probably not the most likely explanation, and I'm saying it here so you can see how demented my thinking was*. Of course, in real life they didn't see past it, because they didn't see it. It was just poisonous rubbish my DPs didn't think anything of dumping on me. (DF also very "handsome" - neither of them had the insight to imagine how destroying sending the opposite message to a child could be.)

Please, please, find a way to challenge your internal voice on this issue. It's just wrong. No-one else thinks this and nor should you. It might take a while but the sooner you believe that people who matter - and others, who knows? - like what they see, the sooner you will too.

For your wedding dress, all of the advice to do a pre-shop with a friend and bring the assistants in on it seems spot on to me. Have a wonderful day.

*I'm old enough to have been around when you could get one-year "British Visitor's passports" and the first time I went to the Post Office for one, I was convinced the man behind the counter would write "ugly" under Distinguishing Features. There's a photo on them, ffs - even if it was true it would hardly be necessary for him to point it out in writing. Please don't put up with thinking anything as daft as I did for as long as I did.

What a good post cross parsley a part of me listened to that, and your parents are awful BTW what horrors.

I know that this is a bit off topic but there are quite a lot of fantastic body positive and weight acceptance networks out there if you'd be interested in something like that.
Finding them helped a lot with my self esteem. They challenge narrow ideas of beauty and provide support to people struggling with body image.
Just a though but search for them on google if you're interested!
Congrats on the wedding!
I'd take someone else dress shopping or just go yourself, its supposed to be exciting, not stressful!

You are welcome whim - sorry it was so long, I promise I cut out a lot. Thanks re DPs - was so relieved the day I told my therapist "they were both beautiful" and he said, very deliberately, "on the outside".

I am certain now that any time you feel extreme or absolute about what you look like, it's not fact. Either way. Remember the girl from Porpoise Spit screaming "I'm beautiful!" at the end of Muriel's Wedding? Not that different really - she'd been messed up too.

One of the best things I ever read was an article that started 'Imagine selling your home. A viewing is arranged, and the person says 'The kitchen is lovely and modern' and you reply 'But it's a nightmare to keep clean'. You go to the dining room.'Oh', they say 'What a lovely bright room, with a gorgeous view onto your stunning garden' and again you reply 'But the big window means it's always cold, and the garden is a time drain - you'll spend hours weeding and grass cutting'.

Your home is the biggest purchase you'll make, and you'd NEVER try selling it like that.

You are priceless - worth more than any pile of bricks and mortar. Please don't sell yourself short. Look in the mirror and see your 'beautiful kitchen' and the 'stunning view'. No one has a right to criticise how another looks.

Foslady - that was lovely.

What everyone else said. It sounds like you need some help to cope with your mother; I don't think you'll change her.

For your first wedding dress shop, followed up with returning with your mother, I would try to find somewhere with sensible sample sizes. Ring up and ask what they have. Even size 10 dresses will give you an idea, but I'd want to start off trying something in the right kind of size. Some shops specialise in bigger dresses so might be worth researching.

you know what. i would go dress shopping with som eone else... id do it

wedding shopping should be filled with excitment and fun. you know what your mother is like, so please find a good friend to go with you? what about your bridmaid (s)

Yes, stop calling yourself ugly. Some of the sexiest people I know do not fit conventional ideas of beauty. I have really become more and more aware of this as I have got older.

It is a terrible shame that your mum's own insecurity, and lack of awareness of it has caused her to project it on to her daughter.
She has fucked up right royally in that respect. My own view is that our prime responsibility as parents is to recognise our own emotional shit and not load it onto our children.

Crossparsley

Your post made me so sad. bloody good on you!

Whim, please go dress shopping with someone else. Please. This is a time where you should feel beautiful.

I'm tremendously lucky in that I am not particularly attractive, but for some reason my mum and sister both treat me as if I am, so when I tried on the dress I got married in and I knew it was the one, I was comfortable walking out of the cubicle to show them - cue much clutching of clasped hands to bosoms and teary eyes, which then made ME cry, and feel like a princess. It was a beautiful day.

This is the experience you deserve. I feel like the back end of a bus the rest of the time but it doesn't get me down so much anymore. And I felt beautiful on my dress-finding day and on my wedding day. My DH told me I looked like a winter princess. I still go to mush thinking about it.

You deserve this. You deserve a lovely day. You deserve to enjoy preparing for your wedding. Give yourself this. Go dress shopping with someone who won't hurt you, mock you, make you feel low, or potentially influence you to buy something you don't even like, because, say, 'it's the only thing you can get away with'. If you do one nice thing for yourself this year, do this.

I think I will have to purrpurr I may go with my MOH.

Hi went dress shopping last week, I did go with my DM, I had a little word beforehand.
It was okay, but she still had the tendency to lecture, go on and on she was sat there like 'well I know you want to loosr a bit more weight' which at home not so bad in full volume to the shop assistant
And was talking about 'I wanted a mermaid dress for my wedding and would have looked excellent on me back then" like repeatedly to me, shop assistant etc just felt a bit :/.
All she talked about really was weight,weight loss what plans do I have in place etc which I dunno I wouldn't mind if it wasn't all the time.I think its a stick to beat me with and make herself feel better at the same time. Its sad that's all I am to my mother. Oh well such is life, wasn't totally horrendous though.