To be annoyed that my best friend/maid of honour won't lose weight for my wedding

[scj96]

I'm expecting to get a bit hammered for this, but here goes...

I got engaged about a year and a half ago, and we set the date for April 2023. Almost a year ago, myself and my bridesmaids had a couple of trips to go dress shopping. We saw a bridesmaid dress that we all absolutely adored, but it turned out that they only did it up to a size 16. My best friend who is my maid of honour is a bigger girl so it didn't seem like this was going to work. However she said, off her own back and unprompted, that she was going to lose weight for the wedding anyway and so we should get them. I told her she didn't need to do that but she insisted it was fine so we bought them.

Fast forward a year, and she's made almost no effort to try and get the weight off. I haven't raised it with her at all and left her to it, but having just been away for a girls weekend, it was quite obvious that she's now even bigger than when we bought the dresses (and bigger than she's ever been) and doesn't seem to be moderating her eating at all

The wedding is now basically 9 months away and I'm stressing that I'm going to end up having to find (and pay for, because I've already bought the current ones) new dresses.

I probably sound like an absolute cow, but AIBU?

Nice! 🙄

She said she would lose weight. If your wedding day arrives and the bridesmaids dress doesn’t fit, she will have to forfeit her position as bridesmaid and watch. It’s not your place to replace a dress that doesn’t fit.

I just hope you have a big enough wedding cake, OP!

What is the dress like. Style and colour

is it possible to have similar made

or buy in same colour but different style

you are prob nowhere near me in kent but there is a fab shop called the fairy godmother

they do beautiful dresses in all diff styles

and then choose the colour and size up to 26 in most

Link would help @scj96

my fairy godmother

What did moh say @scj96

I see this thread was featured in the Newcastle Chronicle yesterday. They're slow on the uptake!

Ok, I’m fully aware that there will be many replies saying how unhealthy it is to loose weight in this way but please do your own research into it before having a go at me:

The only realistic way of loosing the weight in such a short amount of time is to water fast. It’s very healthy, fairly easy to do once past day 5 and has little negative side effects.
She needs two things:
A GP that or a specialist with knowledge about fasting and a therapist to resolve the issues why she is overeating. She will also have to break her fast long enough before the wedding if she wants to enjoy it.
she might also need an arrangement with her employer to have a nap at work.

At the end she must want to do this and your wedding is not a good enough reason to do it. She must want to be healthier and therefore slimmer.

Even as soon as it's posted, theirs a risk it will be in the papers,

Eugh poor woman is probably stress eating after the trauma of dress shopping g with a load of skinny minnies.

if she is the maid of honour could she wear something slightly different in a toning shade that goes with your theme. Sell the original dress. No drama. Have a chat with her, she’s probably feeling overwhelmed, judged even if she’s only judging herself. Your friendship is more important and I am sure there is a gentle path through this.

There is absolutely no need to try any fad.
The friend has approximately 30lb to lose to drop 3 dress sizes. This could comfortably be achieved (physically speaking) at a slow and steady rate of around 1lb a week between now and April, by reducing daily calorie intake by 500 a day; should the friend wish, and be able, to do so. The physical ability to lose weight is not the point at issue.

a1poshpaws · 18/06/2022 18:59
@roxyro well, you're a gem, you really are.

"her friend can’t stop troughing!" has to be one of the unkindest, most offensive posts I've seen on mumsnet, and that's not an easy position to reach.

You should get out more. Sick of bleeding hearts. It’s true so deal with it!

You’re not being unreasonable at all! She insisted on getting them, and committed to losing the weight. Being her friend, there was no reasonable doubt to not trust her word, she just hasn’t honoured it at this point. 9 months is still a good amount of time to lose weight if she really commits now though. I gained ten kilos over the past couple of years and finally just had enough, and decided to go hard and actually try and lose weight. I got professional help- got a good food plan in place (so I wasn’t crash dieting and being silly about it) and I took up regular exercise and no joke in one week alone so far I’ve lost 3 kilos. It can be done, you’re friend just needs to really commit if she really wants to get in that dress. If its going to be too much trouble and you don’t want to cause any problems, the good thing is, she is the maid of honour, so you could just get her a different dress in the same colour or even just a different dress in general! Doesn’t matter :) this isn’t something to lose a friendship over, think about where you’ll be in ten years time and if this would really matter to you then. It really won’t <3

I hope you're coffee goes well with her.

Personally I wouldn't have the health conversation with her now, she might feel you're trying to guilt her in to losing weight.

I think I'd see what options you could find that would complement the other dresses and say you saw this and thought it could be an option if she had any concerns about being able to fit into the dress as you don't want her to feel under pressure to lose weight and would rather her enjoy the build up to the wedding than be stressed and under pressure. Just keep it light.

You sound like a lovely friend - I didn't expect to say that from the thread title though 😊

I think people's real lives have enough content for MN readers. MN really doesn't need to make anything up.
You would be considered a trollhunter for suggesting the OP is fake.

Thank you. Tbh I'm worried about saying too much more as I feel awful about the way this thread has gone, but I do appreciate all the good advice I've had from so many people.

I did mention it when we went for a coffee and said that I don't want her feeling stressed about it all because it's just a dress. She seemed a bit surprised and said she still had loads of time to lose the weight. I told her again that I didn't want her to be under that kind of pressure, but she said she wants to do it. Really difficult tbh because I didn't want to push it too hard, but not much else I could do other than say we'll look at it again in a few weeks/months and see how she's doing, and then look for a new dress if we need to.

I also did mention i'd asked advice online, which she said she understood because it is an awkward topic, but that I should have just spoke to her. I do accept that and that one is on me.

That sounds like it went really well OP, well done.
It's on her now. Good you agreed to look at it again in a few months. You still have plenty of time to sort out a replacement dress without it being a rush.
Have you any idea how many stones she'd need to lose? I'm 5'5 and I know that to go from a 12-14 to a 10-12 is 2 stones for me. Not sure if that's applicable across the scale. But she would have surely around 5 stones to go from a 24 to an 18 I would guess? I think that's actually doable in 9 months if she really goes for it. So leave it with her, review in a few months and take it from there. Hopefully now you've tackled it you feel a bit more relaxed.
Hope you have a lovely wedding!

Thank you so much.

She's a similar height to you, so I'd guess around 5 stone might be about right.

I hope she does lose the weight but if it’s 5s in less then a year then will be tough going

did you look at my link @scj96

to see if can find a similar colour to match your bm then as she is moh she can look diff

at a wedding I went to at Saturday. They chose dresses from that shop - all bm were diff sizes from I say a 8/10 to 24/26 and all in same colour but all Diff styles and they looked amazing - think was 6 in all

Hi - I did thanks, and sorry for not replying earlier. They do have some lovely looking dresses, but I am not near Kent sadly. I'm sure we will find something if we need to, and you're right - i'll be looking for similar colour but probably a slightly different style than the current one if it's needed in a larger size.

Very brave of them having 6 BMs!!

All adults. Then think another 4 younger ones

hope you find something

maybe look at plus size bm dresses near you

The simple solution is to speak with your friend, see where they stand on the whole weight loss front, try not to berate them for not living up to your expectations and then get a seamstress to take the dress out if need be.

Loosing weight is a big undertaking. I have personally put on a load of weight in the past year and have recently bought myself some exercise equipment. Even so, despite my drive and best intentions it’s very easy to fall back into bad eating habits and life gets in the way and then the exercise bike goes unused for a week or two or even three. Your friend may have insisted, but more than likely she didn’t want to be the awkward one causing road bumps on the way to your perfect day. I would feel mortified if I couldn’t fit into my friends seemingly only choice of bridesmaids dress. Not only that but if I was the only one that couldn’t fit, that instant shame would probably ignite a weight loss fire in me and I would make all kinds of resolutions to myself and my friends. But clearly the weight loss thing isn’t working out for her, and you’ve just got to accept that. At the end of the day, do you really want to be that person that is more concerned about their friend fitting into a dress for one day, then how she may be feeling about herself every day?

Does your friend know they're in several tabloids now op?
I'm guessing not.