Okay, big girls, don’t think I’ve forgotten you! Designers may have—so many dressmakers seem scared to take on those of us who are size sixteen or higher.
But there’s really no need, because large-size women CAN look great in a wedding gown… if they pick the right one! The best option is to go for a fitted bodice with an A-line skirt.
Full skirts are out on the plus-side bride, as they tend to make wide hips look even wider, as do column or sheath skirts. But an A-line skirt that gently skims the contours is a flattering look on a larger girl. Strapless gowns are not usually recommended for very large brides as they require a very fitted bodice that can be unflattering to someone with a sizable belly. But this varies from body shape to body shape.
Plus-size brides, more than anyone, can benefit from the help of a certified wedding-gown specialist, since we can really help them find a style that is both flatteringand appropriate for their special day.
LIZZIENICHOLSDESIGNS™
Chapter 11
To find out a girl’s faults, praise her to her girlfriends.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), American inventor
The dwarf is singing “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”
“I don’t know about anyone else,” Chaz says, “but I find his performance exceptionally moving. I give it an eight.”
“Seven,” Luke says. “I find the fact that he’s actually crying a little distracting.”
“I give it a ten,” I say, blinking back tears of my own. I don’t know if it’s that all Melissa Manchester songs make me a little nostalgic, or if it’s the fact that this particular one is being sung so poignantly by a weeping dwarf dressed like Frodo from Lord of the Rings, complete with a Gandalf staff. Maybe it’s the three Tsingtaos I had with dinner, and the two Amaretto sours I’ve downed since, here in the booth. But I’m gone.
The same can’t be said of my best friend Shari, however. She’s picking at the label of her Bud Light, looking distracted—pretty much how she’s been all night.
“Hey,” I say, nudging her with my elbow. “Come on. How do you rate his performance?”
“Uh.” Shari sweeps some of her curly dark hair from her eyes and peers at the man on the little stage at the back of the bar. “I don’t know. A six.”
“Harsh,” Chaz says, shaking his head. “Look at him. He’s singing his guts out.”
“That’s just it,” Shari says. “He’s taking it too seriously. It’s karaoke .”
“Karaoke is an art form in many cultures,” Chaz says. “And, as such, should be taken seriously.”
“Not,” Shari says, “at a dive bar called Honey’s in Midtown.”
The tenor of Shari’s voice has changed. Chaz is just being playful, but she sounds genuinely annoyed.
Then again, she’s seemed that way ever since she and Chaz arrived at the Thai place downtown where we met to have dinner. No matter what Chaz says, Shari either disagrees or ignores him. She even berated him for ordering too much food… as if there is such a thing.
“It’s probably just stress,” I had said to Luke, as the two of us walked slightly behind Chaz and Shari on our way toward Canal Street, dodging fish guts that had been tossed into the gutters by the Chinese markets on either side of the street. “You know how hard she’s been working lately.”
“You’ve been working pretty hard yourself,” Luke had replied. “And you aren’t acting like a grade-A—”
“Hey, now,” I’d interrupted. “Come on. Her job is slightly more stressful than mine. She’s dealing with women whose lives are at stake. The only thing the women I work with have at stake is whether or not their butt is going to look big on their wedding day.”
“That can be stressful,” Luke had insisted with touching loyalty. “You shouldn’t put yourself down.”
But the truth is, I don’t actually believe what’s bothering Shari is work stress. Because if it was just that, the delicious piles of pad thai and beef satay we’d just consumed—not to mention all that beer—would have helped. But it hadn’t. She’s as cranky now, after dinner, as she’d been before dinner. She hadn’t even wanted to come to Honey’s. She’d wanted to go straight home to bed. Chaz had prac tically forced her into the cab with us, instead of letting her find a separate one to take her back to their place.
“I just don’t get it,” Chaz had said to us after Shari excused herself to go to the bathroom between courses at dinner. “I know she’s unhappy. But when I ask her what’s wrong, she says everything’s fine and that I should leave her alone.”
“That’s the same thing she says to me,” I’d said with a sigh.
“Maybe it’s hormonal,” Luke had suggested. Which, considering all the bio he was taking, was a natural leap.
“For six weeks?” Chaz had shaken his head. “Because that’s how long it’s been. Ever since she started that job… and moved in with me.”
I’d swallowed. It was all my fault. I just knew it. If I had just moved in with Shari like I’d promised, instead of ditching her to live with Luke, none of this would have happened…
“If you think you can do so much better,” Chaz is saying now, shoving the songbook across the table of the booth we’re sitting in, “why don’t you give it a whirl?”
Shari looks down at the black binder in front of her. “I don’t do karaoke,” she says coldly.
“Um, that’s not what I recall,” Luke says, waggling his dark eyebrows. “At least, not from a certain wedding I remember… ”
“That,” Shari says dourly, “was a special occasion. I was just trying to help out Big Mouth over there.”
I blink. Big Mouth? I mean, I know it’s true and all… but I’ve been getting better. Really. I haven’t told ANYONE about meeting Jill Higgins. And I’ve managed to keep from Luke the fact that his mother’s lover (if that’s who the guy even is… which, more and more, I’m starting to suspect) has called theapartment yet again . I’m a veritable vault of incendiary information!
But I decide to cut Shari some slack. Because I did leave her in the lurch and all.
“Come on, Shari,” I say, reaching for the binder. “I’ll find us something fun to sing. What do you say?”
“Count me out,” Shari says. “I’m too tired.”
“You can never be too tired for karaoke,” Chaz says. “All you have to do is stand up there and read from a teleprompter.”
“I’m too tired,”Shari says again, this time more adamantly.
“Look,” Luke says, “somebody has to get up there and sing something. Otherwise, Frodo is going to perform another ballad. And then I’ll have to slit my wrists.”
I’ve started flipping through the binder. “I’ll do it,” I say. “I can’t let my boyfriend commit suicide.”
“Thanks, honey,” Luke says, winking at me. “That’s so nice of you.”
I’ve found the song I want and am filling out the little slip of paper you’re supposed to give to the waitress if you want to sing. “If I do this,” I say, “you guys have to do one, too. Luke and Chaz, I mean.”
Chaz looks solemnly at Luke. “‘Wanted Dead or Alive’?”
“No,” Luke says, shaking his head vehemently. “No way.”
“Come on,” I say. “If I’m doing it, you guys have to—”
“No.” Luke is laughing now. “I do not do karaoke.”
“You have to,” I say gravely. “Because if you don’t, we’ll be subjected to more of that.” I nod toward a group of giggly twenty-somethings, each wearing the light-up penis necklaces and slackly drunken expressions that give away the fact that they are part of a bachelorette party—as if the fact that they’re screeching “Summer Lovin’” from Grease into a single microphone is not evidence enough.
“They are making a mockery of the karaoke,” Chaz agrees, pronouncing “karaoke” with the correct Japanese inflection.
