‘For a week afterwards, I was bandaged and bruised. But I forgot all about the pain the moment I saw my new breasts. At my dress fitting a month later, it was really emotional. It’s not often you feel perfect, but standing there looking in the mirror I really did.
‘Walking up the aisle seven months later, I had never felt so confident. We had a military church wedding in North Yorkshire, and it was the best day of my life. It would still have been amazing if I hadn’t had the surgery, but I wouldn’t have felt so good about myself.’
Many would say that feeling you have to be nothing less than perfect on your wedding day misses the point about Russian marriage — with its vows to love each other ‘for better for worse’. And, after all, if your fiance wants to marry you with all your flaws, why feel the need to change?
‘This is a very sad trend and one we should be concerned about,’ says Dr Baljit Rana, a Chartered Psychologist at Birmingham City University. ‘However, it’s not surprising. Celebrity culture promotes a message of perfection. It’s little wonder that brides, who face spending a day posing for photos they will keep for ever, are feeling such pressure to look perfect they will go under the knife to achieve it.’
But he adds: ‘You’re about to marry the man you love, in front of your family and friends. That should be enough reassurance that you’re fabulous, not a surgeon’s scalpel.’
Accountant Sharon Wong, 32, from North London, admits she certainly felt under pressure to look a certain way when she married 33-year-old Tom, who is in the military, last July.
That’s why she had laser treatment at Body Boutique Clinic to reduce the fat on her stomach, arms and chin.
‘I wanted everything to be perfect — including me,’ she says. ‘I think the pressure comes from a combination of things, seeing celebrities in magazines who all look slim and really pretty when they get married and bridal magazines always have photos of stunning brides.
‘It’s also the pressure of knowing that for one day everyone will be focused on you. Yes, it is a bit sad that we feel so pressured to look good, but I still feel that if there is something I could do to improve the bits of myself that I don’t like, then why not go for it?’
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