A "fat bride-to-be" is refusing to diet ahead of her wedding and says her weight is just a "small part" of who she is.
Hannah Attewell, 36, hasn't always felt confident about her body and started dieting at the age of 12.
She spent her 20's wearing just black clothes but finally "had an epiphany" aged 30.
Hannah, a size 24, found the confidence to throw herself into dating and went on "26 first dates" before meeting her fiancé Charles Anderson, 32, a council administrator.
Now she loves herself and and her body and is refusing to diet for her upcoming wedding.
She hopes to encourage others to feel confident in their bodies.
Hannah, a wedding photographer, from St Albans, Hertfordshire said: "This assumption that you need to lose weight for your wedding is old.
"What if there's another way to feel good that doesn't involve going on a fad diet and weighing yourself every morning and letting yourself be dictated by this?
"The average UK woman is a size 16 but the most commonly stocked size in wedding dress shops is an eight.
“Our bodies change all the time, it's normal, especially as women.
"Before I wouldn't date. I wouldn't go on holiday, and I wouldn't have met my fiancé if I hadn't changed my opinion about myself.
“I do all the things I wouldn’t do before, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do now."
Hannah grew up feeling insecure about her weight.
She said: "I went on my first diet at 12.
"It was so instilled in me. I remember trying on a pair of trousers and them not fitting anymore and thinking I was fat when it was probably just a growth spurt.
“One girl in drama class said: 'Why are your knees like that?' in front of everyone sat in a circle, which I hadn’t noticed until that point so it gave me a new insecurity.
“I was acutely aware I was the fattest person in my whole school and my friends were all thin.
“We’d go to Topshop together and I couldn’t have the classic teenage girl experience of clothes shopping on the weekends because nothing fit me.
“I felt like their mum trailing around after them chaperoning, and it felt very exclusionary because fashion is such an important thing as a teenager.”
In her late teenage years and 20's she would only wear black so she “merged into the background".
She said: “I used to just wear black all the time. I remember wearing black on a beach in Australia.
“I wouldn’t wear anything that had any sort of personality.”
Hannah says she didn’t go on any dates for the majority of her 20's, but when she got to aged 30 she “had an epiphany” and changed her perspective.
She said: “I was sitting on the sofa in my house watching The Handmaid’s Tale, thinking about how many pounds I could lose a week until Christmas and I thought 'I can't do this anymore'.
“I realised I can't be 45 and still feeling like this. I’ve been obsessed with losing weight for half my life.
"All the things I could’ve just done but didn't because I thought I had to wait until I’d lost weight.
Hannah Attewell, 36, hasn't always felt confident about her body and started dieting at the age of 12.
She spent her 20's wearing just black clothes but finally "had an epiphany" aged 30.
Hannah, a size 24, found the confidence to throw herself into dating and went on "26 first dates" before meeting her fiancé Charles Anderson, 32, a council administrator.
Now she loves herself and and her body and is refusing to diet for her upcoming wedding.
She hopes to encourage others to feel confident in their bodies.
Hannah, a wedding photographer, from St Albans, Hertfordshire said: "This assumption that you need to lose weight for your wedding is old.
"What if there's another way to feel good that doesn't involve going on a fad diet and weighing yourself every morning and letting yourself be dictated by this?
"The average UK woman is a size 16 but the most commonly stocked size in wedding dress shops is an eight.
“Our bodies change all the time, it's normal, especially as women.
"Before I wouldn't date. I wouldn't go on holiday, and I wouldn't have met my fiancé if I hadn't changed my opinion about myself.
“I do all the things I wouldn’t do before, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do now."
Hannah grew up feeling insecure about her weight.
She said: "I went on my first diet at 12.
"It was so instilled in me. I remember trying on a pair of trousers and them not fitting anymore and thinking I was fat when it was probably just a growth spurt.
“One girl in drama class said: 'Why are your knees like that?' in front of everyone sat in a circle, which I hadn’t noticed until that point so it gave me a new insecurity.
“I was acutely aware I was the fattest person in my whole school and my friends were all thin.
“We’d go to Topshop together and I couldn’t have the classic teenage girl experience of clothes shopping on the weekends because nothing fit me.
“I felt like their mum trailing around after them chaperoning, and it felt very exclusionary because fashion is such an important thing as a teenager.”
In her late teenage years and 20's she would only wear black so she “merged into the background".
She said: “I used to just wear black all the time. I remember wearing black on a beach in Australia.
“I wouldn’t wear anything that had any sort of personality.”
Hannah says she didn’t go on any dates for the majority of her 20's, but when she got to aged 30 she “had an epiphany” and changed her perspective.
She said: “I was sitting on the sofa in my house watching The Handmaid’s Tale, thinking about how many pounds I could lose a week until Christmas and I thought 'I can't do this anymore'.
“I realised I can't be 45 and still feeling like this. I’ve been obsessed with losing weight for half my life.
"All the things I could’ve just done but didn't because I thought I had to wait until I’d lost weight.
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FunTranscript
00:00I never thought I'd get married to fat and obviously it's not even because I didn't think anyone would want to marry me fat
00:05I had several long-term relationships while I was fat. I'm still fat
00:09So just I've had several long-term relationships in this body at varying sizes
00:15No
00:18The thing is I thought that if someone asked me to marry them I would say no
00:23because I was fat or I would say yes, but I wouldn't have a ring because I didn't want a ring that would fit my
00:28stupid fat fingers and
00:29More importantly I would definitely lose weight for the wedding and if I literally had this thought with my ex because if we were together
00:36for a long time
00:38if
00:39We planned a wedding and I didn't succeed in losing the weight
00:43I wanted to for the wedding that I would cancel the wedding. I mean
00:47that's a wild thing to think and yet I was so convinced that being fat was this like
00:55failure this
00:56incredible like moral failing this
01:00Humiliating thing that I would rather have wasted like 20 grand or whatever the wedding cost
01:07Because I was too fat to be in photos to wear my ideal dress. Um
01:14that's just as someone who's now engaged and planning a wedding and totally fine with the fact that I'm gonna be fat at that wedding and
01:21Has done a lot of hard work to be okay in general with being fat and not putting off living my life
01:28because of my weight
01:30It is wild to reflect on the fact that if if I had been proposed to at another time
01:36even by the same person who I wanted to marry just as much as I want to marry my fiance that I might have said
01:41No, or I might have ruined this experience for me. I might have made it about my weight just because I
01:49Could not see that there was so much more to life than how fat I was
01:56Where are all the fat brides? Um
01:58I am like so over
02:01wanting to lose weight for specific occasions or
02:05Thinking that I have to lose weight for something to happen
02:07Or thinking that I need to take this out of my hair before I film a video. Um
02:13but
02:14It is really discouraging not seeing photos of
02:19Fat people getting married when you are looking for stuff
02:23Looking for dresses looking at wedding photographers like just looking all this light inspiration and not seeing yourself
02:30represented at all is
02:32really difficult because
02:34It does let all the like stuff that you've worked really hard to let go of in your head
02:40You know all this diet culture stuff that makes you think that it would be better if you were thin
02:45Like it really like drags that to the surface because there's only one
02:50Visual that you're seeing and so you're like, well if I want to fit into that, I think I need to lose weight
02:57I'm not there and you shouldn't be either. You do not need to lose weight for your wedding, but
03:04Just a like general call to everyone if we can see more fat people getting married, that would be amazing
03:10And I mean as a wedding photographer, I haven't actually photographed that many fat couples
03:16Unfortunately, so my website is not full of them
03:20But I'm gonna go and review my portfolio and make a conscious effort to put more
03:27Representation of a variety of like shapes and sizes and colors in there
03:33To make sure that other people don't feel like this when they're looking at my website
03:39If you have already got married and you are fat like comment so I can go look at your pictures