my little black dress

I had a wedding to go to last night.  I'm not a fan of weddings.  Sure, I love the food and dressing up, but I'm not into dancing and I usually don't know many people.  But I had to go so I figured I'd use it as as opportunity to buy myself a new dress.

Last weekend I went shopping for a dress with my favorite cousin.  I'm so glad she was there, because she gave me the confidence to, for once, buy a dress that shows off my new figure.  For the first time in my life ever, I went sleeveless and form-fitting!  She helped me pick out some jewelry and shoes.  We also picked out a little lace jacket to wear over the dress, since I was pretty self-conscious about wearing a sleeveless dress.  I've lost a ton of weight, but the tops of my arms are still a bit flabby, so I wanted to be able to hide that if I chickened out.

I'm happy to report I took the jacket off as soon as we got inside the venue!  I felt very exposed at first and a bit self-conscious, but that quickly subsided when I saw almost all the women were sleeveless also.  And there were all shapes and sizes, not just the skinny girls going sleeveless.  Then I thought back to how I looked in the mirror and that gave me more confidence.  For the first time in my life I actually have a shape and it's not round like an apple: it has curves! Having a good, shaped, strapless bra helped a lot, too.  All night I kept telling Bob, "I look like I have a rack!" That helped with the confidence, too.

The biggest self-conscious-fat-girl-no-more moment was in the Ladies room, where there was a big group of skinny women in there chatting, checking their makeup and hair, and laughing.  I felt a bit awkward when I walked in - it felt like high school all over again - but when I looked in the mirror, I realized that I look pretty much like them now.  Sure, I'm not a size 4, but I looked awesome in my dress and I'm no longer the biggest girl in the room.  So, I got over the awkwardness and went about my business as if they weren't even there.

As far as food goes, I ate a lot.  Well, to be fair, "a lot" to me now is totally different than "a lot" when I was 343 pounds.  They had a fantastic assortment of food during the cocktail hour. I ate about two small plates of food: a few chunks of chicken satay, one stuffed mushroom, two bacon-wrapped scallops, one crostini with artichoke spread, two small pieces of beef with gravy, a piece of cheese, and one mozzarella stick.  The salad was caprese salad, which I was thrilled about since that's my new-found love lately.  I had to stop myself from eating it all.  Dinner was filet mignon with mashed sweet potatoes and grilled asparagus; I ate about 1/3 and gave the rest to Bob.  I ate about 3/4 of the wedding cake slice. It was pretty small, so that's not a lot.  Then they brought out cheeseburger sliders cooked to-order and fries. I had just a few fries.  A couple years ago it would have been twice the amount of hors d'oeuvres, my whole dinner, the cake, and several of those sliders with fries.  So, I'm not upset about the amount I ate.  It wasn't all junk or fried food.

So, drinking.  I had two drinks since it was an open bar.  This was my first time really drinking since the surgery. I tried a watermelon martini last summer, but it was too much for me and I gave up.  Last night I had a glass of Bailey's on the rocks and a margarita on the rocks. It took me from 6:30 pm until about 10:00 pm to drink both of those drinks.  Since I drank them so slowly, I didn't get buzzed at all.  Only once when I had three sips in a row. But I made sure to drink a lot of water in between so that helped space it out. And I felt fine this morning.

So here's the dress. I tried to lighted up the pictures a bit so you can see the drape of the dress, but it's a black dress so it's tough.  I love the back of this dress and I'm so glad I didn't wear the jacket!