- [Man] What's wrong?
- My dress doesn't fit.
- [Man] This is very tragic.
Why doesn't it fit?
Are you gonna get it fixed?
Okay.
(techno music)
- Here's my nipple.
- [Man] Are you saying no to the dress?
- I'm keeping the dress.
It was very expensive and I love it.
I just need to make my body fit into it.
I don't know if you guys could tell but,
I'm getting married.
Here's the problem.
I bought a wedding dress that was too small.
At the store she actually told me to get a larger size.
I tried on the sample and it was the size.
I didn't really think about the fact that the sample
had been like really stretched out.
So I got the size I wanted which was not my size.
Like six months later it comes in.
I go to try it on and I can't zip it up.
I never thought I was gonna be the person who
had to try to fit into my wedding dress.
I wonder if this happens to a lot of people?
- We actually see a couple of those every month.
Hello, I'm Susan Ruddie Spring.
- [Sarah] How often do you have brides that come to you
and they have gotten dresses that are too small?
- Dresses can always be made smaller
but dresses can't always be made bigger.
It's really best to buy something that's the correct size
and making sure that if your bust is a 12
and your waist is a six and your hips are a 10,
you don't buy the eight because it's in the middle.
You have to buy the 12 and take in the other parts.
- [Sarah] Why do women order sizes that are smaller
than what they should?
- Brides do that along with several other things
which this is their big day and they're being photographed
and everyone they know is gonna see them.
- Has it always been that way?
- I think it's always kind of been that way.
But I think there's way more pressure now
because there never used to be Instagram and Pinterest.
- I immediately got home and was like,
I need to go on a diet.
I need to be shedding for the wedding.
I looked up diets, cutting dairy and gluten.
I'm gonna be trying to cut out a lot of carbs.
We're doing a lot of salmon.
We gotta a beet, you know that's healthy.
Okay it it's kind of like the Whole 30 light
'cause the Whole 30 was like too hard for me.
So I'm gonna try some different things.
I already lost a few pounds just from drinking water.
I feel like I just have to go down one size.
So it seems doable.
I only have to lose two inches on my waist
and then the dress should fit.
I signed up for a shit ton of exercise classes.
And I have the whole feeling of like,
I can't believe I waited 'til now to try to get healthy
and lose weight.
This is amazing and easy.
I'm feeling, I'm feeling healthy.
I'm feeling active.
I've been weighing myself.
In the first week, I was like freaking out
because I actually lost four pounds.
You know that's huge.
More weeks passed and my weight just was
moving up and down and the wedding diet,
the exercise, it wasn't doing anything.
Even at my smallest, I had tried on the wedding dress
and I could get it zipped up.
Take it off 'cause I can't breathe.
If I breathed out, the entire thing would burst.
This eating healthy thing is stupid and it's not working.
I need get skinny quick schemes.
I read somewhere that Gas-X can help the dress fit
because you might just be like a little bloated
and so maybe this will be the difference.
I've been taking Gas-X and like where you would be bloated
my dress is A-line so it's not tight there.
It's tight above that point so Gas-X is not the solution.
I gotta try something else.
I bought these waist trainers that Kim Kardashian uses.
- No stretch marks and a flat stomach.
After you have a baby is a waist cincher.
- So I was like she's got a skinny waist, they must work.
And actually when I put that on, I was like,
oh wait maybe this does work because it really
does make you much skinnier on the waist.
It just like pushes your fat down here I guess.
It feels like it does something right away
'cause I measured my waist right after I took it off
and It was like an inch smaller but your body
just goes back to the way it normally is
after a little bit.
Maybe it would help me get the dress on initially.
Go to take it off to put your dress on
and immediately it just is like pfth.
It doesn't change your actual waist.
I wanted to fit into the dress but the became like,
I need to be skinnier.
And then it became, why can't I do this?
Why can't I, I should be able to do this.
I should be able to follow through and become this person.
If I can't do it now before my wedding,
when will I ever do it?
Trying to fit into my dress has made me into a psycho.
And I want to know why.
I talked to the wedding dresser and she mentioned.
- 'Cause if I could go back and gt a PhD
I would get a psychology degree and write a thesis
on bridal psychosis.
- And that gave me the idea that I should try to find
like a psychotherapist that could explain to me
what the hell is going on in my head.
Why have a become a crazy person?
- What do I want to feel and what do I want to experience?
What do I want it to look like and what, you know.
- Yeah.
- All of these things kind of collide in such a way.
It's just like this tsunami of overload.
My name's Katherine Schafler.
I'm a therapist in New York City.
And I work mostly with women.
- Why do so many people feel the need
to do the shedding for the wedding?
- Things need to be perfect
is just a real gesture for control.
And so much about weddings is out of control.
Women are always taught that they can do to control
their lives is control their bodies
and control their weight.
It just sort of dumbs it down to like,
if I can just get to this number on the scale,
then I've controlled the situation.
- People set this goal weight and then they don't reach it.
And it's like, you feel really bad about yourself.
- You're making your happiness based on an external outcome.
And whenever you do that and you keep
that singular relationship you kind of fuck yourself
in that way.
You're only happy because you're skinny.
And so if you're no longer skinny anymore
than you won't be happy.
Right it's okay to wanna be pretty and look your best
and put your best foot forward and all that stuff.
If the only way for you to feel happy on your wedding day
is to be a certain weight or a certain this
or a certain that, it just doesn't work that way.
If you focused on the goal weight, the product,
and not the process.
Like you wanna lose ten pounds anyway you do it.
You know some people can like insert
feeding tubes into themselves.
(upbeat music)
You kind of fake it because you're like
I guess I'm supposed to really care about this.
- I became obsessed with like looking a particular way.
- What do you think that being skinny or whatever
is gonna make you feel?
I think it's gonna make me feel really proud of myself.
Being able to say like what other things
make me feel that also in addition to looking my best?
- She made me feel a lot better.
Like I'm not going crazy but I still need to fix my dress.
So like the dress's waist is not hanging at the waist.
It hits me above my waist.
Like I can't lose my ribs or anything.
I can do with like adding a bow or straps or anything.
Please come help me.
I could've lost 15 pounds.
That fuckin' dress wasn't gonna fit me.
I didn't want to spend any more money on this dress
'cause I already spent so much goddamn money.
At this point, a month out, it's like buy a new dress
or I'm just gonna have to eat it.
So I reconnected with the wedding alterations expert
I spoke to.
She found a spot for me to come in.
I gotta go to the dress place.
Coming back to you.
- Okay.
- I was gonna have to break my ribs to fit
into my wedding dress.
She suggested checking the seams to see if the dress
could be let out.
You can't always make dresses bigger,
but I got very lucky and she was like,
there is about an inch that I can let out at the seams.
Thank you so much for fixing my dress.
I paid the money which I'm pretty sure
the money I paid to have that done was equivalent
to the money I spent on all these weird diet weight loss
contraptions and pills.
- What we're really here for is to give brides confidence
because we know that they're gonna look gorgeous
when they're done.
We just help them a little bit along the way.
- The dress fits now.
I am so thankful and relieved because
this was something that's been all consuming,
trying to figure out how to make my body fit the dress.
When obviously in the end I just should have had the dress
fit my body.
Ohhhh god weddings make me crazy.
Ow.
Oh that hurt.
Ow.
- Hey Unsolved is on a new channel.
You know your part.
- [Both] Subscribe here.
- That was my part.