Choosing a wedding dress: a stocktaking moment to connect with our body and honour ourselves
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Choosing a wedding dress: a stocktaking moment to connect with our body and honour ourselves
The world around us appears to infect women with ideals and images of what she should look like, what she should do and who she should be. Everything from how to be a kid, a teenager, a twenty-something, a forty-something, a mother, a career woman, a friend, a retiree, a grandmother and so much in between is defined for us through society’s expectations, and quite often driven via the media and tradition.
This isn’t new and isn’t restricted to modern societies or certain cultures; it’s eons old and rather than building self-confidence, it does the opposite. But every moment a woman can choose to break free from the toxic demands that drain her sense of self-worth, she gives herself permission to live entirely honouring of herself. In this article, we explore an example of one of those moments that are constantly on offer for us to live free of imposition and Earth’s creations. Using the simple example of choosing a wedding dress, we look at answering why this is so and discover how women can develop their self-confidence to make this way of being normal and her ‘everyday’, rather than the fleeting expression it usually turns out to be.
For women getting married, choosing the wedding dress presents a plethora of options. Maybe it could be a princess-like ball-gown, or slim and slinky. White, or off-white, or ivory, or pink or even black perhaps? Ruched or svelte, lacy or sparkly, or plain and simple? You get the idea; thousands of different options are available and limited only by our imagination, by an ideal or because of an image we might hold. So, how then does a woman choose her dress in the face of such choice? Is it a simple matter of elimination – it’s a beach wedding so it has to be slim and slinky, or is something else at play?
Any woman who has ever searched for her perfect wedding dress has been through this process. Most women have at least some sense of what they do and don’t want to be wearing, but for each bride-to-be the end result actually isn’t in the design features; it turns out to be something far less tangible or physical.
The search usually starts with a picture of the dream dress in her head. It might be something she’s wanted since childhood, or it might be a recent creation. Either way, women have an idea of the style and how they think they want to look on their wedding day. But very often what plays out is the bride-to-be tries on a dress that ticks all the boxes of what she said she wanted, but when she’s actually in it, she doesn’t feel that ‘something special’ or that ‘wow factor’, lamenting something like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but I haven’t got ‘that feeling’.”
Which begs the question: what is ‘that feeling’ which is so valued when it comes to choosing a wedding dress?
As the woman stands before a mirror dressed in a possible option, she allows herself to first and foremost feel herself in the dress before any discussion to change a feature may start. There is something about choosing a wedding dress, or what clothes to wear on any given day, that offers a woman the opportunity to entirely choose something based on how she feels, rather than how she thinks she is supposed to look.
"We can feel more than the eye can see."
Serge Benhayon Esoteric & Exoteric Philosophy, ed 1, p 410
When we look into the mirror we believe that it is about the style, the colour, the texture that makes us like or dislike what we see. But in truth, what the mirror reflects to us is how we feel within ourselves and from this inner feeling we will feel settled (or not) with what we see. Hence, choosing a wedding dress or any other outfit is always presenting an opportunity to tune into ‘that feeling’ and how the clothes we have chosen can confirm and support us in feeling who and what we are on the inside. That also explains why there is no fashion in the world that can make us feel beautiful if we don’t feel and honour our very own inner beauty.
When the woman is given space to feel her body, she has the possibility to distance herself from the pictures of how she has to be, what society says she should be and/or what she expects from her marriage etc. She is then able to reconnect to a quality within herself that is a feeling of an inner knowing and where she can feel settled in her body.
External pressures from friends, family, the media and so forth aren’t given weight, and the woman allows space within herself, and with at least momentary self-confidence gives herself permission to choose her dress based on the way she feels in it.
What she is doing is reconnecting to the qualities within herself that allow her to embrace her unique style and beauty – this only ever comes from within and cannot ever come from the pictures that impose life onto us.
Choosing a wedding dress, like many other situations in life, offers an avenue for a woman to make a deeper connection with her body, and through that connection, access the intangible wealth that we all have available to us but which is often discounted, dismissed, rejected, minimised or overlooked.
The times when a woman has ended up choosing her wedding dress with pictures dictating her decision in lieu of ‘that feeling’ inevitably reveals the missed opportunity to honour herself, with the flow-on effect of diminished self-worth.
We have an intrinsic trust or knowing in our inner-hearts of our decision-making abilities. However, society has become quite sceptical about accepting one’s body as the messenger or confirmer of how to choose, behave and live. As a result, the ways we allow ourselves to be are mostly determined by pictures, which are often very strong and override the actual communication from our body.
The images, ideals and beliefs we organise our lives around are separating us from this inner knowing, which brings in an insecurity that we see play out in the world today and rather than building self-confidence, it undermines it. We are imprisoned in the need to have proof that what we are choosing has been validated by an external source. We worry about the ‘likes’, comments and approvals and so forth, which are all also based on the dominant pictures that are ruling what can and can’t be selected.
What’s more, rather than being a self-confidence booster, our current image-based model of living brings us insecurity because nobody ever can live up to a picture. When the outer is stronger than the inner, we live enslaved, looking to rules and pre-determined parameters or precedents to tell us how to live when we could be listening to our body for guidance about how we feel in every moment.
"The body is the marker of all truth.
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 569
It is that which can with accuracy spell-out all that is and has been."
The good news is that no matter what age, it is never too late to start to listen to your body and rediscover there is indeed an inner knowing, ready and willing to be called upon in every moment. It’s a feeling that comes as we develop our levels of sensitivity and from there, once again have access to greater awareness. Images and their associated beliefs and ideals have us living life according to criteria of how life has to be. Developing an honest relationship with our body helps us move beyond this imposition and contributes to building our self-confidence immeasurably.
We have a perfectly good tool to use to guide us constantly, whether that be with choosing a wedding dress or any other item of clothing, what to eat, with whom to be friends, what job to be in, what house to design, how to parent and, of course, what true wellbeing is for us. Our bodies are our very own personal data banks and by accessing our files, we have the ability to only ever make choices from the truth of the body.
Filed under
Body awareness, Self-esteem, Confidence, Weddings
