Seven-year hitch
How blushing bride delayed her big day – until she was slender enough to fit into dream size 10 dress
AS the big day approaches, many brides-to-be cut back on the calories to help them fit into their dream dress.
But Kirsty Thomson made her fiancé wait for seven years until she felt slim enough to walk down the aisle.
She was almost 17 stone when she got engaged to Lindsay McEwan and refused to set a date to get married until she lost weight.
It took seven years, countless different diets and annual repetition of proposals before she finally reached her target.
And last month she at last became Mrs McEwan, 26, of Callander, Stirlingshire, walking down the aisle at a healthy 11st 9lb after shrinking from a size 22 to a size 10.
She said: ‘I refused to set a date because I didn’t want to be a fat bride. I tried every diet but I would always start craving something and that would be the end of it.
‘Lindsay has been patient and kept asking me on the same date for seven years. He’s been great and very supportive.’ Mrs McEwan struggled with her weight while working as a waitress at the Dreadnought Hotel in Callander, where her husband-to-be was head waiter.
She recalled: ‘Lindsay and I both worked in the hotel and our shifts were all over the place, so we never really had the chance to cook. We were surrounded by
‘I was massively obese and felt a hypocrite’
a fish and chip shop, Chinese and Indian takeaways, so we just ate conveniently. It was all the wrong stuff.
‘Being a waitress was an active job. I could do it but I ended up a sweaty mess, and you don’t want somebody like that serving your dinner.’
Eventually Mrs McEwan left the hotel and started working for a pharmacy – where one of her jobs was to dish out advice on leading a healthy lifestyle.
‘I have to promote healthy eating,’ she said. ‘I was massively obese and I was supposed to give advice about that. I felt like such a hypocrite.
‘Some of my friends went to dance classes but I couldn’t go – even if I could do the moves, I couldn’t wear the outfits. It was mortifying.
‘I didn’t do much sport or exercise before. I hated going clothes shopping because there was only a few clothes shops in my town that had sizes big enough to fit me.
‘I couldn’t go shopping with my friends because I found it embarrassing but now I can swap clothes with them.’
As a result of her bad diet, Mrs McEwan ballooned to 16st 9lb. She eventually joined Scottish Slimmers and a year later began shop- ping for her wedding dress. She could even swap outfits with her three best friends who became her bridesmaids.
She reached her target weight of 11st 9lb two weeks before her big day. She said: ‘ It was perfect timing. I ordered my dress from an American company in April and when it arrived in June it fitted perfectly.
‘But when I tried it on two weeks before the wedding it didn’t fit. I had to have four inches taken in because the weight just kept falling off. The more weight I lost, the more interested I became.’
Mrs McEwan soaked up the compliments from family and friends on her big day at Doune Castle, Perthshire, before honeymooning in Malta – packing a bikini in her suitcase for the first time.
‘In the past I sometimes needed a seatbelt extension on the plane because it either wouldn’t fasten or it would dig into me,’ she added. ‘I didn’t have that problem this time.’
Mr McEwan, 35, said: ‘Kirsty’s transformation is fantastic, she’s looking good. I asked her every year to set a date but she would always just say, “Not this year.”
‘ I managed to stay patient because I love her and she was definitely worth the wait. The wedding was great and Kirsty looked fantastic.’