Friend of Julie: Vacations

My brother and his wife were invited to celebrate the birthdays of a couple we've known for over thirty years. Both the husband and wife turned 80 in May and to celebrate our friends invited four couples to join them on a cruise. My brother was not able to go and I was invited in his place. All I had to do was pay for my ticket to Florida and back, and to bring along at least two formal dresses. Who am I to say no to such an incredible invitation? What's a girl to do? Start looking for formal dresses of course!

View from my balcony on the Oasis of the Seas.

A few weeks after I accepted this fabulous gift, something incredible happened: one of our key friends posted a notice she had 8 bags of clothes ranging from size 12-18 to give away to the first person who contacted her. I responded right away and we arranged to meet at her house.

I spent about an hour on her front steps, listening to her inspiring weight loss story. After our visit, she brought the bags out to the steps and I loaded them into my trunk. As I walked toward my car with the last bag, I heard her call out from inside the house.

"Hold on! I have some more."

I looked up and saw her coming out the front door with her hands full of beautiful dresses. I'm so grateful and fortunate to have made this connection.

Back home I sorted through the clothes and put the items that were too small into a bin, I wrote a note and placed it on top before closing the lid. The note read: beautiful clothes that will fit me soon.

The dresses she handed to me were size 12's and 14's and too small for me last summer, but I was optimistic they would fit me by the time I went on the cruise.  I hung the dresses in the left side of my closet, next to other clothes waiting for me to fit into them.
As summer turned to fall, I kept pulling the beautiful dresses out of my closet and holding them up to me in front of my full length mirror. I could see they did not to fit yet; my body was wider than the dresses.

January, February, and then March passed, and each time I stepped in front of the mirror, the results were the same: the dresses were still beautiful and still too small.

The first of April, after having lunch with some of my key friends in South Hadley, I invited Jennifer and Linda to my house to get their opinion on a formal dress I had bought for the cruise that I was unsure of how it looked. I felt it clung to my backside too much and in the end I returned it. While they were at my house, I put on a black dress from my key friend for them to help me determine if it was too tight.

They agreed with me, it was too tight. I showed them the other dresses and said how sad that they too were to small. Jennifer suggested I try them on, but I said no; I was positive they would not fit. After they left, I decided to try them on and I was shocked--I could get into all but two of the dresses. I would not go outside my house in any of them, as they were way too tight, but I could fit into them.

What shocked me so much was that these dresses looked so small. I was in awe. Am I really that small? Despite the fact that they were skin tight - the fact that I could get into them was incredible.

Tick tock. Time was running out and I still had to get my formal dresses lined up.

A friend in New York sent me a dress that she was confident would fit me and that it would look incredible. When it arrived, I tried it on and she was right. The floor length red dress was a beautiful color on me, but it needed to be shortened and altered to fit me better. I asked around for a good tailor.

One dress down, one more to go.

Two summers ago I bought a few beautiful dresses and they're too big under the arms. I decided to take them to the tailor as well. I was lucky again, as prom season was closing in and the tailor would have just enough time to finish my dresses on time.

Meanwhile, I kept trying on those size 12 and 14 dresses right up until a few days before I left. They fit much better, but they were still too tight. In the end, those beautiful dresses did not go in my suitcase. It turns out that I had exactly the right number of pretty dresses to bring with me.

This cruise wasn't only about dresses, although I have a ton of photos of me wearing all my beautiful dresses. There were a couple physical challenges I gave myself while on the cruise that I could not have done prior to losing this weight. I'll share those stories and more in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, here are some photos in my beautiful dresses. This first photo was taken outside of the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, FL, where the first of many birthday celebrations took place. I felt like a celebrity when we arrived. Getting out of a stretch limo in a short dress while others are watching, was interesting!

Did you ever get into a stretch limo in a short dress?

This is the beautiful red dress my friend gave me.

This is one of the dresses I had the tailor make smaller.

Same dress in 2012 and 2013, which I had altered before the cruise.

I couldn't resist showing this same dress that I had altered to wear last Halloween.

Buying a dress off a street vendor in Jamaica was not possible when I was a size 30/32. And, at the insistence of our host, I bought the hat the same day from another vendor. There was a time, when the hat would have been the only thing on the street that would fit me.

The big birthday celebration was in Cozumel, Mexico.

This is is the other formal dress, which I had in my closet.

Ten of us traveled on the Oasis of the Seas to Haiti, Jamaica, and Mexico