A "fat bride-to-be" is refusing to diet ahead of her wedding and says her weight is just a "small part" of who she is.<br /><br />Hannah Attewell, 36, hasn't always felt confident about her body and started dieting at the age of 12.<br /><br />She spent her 20's wearing just black clothes but finally "had an epiphany" aged 30.<br /><br />Hannah, a size 24, found the confidence to throw herself into dating and went on "26 first dates" before meeting her fiancé Charles Anderson, 32, a council administrator.<br /><br />Now she loves herself and and her body and is refusing to diet for her upcoming wedding.<br /><br />She hopes to encourage others to feel confident in their bodies.<br /><br />Hannah, a wedding photographer, from St Albans, Hertfordshire said: "This assumption that you need to lose weight for your wedding is old. <br /><br />"What if there's another way to feel good that doesn't involve going on a fad diet and weighing yourself every morning and letting yourself be dictated by this?<br /><br />"The average UK woman is a size 16 but the most commonly stocked size in wedding dress shops is an eight.<br /><br />“Our bodies change all the time, it's normal, especially as women.<br /><br />"Before I wouldn't date. I wouldn't go on holiday, and I wouldn't have met my fiancé if I hadn't changed my opinion about myself. <br /><br />“I do all the things I wouldn’t do before, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do now."<br /><br />Hannah grew up feeling insecure about her weight.<br /><br />She said: "I went on my first diet at 12.<br /><br />"It was so instilled in me. I remember trying on a pair of trousers and them not fitting anymore and thinking I was fat when it was probably just a growth spurt.<br /><br />“One girl in drama class said: 'Why are your knees like that?' in front of everyone sat in a circle, which I hadn’t noticed until that point so it gave me a new insecurity.<br /><br />“I was acutely aware I was the fattest person in my whole school and my friends were all thin. <br /><br />“We’d go to Topshop together and I couldn’t have the classic teenage girl experience of clothes shopping on the weekends because nothing fit me.<br /><br />“I felt like their mum trailing around after them chaperoning, and it felt very exclusionary because fashion is such an important thing as a teenager.” <br /><br />In her late teenage years and 20's she would only wear black so she “merged into the background".<br /><br />She said: “I used to just wear black all the time. I remember wearing black on a beach in Australia.<br /><br />“I wouldn’t wear anything that had any sort of personality.”<br /><br />Hannah says she didn’t go on any dates for the majority of her 20's, but when she got to aged 30 she “had an epiphany” and changed her perspective.<br /><br />She said: “I was sitting on the sofa in my house watching The Handmaid’s Tale, thinking about how many pounds I could lose a week until Christmas and I thought 'I can't do this anymore'.<br /><br /> “I realised I can't be 45 and still feeling like this. I’ve been obsessed with losing weight for half my life.<br /><br />"All the things I could’ve just done but didn't because I thought I had to wait until I’d lost weight.
