Something Old, New, Sweaty & Blue

Weddings — no matter how you slice it — tend to be pretty decadent affairs.

If you’re a guest, it means hours of unlimited crab dip and bubbly, unless you were at our wedding, in which case you strangely chose to drink the bar dry of totally healthy full-cream White Russians. Mmm.

If you’re a bridesmaid, it’s that plus two extra weekends of Bloody Marys and Mimosas and cute hashtags and hangover quiches, all of which can hit your waistline.

If you’re the bride, it’s all of the above — and a year of celebratory toasts and cake trials and a whole additional dinner where you literally taste everything you’ll be eating again in six months’ time.

(And you wonder why the global industrial bridal complex tries to convince us all we need to lose weight.)

It’s this notion — that weddings are unhealthy and there’s nothing you can do about — that many of us resign ourselves to as we enter the celebratory season. But in 2018, I’ve noticed a wonderful new trend emerge: every one of my girlfriends to tie the knot this year invited her friends to a sweaty, empowering fitness class to build excitement (and muscle!) for the big day. Who says a party can’t be healthy.

In March, we did a barre class with the world’s tiniest mats at a West Side dance studio to celebrate some upcoming nuptials.

This awkward photo of Cat definitely beats a group photo.

In April, we did a reformer class in Venice Beach because the super fit bride wanted to ~~torture me for learning to read before her in kindergarten~~ show me her favorite kind of machine-based core-stabilizing workout.

Perhaps I should take fewer fitness classes and more photography ones. That said, the shirts I designed rocked.

And just last month, we celebrated another happy couple with kettlebell swings and burpees at the very intense Fhitting Room on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that my hamstrings are still reeling from.

These three classes definitely went in ascending order of pain.

After the bridal workouts, did I still go on to drink seven glasses of white and eat all the bacon-wrapped things within arm’s reach during the main event? You know I did. But I did it with a little more muscle, and THAT’s my kind of wedding mass.

(Now don’t get me wrong: weddings are not just about the bride. The groom is very important too. And speaking of grooms…)