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."

Hannah Attewell, 36, hasn't always felt confident about her body and started dieting at the age of 12.

She spent her 20's wearing just black clothes but finally "had an epiphany" aged 30."

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."

Now she loves herself and and her body and is refusing to diet for her upcoming wedding.

She hopes to encourage others to feel confident in their bodies.

Hannah, a wedding photographer, from St Albans, Hertfordshire said: "This assumption that you need to lose weight for your wedding is old. "

"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?"

"The average UK woman is a size 16 but the most commonly stocked size in wedding dress shops is an eight."

"Our bodies change all the time, it's normal, especially as women."

"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. "

"I do all the things I wouldn't do before, there's nothing I wouldn't do now."

Hannah grew up feeling insecure about her weight.

She said: "I went on my first diet at 12."

"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."

"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."

"I was acutely aware I was the fattest person in my whole school and my friends were all thin. "

"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."

"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." "

In her late teenage years and 20's she would only wear black so she "merged into the background"."

She said: "I used to just wear black all the time. I remember wearing black on a beach in Australia."

"I wouldn't wear anything that had any sort of personality."

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."

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'."

"I realised I can't be 45 and still feeling like this. I've been obsessed with losing weight for half my life."

"All the things I could've just done but didn't because I thought I had to wait until I'd lost weight."

"​​I had an overwhelming feeling of not wanting to settle for this anymore and waste no more time."

"In the past, I'd always go on a second date with someone if they said they liked me because the approval was enough, even if I didn't want to."

"Instead, I went into every date not even asking myself if they liked me. I went into them asking myself if I actually liked them."

Hannah clicked straight away when she met her fiancé Charles.

She said: "We met on Bumble. Had some long phone conversations before we met."

"In terms of my weight there was no question. "

"He's always saying 'you are the most beautiful girl in the world'."

The couple got engaged in April 2024 and Hannah started wedding dress shopping in May as she was aware it might take longer to find the right dress in her size.

Hannah said: "At no point was I like maybe you should lose weight for this."

"Everyone at that wedding knows what you look like. They should be on your side."

"You don't have to try and impress them."

She added: "Now I wear things I enjoy wearing that show my personality, whereas before I would just try and be invisible and would only wear things that would mean I'd merge into the background."

Hannah says her self-love journey has taken years, but she's now confident and happy in her body.

She said: "I've come a long way to feel okay about being fat, but spent the rollercoaster of my twenties refusing to do things because of it. "

"I've realised it's only a small part of who I am, and I'm not going to use a load of mental energy trying to change."

Hannah is putting together a list of plus size friendly wedding suppliers and you can follow her @the_fat_bride