Michelle Nedwick doesn’t mind if the 100 guests she’s inviting to her Oct. 3 wedding know she used a weight-loss medication to help her slim down.
Ms. Nedwick, a 56-year-old prosecutor from Elyria, Ohio, began taking the compounded form of Zepbound, a type of glucagon-like peptide-1 drug, or GLP-1, in August. So far she’s dropped 20 pounds. She hopes to shed 20 more in the next few months. (The FDA recently halted production of many of the most compounded weight-loss drugs. Ms. Nedwick said she has stored up enough to get her through her wedding, and will then figure out what she does next.)
“I don’t think there should be a stigma around it,” she said of weight-loss drugs like Zepbound and diabetes drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro that are often used for weight loss. She has shared her story on social media, and subscribers to her YouTube channel following her “GLP-1 journey,” as she calls it, even offered advice on which wedding dress she should choose for her slimmer figure. She ordered three.
Medications like the one Ms. Nedwick is taking have changed the conversation around “shedding for the wedding,” as the expression goes, though not just among brides and grooms, but the dressmakers and tailors too.
In March, the Wedding Report, a market research company, polled 73 vendors across the wedding industry about the effects GLP-1 drugs were having on their businesses. Of the 7 percent who reported seeing “major changes in client requests and change” or 11 percent seeing “small shifts in spending or preference,” 80 percent work in attire and accessories.
Naama Navipur, a couture wedding dress designer with shops in Philadelphia and Austin, Texas, said she helps brides and mothers of brides desperate for adjustments “all the time.” Two years ago, such last-minute changes were uncommon, she added.
“What’s happening is that the bride ordered a dress six or seven months ago in a size 16 or 18, and now she’s a 10,” Ms. Navipur said. “Because I know how to make dresses, I’m not stressing about it. I can rebuild the dress.”
But brides who need major alterations to mass-produced gowns or dresses coming from overseas can’t count on the person who made it to orchestrate a rebuild, she said. “Seamstresses don’t want to touch a wedding dress because it’s a big, scary responsibility.”
So lately, bridal boutiques have been calling Ms. Navipur “because they know I can do the work.” She prefers to focus on her own designs, but is helping as much as she can.
Shao Yang, the founder of the Tailory New York, a bespoke atelier in Manhattan, routinely gets these requests, too. Some brides say explicitly that they are using GLP-1s, while for others, Ms. Yang, who said she uses Mounjaro herself, has her suspicions.
The drastic shape shifting can be hard to keep up with when it comes to wedding dress fittings. “Instead of being simple alterations, they are now more along the lines of a reconstruction,” Ms. Yang said.
Jami Pack of Georgetown, Ky., admits she was looking for a quick fix when she started using compounded tirzepatide in February 2024. Ms. Pack, 37, a clinical social worker, wanted to lose 50 pounds for her wedding last fall.
“It wasn’t a physical issue as much as it was a mental health issue,” she said. She had used food to cope with a depression surrounding a move and career change, “and before I knew it, I put on 50 pounds.” Eight months before her wedding, “I realized I wasn’t going to be able to lose the weight fast enough,” she said. “I needed some other assistance.”
So she worked with a nurse at a wellness center in Lexington to monitor her weight loss on the medication, and supplemented it with an exercise program and advice from a dietitian.
The effects of these drugs may extend beyond the dress. Some health experts think wedding menus could evolve to better suit more limited appetites. Michelle Cardel, the chief nutrition officer at WeightWatchers, who is a registered dietitian and holds a Ph.D. in nutrition science, said waiters might soon be passing trays of mini cupcakes in addition to full-sized pieces of cake.
“Just as weddings have adapted to vegetarian and gluten-free diets, we do anticipate that caterers are going to be creating menus with smaller appetites in mind,” Dr. Cardel explained.
But because these medications can come with side effects like nausea, constipation and diarrhea, especially in the beginning, Dr. Melanie Jay, director of the N.Y.U. Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity, said, “I wouldn’t start taking these medicines a few weeks before an event like a wedding.” She added that she advises starting them more than six months before a wedding, because if you’re not tolerating them well you still have time to go off them.
Ms. Pack, the newlywed in Kentucky, was happy with her results. When she found a gown she loved, having lost the weight she wanted, she texted her nurse three photos, writing, “I’m not going to be able to put a price on my confidence in this dress.”