First of all, I specifically looked for dresses that had reviews/pics from bigger girls — & they all looked beautiful, btw. I’m on the verge of plus size after having that “oops” baby at 40 (being my 4th kid, after 8 years, it completely wrecked my body). But I didn’t realize that my chest size would make such a big difference. And tbh, it wasn’t *just* my chest size ?.The short of it is this: I looked horrible, I felt horrible & I’m returning the dress. I went with burgundy thinking it’d be dark & slimming (like black, but not as “cliché”) but instead (& esp bc the burgundy leaned a lot more purple than brown or red) I looked like the purple pie eater’s sister. Like a short (I’m around 5’1.5”), fat, overripe, smashed, grape. Like if I wanted to be a princess troll but ended up a bergen. It was really bad.I’m gonna go over each point now & try to be as brief as possible while still providing an explanation. If you’re like me & just need to know why, then read on. If you don’t have the time, well, you’ve got the gist already.First of all the dress was heavy. I thought it was an exaggeration, but it’s not. Pair that with the lace up back & my claustrophobia (that even I didn’t know was *that* intense) = I felt trapped in that dress. It did take a while for me to tighten it myself & it really was “tricky” (i.e. crazy difficult; esp being dyslexic & trying to do it behind my own back in the mirror). It was like trying to perform a magic trick on myself, but it obviously didn’t work bc I already knew what was going on behind the curtain. And loosening the ties was a lot harder than tightening them. So I had a baby panic attack, like a toddler who gets stuck in a swimsuit with the weird straps.I ordered according to my bust measurement (bc I didn’t want it to be too small & give me the 4 boob look OR just be too low & immodest), which was way up from my “normal” size — & it ended up being huge on me. And that poor lace up back can only do so much. Why didn’t I give them my exact measurements? Bc that has never, never, ever, worked for me (& bc I wanted to be able to return it). My body is oddly shaped & my measurements never fit the the actual size I need to wear. My bust is the perfect example. It’s 41” — I measured at different times, on different days, with different tapes & it was 41” every time. I saw a video of a plus size girl, who also had a 41” bust, who was also 5’2”. You guys. She had DD’s & I have B’s. So obviously I have a gigantic rib cage & tiny t’s. Like I can’t wear any of the “small” bras in B cups bc I’m too wide. And with this dress, just knowing my inches doesn’t do anything for me, bc it fit me great in width — but the cups were 2 sizes too big. Not even kidding, I could have fit both my boobs into one cup. ?Then there’s the waist area. That’s where I was wrecked the most bc I’ve had 4 c-sections. I can’t even do ab workouts bc my muscles have been cut into so many times that even just bending over often gives me a charlie-horse type cramp to the point where I get stuck & have to massage it out to get unstuck. Also I’m Asian & always thought I had a long torso & short legs. But this torso was so long on me that the waist cut into the fattest part of my stomach flab. And no amount of tightening those laces would fix it, bc the part under the waist is just the “free flowing” skirt — which is PLEATED. Pleats add volume, so instead of slimming anything it made me look poofier. And bc of exactly where it hit on my body, I simultaneously got a muffin top AND and even bigger fupa. Not the look anyone is going for, I’m sure.Then we have the behind. Again, I ordered up (at least 2 sizes, to fit my bust, according to their chart) so the dress was obviously too big all over. I really knew it when I kept getting poked in my butt crack with the bottom of the laces. Like the very bottom of it goes to a point, & that point was situated way down at the bottom of my butt checks. I don’t know where it’s actually supposed to stop. On me, it looked like I was trying to hide a tail on my super flat behind, under my dress.Then we have the sleeves. I should have known it was way too big when all the reviews of girls looking awesome said the inner sleeves were tight. My sleeves were so loose that I couldn’t pretend to imagine where my arms actually were. I think the wrist parts were several inches below my hand & bunching it up to get my hands out made the bottom of the sleeves puff up, while also falling off my shoulders. I’m an older girl here, so I have those flabby under arms that wave at people while I’m waving my hand. When I have my arms down I just kind of look like a linebacker — wide ribs, flat chest & big arms. These sleeves just doubled that so I ended up looking like the suit with the shrunken head from Beetleguise. Not even kidding. I never had a small-head complex before & now I’m trying to figure out how to make my hair huge to make my head look bigger!!! Let’s repeat that just once to really take it in — I am trying to make my head look bigger … to even it out with my enormous rib cage & arm fat. What in the ever loving …. ?‍?So I guess I looked more like the syrup eating jock than the purple pie eater’s sister. Or the sister who ate the purple pie eater. I’m gonna just go out on a limb here & say it’s *probably* bc I ordered way above my size. And I did that based on the reviews. I should have known better, bc size charts have *NEVER* worked for me. All that extra fabric & wrong dimensions did nothing but exacerbate my worst features (I mean, it gave me a 10 pound fupa!). I am so traumatized from the horrors of my body — & getting momentarily stuck (you know, like trying to look away before you see the really gory part of a slasher movie, but timing it wrong & seeing ALL of the gore close up in HD) — that I don’t even want to try it on in my actual size. I hardly want to try on another dress in my life.So that was MY journey to Mordor, as an extremely bloated gollum. Not a princess story like everyone else. I’d say “order your size” but some people sized up with great results. So my advice is to follow your gut. Mine said “don’t do it” & I was like, psshhht, you don’t see these pictures. I should have listened to my gut; this dress was not for me.PS. My profile height/weight is pre-baby. I don’t have the courage to get on the scale post-baby, so I don’t even know (or want to know really) what my actual weight is. It’s enough that I fit nothing else but my previously oversized sweat pants … & my maternity jeans.