This Bride Lost 135 Lbs. to Avoid the 'Fat Tax' on 'Plus-Size' Wedding Dresses

After six years in a happy relationship, Mary Jane O’Toole thought a proposal might be on the way. But life with her boyfriend, Alex, hadn’t been good for her eating habits.

Although O’Toole had grown up overweight, she had become “clinically obese” from fast food dinners and a lack of exercise.

“I didn’t really understand how to eat properly,” O’Toole tells PEOPLE. “I never ate because I was hungry — it was because it smelled or looked good, or because my friends were going to Steak n’ Shake or Taco Bell. Then when I met my husband, he had always been active and thought that as long as he worked out he could eat whatever he wanted, and I started to do that too, but I was never active. We just ballooned up.”

Her extra weight — which hit 281 lbs. that year — was causing health problems that the Orlando-based leasing assistant tried to ignore.

“I didn’t realize that my weight had caused me so much pain,” she admits. “I was in my cousin’s wedding and one of those group dance songs came on and I tried to get low and my knees would hurt. I thought I was getting arthritis — I always had some excuse in my head — but it was just because my knees couldn’t bear the weight of my body.”

Deep down, O’Toole knew that she needed to make a change — as did her husband-to-be, Alex, but it wasn’t until she saw photos from a trip to the Animal Kingdom at DisneyWorld that they found their motivation.

“When we got home they sent us the photos and I was mortified,” she says. “I couldn’t believe how big I had become. We didn’t even recognize ourselves.”

Together, the couple set weight loss goals and downloaded the app LoseIt!, where users can log their meals, track their calories and monitor their weight loss.

“We had tried using it before and stopped, but seeing those photos was the catalyst we really needed,” she says.

Plus, O’Toole wanted the wedding dress of her dreams.

“I didn’t want to buy a plus-size wedding dress, because they cost way more than straight sizes,” she says. “I was tired of having to buy clothes that were only at certain stores. I felt like I was paying this fat tax — I didn’t have the ability to buy affordable clothes because I was bigger.”