Meh, it’s her dress. Am I the only one who thought some of those art shots looked great?
Nope–I thought they looked really good. Like she was drowning…but beautifully.
It may be the packrat in me, but just destroying it for a photograph seems so wasteful.
Those seem like good suggestions.
Using it for a quilt. Or a baby blanket. Other ways of repurposing it also seem fine. But just ruining a perfectly good dress for the sake of ruining it? How…different from my own way of thinking.
My wife plans to have hers made into a baby blanket that we’ll use to take our first child home from the hospital. Very sweet, but wearing it in a moshpit has a certain visceral appeal as well.
I wouldn’t do it, I wore my mother’s dress, it was plain and I had our seamstress friend make it into what I wanted. It was very nice, then my SIL wore it and had the same friend change it into what she wanted. If I can copy pics I will post them. If the dress was expensive, hell no. But that isn’t something that I would do.
BadkittyPriestess
I think it’s awful. And this from a woman who went through an unfriendly divorce. I have actually been trying to find someone who might use it to make vintage-quality baptism gown type things. I think I will get myself to craigslist.
Thinking about this more, I’m going to amend my answer to say it very much depends on the dress and the person. My dress was not expensive, and it is a colour that I almost never wear and don’t particularly like for everyday clothes (it’s ivory - I’m a dark clothes/bright colours person) - I won’t be making my dress into anything for me to wear. About all I can think to make my dress into would be curtains, maybe. Getting really cool shots of me and my husband trashing the dress - hell yeah.
But I agree that paying thousands for a single use dress is ridiculous to start with.
I’m not planning on getting a super expensive wedding dress, and I realize there’s a good chance that I’ll end up with a pretty wrecked dress at the end of the night, as we’re getting married and having our reception on the beach. I’m just not planning on spending a ton of money on the dress, and if I get some cool pictures that just happen to make the dress unrepairable, I’m not too concerned. I’m not planning on having kids, and my taste in dresses doesn’t seem to be all that common as far as wedding wear goes. I’m not even a common size in the area, so giving a dress away to charity may be more of a burden on the charity to get rid of it than helping someone else with a like new cheap dress.
I think some of the art shots are really pretty, and having been to a wedding that didn’t do the Trash the Dress thing, I can tell you that the bottom hem of a floor length dress will get trashed even when care is taken to not mess it up. I just wouldn’t be one of those people who buys a $4000 gown to start with, so I’m not as concerned with it getting wrecked.
I cut mine up to use some of the appliques on a friend’s wedding dress, then used the remainder of them on a sweatshirt (which I named “The Bride Wore Sweats”). It was a very pretty dress, but what was I going to do with it? I never would have kids, and it didn’t occur to me to sell or donate it.
Ow. That makes my brain hurt. I’ve worn my wedding dress dozens of times, but that’s because it wasn’t wedding dressy. If I didn’t intend to wear my wedding dress I’d either reuse it (I helped my friend make awesome curtains out of hers) or donate it. If I was feeling really enthusiastic, I might do a consignment shop thing.
Yeah, it’s her dress and she can do whatever she wants with it, but I take that “reduce, reuse, recycle” thing pretty seriously. Every garment I own is either bought from a thrift shop or goes to a thrift shop, sometimes both, unless it’s so gross and stained that it gets cut into rags or cut up and made into scarves, handbags or clothes for my daughter.
Seems to me to be yet another example of the “I’m the bride and it’s all about me” culture. Sure, torture your mom and your maid of honor for six months with your search for the perfect dress, obsess for the next six months about gaining weight, then trash the thing after the wedding. OK, whatever.
If shots of the bride romping through the surf or sitting in a dead tree or on the hood of a rusted-out truck have some personal significance for the bride or groom, those photos might be more meaningful that a lot of the standard, contrived wedding shots. But most of the artsy-fartsy photos struck me as an exercise in seeing how far the photographer could push the juxtaposition of the white dress and the surroundings.
It’s your dress. Do what you want. But in 10, 15, 20 years (assuming the marriage survives), I bet the photos you get the biggest kick out of are the ones of the people who came to your wedding.
I think my dress cost me nearly 1000$ once the final alterations were made (it required some pretty elaborate adjustment of the embroidery by hand!). I loved the dress too much to pass it up, and allowed myself the indulgence…
The dress isn’t even in a preserved box, since we figured it wasn’t worth the cost. I don’t know what to do with it. I’m not even sure where it is; I think it’s probably in a closet at my parent’s place.
It never occurred to me to “trash” it, but now that I think of it, it would be a heck of a lot of fun to get all dressed up again like on our wedding day (though his suit was rented) and take pictures doing activities we love, but which might be messy. Kayaking in wedding outfits! For our engagement, my husband paid for a flight in one of the trainers at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum… I can imagine some pretty fun pictures sitting in a Stearman, or the Lancaster!
I don’t know that we’ll do it… maybe for an anniversary? I actually like the idea… I don’t see it as destroying what a wedding means, but rather showing that it isn’t about the WEDDING, it’s about the MARRIAGE. Of course, in my mind, my husband is in nearly all the pictures (same as for our wedding pics… we have some individual shots, but they are mostly together or with friends and family).
Y’know, I think I need to back up and change my vote. If, like you say, you’re wearing your dress again to do really fun stuff and get some beautiful pictures (which, some of those in the linked article ARE beautiful) and the dress just *happens *to get trashed in the process, then I think that falls under the “reuse” category. Goodness knows I’ve worn my old wedding dress in the rain, around bonfires, in the mud and tromped through small creeks in it. The dress isn’t sacred, it’s just a dress.
It’s the intentional destruction for destruction’s sake, like the woman taking scissors to the dress, that I’m appalled by.
Just a few more thoughts… imagine doing an activity like that every year (or every 5, 10, 15…65) years of marriage. The dress gets more and more ragged, and your last pictures might just be you holding what looks like a handkerchief… but you’ve done this with your spouse the whole time. I think that would make an AMAZING photo album, and be more fun and meaningful to descendants than the dress itself would be. The fancy trappings might have faded away, but you’re both still there.
I’m already 2.5 years into my marriage, but I’m seriously thinking of starting something like this! One hell of a motivator to keep in shape, too 
Although the photos I looked at are beautiful, as a new wedding trend I think it speaks to the excess and the “it’s all about me” attitude that seems to be overtaking US weddings. It’s mine and you can’t have it! Look how affluent I am, I can waste a $4000 dress without caring.
I’ve been married twice. The first time I wore a dress I bought at a consignment shop. After the wedding I donated it to Brides Against Breast Cancer. For my second wedding I wore a suit I got for $25 at Nordstrom Rack.
Ooooh, I love this idea! I thought the photos in the slideshow on that site were awesome, and I don’t see how sticking the dress in a box in the atic is somehow more respectful than getting it wet. But I really love mnemosyne’s idea. If I had a real wedding dress I might do it.
Also, everyone is assuming all of these dresses cost thousands of dollars. I’m sure some do, but probably lots are in the hundreds of dollars range, and of the ones that cost thousands, I imagine many more thousands were wasted on the wedding, so why get up in arms about this particular waste?
I’m changing my vote to say that this idea sounds cool. And it’s very appropriate that it was suggested by someone named mnemosyne.
Wow! I’m kind of getting choked up imaging that. Fabulous idea, mnemosnyne!
The trash the dress photos I’ve seen have been beautiful, especially the water ones. I’m trying to buy a dress that I can wear again but if I did have a traditional wedding dress I’d be more inclined to trash it than stash it. Though selling/donating it (rehash it?) is probably the least wasteful if that is the concern.