I too love your idea, mnemosyne (especially having your husband in all the pictures, too - showing that it really is all about the marriage, not YOUR SPECIAL DAY!!1!!!)
I think there were some great photos, but it’s nothing I would do.
I was all prepared to go off about how wasteful and horrible this is. I’m already opposed by the extreme display of consumption weddings are.
But those were some damn good photos. Photos, even, that are a better keepsake than the dress itself. And it doesn’t seem like the point was to destroy thie dress…it was more like something that might happen. I’m sure people destroy plenty more expensive clothes at regular fashion shoots.
So, I vote for yes.
I am a wedding photographer, and that’s how I feel about it. It was interesting the first couple times it’s been done, but now it’s just so, I don’t know, gimmicky and contrived is the best word I could come up with. If a bride asked me to do one, sure I’d do it, but I just couldn’t suggest it, because I don’t have the heart to ask a bride to sully up a dress she spend thousands on.
Um, yeah. I came into this thread expecting it would be all about women destroying their stored-up wedding dresses after a divorce!
As for me - I don’t purposely destroy things I own. So that would be a no. And I have worn my wedding dress since the wedding (to a costume party, as Galadriel) and certainly would again, should the opportunity present.
She couldn’t have had that epiphany before spending a shitload of money?
mnemosyne, I agree that’s a beautiful idea, but c’mon…who’s gonna stay married to the same guy all that time? 
Okay, seriously, the pictures were pretty, but I’ve got no interest in having arty pictures of myself. I’d rather wear the dress again or give it to someone. My dress cost less than $200. I keep thinking I need to dye it black so I can wear it some more. That Brides Against Breast Cancer thing sounded good too.
Never worn a wedding dress and probably never will. At least not one of those white poofy numbers. Blech. In any event, I’m not sure why you’d buy something in the first place if you disliked it enough to trash it.
Also, does anyone else find some of the pictures kind of morbid? The one on the front page looks like a corpse.
My personal opinion is that I couldn’t care less - wedding photos are only interesting to the wedded couple - and possibly guests and close relatives for a little while after the event.
My feeling about trashing wedding dresses is the same - it’s just not very interesting.
Appalling. Although, I’ll admit, the pictures may be appealing–I have no particular objection to a bride a beach wedding walking on in to the ocean or something. And I’m not entirely sure why it’s better to stick the dress in your closet for the rest of your life rather than get some enjoyment out of destroying the dress. Although maybe some of that is the gimickry of it–and the whole “it’s all about the bride” thing.
I thought some of the pictures were great! I think that the name of the trend, “Trash the Dress,” is deliberately (and stupidly) provocative.
The picture of the woman taking scissors to her dress – she could be on the verge of making it over into a christening dress (the fate of my mom’s wedding dress) and simply wanted to capture the moment in an interesting photograph. Or not … but you can’t tell from the picture what she plans to do.
There was at least one water picture that I loved – the bride looked like a mermaid, it was so lovely. If you loved the water, if it was really important to you, that would be a great way of capturing that in a photograph.
How often would you look at a dress in a box at the back of a closet?
How often would you look at a photo like this blown up, framed and put on the wall.
I like the trend, but I can’t see my fiancee going for it when we get married in a couple of months. Her dress is costing some obscene amount of money, £2,400 I think.
Then again, her father has spent something like £25,000 on the wedding so far. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but it’s all for ONE DAY! The thought of it just makes me go slightly weak in the pocket.
Exactly. I love the idea. I still wear my wedding shoes because I had them dyed black when we got home. If my husband didn’t have my dress hostage in his closet, I would definitely do it. Although now I’m thinking that since we’ve started crushing grapes to make our own wine, me stomping around in a vat of grapes in it would be awesome. We could even make a label out of it. 
Hmmmm.
The more I think about it, the more bizarre it seems. Is there going to be a picture of my husband swimming around in his tux, too, or are we both just going to admire me and a pretty dress every single day?
I admit, I’m probably weird, since I don’t even have wedding pictures except whatever’s stored on my husband’s computer.
Made me think Ophelia floating down the stream…
Yeah, if I were thin enough and young enough not to look really silly in my dress (14 years later), I’d do it, except my parents would be horrified at the idea.
And no, not all wedding-dresses are “classic” or “timeless” and mine is horribly out of date. It’s totally early 90’s, style-wise.
I think that would be so fantastically super!
Most of the dresses don’t look at all trashed to me. I’m not seeing the big deal about this.
I find it disturbing as well. Kind of like burning a flag.
To all those people saying “Why does it matter? It’s just a dress!” … well then, why did the bride spend all that money to buy a wedding dress in the first place? If a wedding dress is “just a dress” then why did she not get married in a nice dress she could wear on other occasions?
To me, the symbolism is more like “I have married my one true love, so I won’t be needing a wedding dress ever again.”
How is that not a good thing?
In the Orthodox Jewish world, there are associations called gemachs that exist to give free loans. Traditionally, they’re for money, but the most common gemach type nowadays lends you stuff for a small fee that you might not otherwise be able to afford. There are gemachs for baby stuff like cribs and strollers, medical equipment such as crutches and wheelchairs, and of course for wedding attire, both for the bride and for the female members of the wedding party. Usually bridal gemachs involve several hundred dollars of fees for the cleaning, alterations, etc., but they’re much cheaper than a gown from the places that specialize in Orthodox wedding clothes, which offer much more coverage than most commercial available gowns.
I saved my dress because I loved it, and would consider dying it to wear again at a sibling’s wedding (it’s silk shantung, and much more dyable than the usual satins), but if I didn’t want it again, I’d much rather donate it to a gemach so that somebody who couldn’t afford a dress could wear my beautiful one. If you don’t want your dress, somebody else might as well benefit. I routinely wear both pairs of my wedding shoes (white strappy sandals for the photos and ceremony, gold ballet flats for dancing), because I didn’t want to get those stupid satin slippers that look grungy after one wearing.
That said, some of those pictures were lovely. The ones that were done purely for the shock value (look at me! I’m cutting up my incredibly expensive dress!), without any particular aesthetic appeal, seem childish to me.
I guess I’d draw a distinction between “Hey, let’s make some arty pictures of you in your wedding dress, juxtaposing the formal dress with a setting where you’d never expect to find it, like water, but maybe your dress will get ruined, is that okay?” – and – “Hey, let’s just fucking TRASH your wedding dress because you feel anti-wedding!” If the motivation is truly to trash the dress – destruction for its own sake – I find that inexcusably wasteful. Just because you’re never going to use something again doesn’t mean you should destroy it – not if it can be of use to someone else at no cost or effort to you.
I also agree with Autolycus that it is at odds with how many of us would expect a bride to feel about something so closely associated with her wedding day. The act of destroying something – anything – indicates at best you don’t value it at all and at worst you loathe it. Those are odd feelings to associate with what presumably should be a very happy day.
And I think some of the photos are just bizarre – the one that looks like Millais’ Ophelia, the one of the bride’s corpse stuffed in a trunk – the association of the bride’s own wedding with death strikes me as really, really strange.
I can get behind “bride on a fire escape” – not your every day “bride” picture – and I can get behind “bride as mermaid,” especially with a frothy, mermaid-y dress. And if the dress suffers, so be it; there’s a cost to creating art. But the pictures that associate weddings with death are strange. And the ones where it’s just destruction for destruction’s sake are stupid, selfish, and wasteful.
Arty wedding photos: Yes.
“Trash Your Dress”: No.