Did You "Trash the Dress" After Your Wedding?

The best thing I have ever seen done with a wedding dress was make it into a beautiful skirt for a bassinet. The skirt was cut to fit the bassinet with a big pc taken out of the back for the hood of the bassinet. It was beautiful. so frilly/lacy. the baby's christening dress/outfit can also be made out of the wedding dress. what a beautiful way to show the love that the baby was created in.

How sad and terribly selfish. There are many brides who can't afford to buy A wedding dress, much less the dress of their dreams, and here are people who don't think of others and ruin something special just for fun. I donated mine right after the wedding, and I really hope someone had just as much fun, just as special a day as I did while wearing it!

I cannot imagine doing this! If you don't want to keep it -then donate it for someone who has no money. My wedding gown was/is gorgeous and we had it preserved and stored after the wedding. If someone wants to wear it someday, I'll be honored, and if not, it can be a family heirloom. If I didn't care about any of that, I would have found someone who would really appreciate it and given it to her!

I got married two years ago. The trash the dress trend was in effect. I've never been the sentimental type, so I knew I didn't want to hold onto mine. Rather than trash it, I chose to donate mine instead. http://www.bridesagainstbreastcancer.org/

I shipped the dry cleaned dress in its "keepsake box." Brides against Breast Cancer gave me a tax deductible donation receipt. At the time, they sold donated dresses and used the proceeds for breast cancer research.

If you don't mean to keep your dress, consider this or another charity.

Wow, thanks for bringing me up to speed. Never heard of this, but checked it out.

You could say mine was trashed. But truth is, I had mine cut up and sewn into a baptismal gown. Best thing I could think of to do with mine.

Although, I'm not against the whole "trash the dress" idea, I'm glad mine was made into something more memorable.

seriously?
i'm so glad i'm out of the loop!
who would do that??
:/ khairete
S.

Never heard of that before! I'm actually planning on having it altered and dyed black (my fave color) along with the shoes. So I can wear it for special occasions. (I don't like white)

Hi Ladies,

I am a photographer and thought I would help explain what a "Trash the Dress" session means.

These type of session have been going on for a long time(10+ years), and became very popular in the last 4-5 years.

Some photographers and brides take the meaning very literally. They trash the dress, and have a fun time doing so, and getting artsy, avante garde images of the session. This bride typically doesn't care if the dress gets really stained, wet or even torn.

For me-when I do a Trash the Dress session, it doesn't mean that you actually Trash the Dress. It means that you and your hubby do another portrait session sometime shortly after the wedding. Since the event is over and there aren't the normal time constraints or stress as on a wedding day- we can take our time getting those images at locations that may not have been possible on the actual wedding day.

With this type of session we don't destroy the dress at all. But, the bride is much more relaxed if it does get dirty. They've already had the ceremony & reception and if the dress gets dirt or stained at the bottom from walking around outside-she doesn't care. All the guests have already seen the dress, and she'll take it in to the dry cleaners after the session.

The goal with this type of image is still to get artsy, cool, avant garde images-but not destroying the dress in the process.

If someone really likes the idea of trashing a dress in a session but doesn't want to use their own dress-they buy a second hand O. for little money. Their original dress is safe in box and the inexpensive O. gets trashed.

Hope this makes sense!

Cheers,
T.

WWW.roperphoto.com

No.
I have it still.
All cleaned and wrapped up.
I showed it to my daughter.

No. After the amount I paid for a beautiful dress, I wasn't about to trash it. I am hoping to pass it down to other generations. I did consider selling it to recoup some of the cost (and I did shop around & got a good deal and it was still expensive), but DH talked me out of it.

ABSOLUTELY NOT! Mine is boxed & preserved, either waiting for O. of my girls to use as is, modify or use parts in their own custom dress. My hubby & I will be married 18 yrs this summer & our girls are still in elementary. But the boxed wedding dress is still waiting for the right time to come out.

My questions is WHY? Why would you go through all the time & Expense to HUNT for the "Perfect" dress then TRASH It? stupid, plain stupid.

I think that it could be really cool. At the end of the day, the only tangible thing you have left from the wedding are the pictures. If you could get some really cool pictures, it would be worth it (to me) to take advantage without worrying about what it was going to do to some dress you are never going to wear again. But then, I don't see the point of spending thousands of dollars on a wedding dress, so it wouldn't be that great of a loss for me. I'm not outdoorsy, but if I had had a beach or a mountain wedding, or something like that, I would have rather gotten cool photos than fixate on keeping some fabric that was never going to see the light of day again perfect.

Hmmm, I spent $700 on my wedding gown from Laura Ashley (a Holy fortune in 1990). We had a reception in a nearby state park. I DID muck it up a little, and like Rachel we DID go out afterwards (but we all changed).

I took it to a cleaners that specializes in such things and spent ANOTHER hundred bucks having it boxed and such.

I did not chuck it til 3 years after I left my husband. And oddly, after reading today's posts, I somehow regret it.

:(

I'm not sure what type of people that find this trendy but most women I've always known spend too much money to trash their dress. I've known no O. who intentionally trashed their dress. Some women save it for their daughters as well. Maybe it's trashy people who trash their dresses? LOL

K. B
mom to 5 including triplets

I don't even know what that is...I am out of touch. I guess it is probably exactly what it sounds like.

I didn't wear a dress when I got married (we are waiting for our girls to ask to see wedding pictures and demand we renew our vows with mom in a dress).

Nope! I had mine preserved along with my daughter's flower girl dress. :)

This is just another example of how little our society values things.

.

I never heard of this, so I wikipediaed it (doesnt roll off the tongue like googled it)

Trash the dressFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Trash The Dress" style photo featuring both the bride and groom on the beach.
Examples from a "trash the dress" shoot on a beach.
Trash the dress, also known as fearless bridal or rock the frock, is a style of wedding photography that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is out of place. It is generally shot in the style of fashion and glamour photography.

Usually brides decide to have pictures taken on a beach, but other locations include city streets, rooftops, garbage dumps, fields, and abandoned buildings.

Some sources claim that the trend was originally started in 2001 by Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper.[1] However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used in Hollywood symbolically since at least October 1998 when Meg Cummings of the show Sunset Beach ran into the ocean in her wedding dress after her wedding was badly interrupted. Since then the style has spread around the world and most notably in the UK, with photographers like Steve Gerrard[2] and Mark Theisinger,[3] amongst others, shoot their unique ideas of Trash the Dress.

A model often wears a ball gown, prom dress or wedding dress, and may effectively ruin the dress in the process by getting it wet, dirty or in extreme circumstances tearing or destroying the garment.

It may be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away, never to be seen again.

In a Mass Trash The Dress event September 9, 2009 more than 150 women wore their wedding dresses once more and were pictured on a beach in Scheveningen, Netherlands. Fine art photographer Melanie Rijkers (MeRy) initiated the act after she found out about the American phenomenon 'Trash the dress' on the internet. First mass Trash The Dress: 08-08-'08. Future dates: 10-10-'10, 11-11-'11 and 12-12-'12.

Good heavens, no. I wore my mom's dress, so I sure am glad she didn't trash it either!

No way! I really don't get the whole fad myself...

Ewww. Trendy is sometimes weird.

I have mine. I don't know what I'll do with it, because my daughters were/are not interested. But I'll hang on to it, even though it didn't cost thousands of dollars!

NO WAY!!! I had mine preserved as well as my daughters baptism dress that looked very close to my wedding dress. That goes right along with.... these women spend alot of time and money finding the right dress, getting their hair just perfect, having their makeup done just to smash the cake all over them. I just don't understand that. And now they are trashing the dress. WHY????? Why spend the time to find that perfect dress and spend good money on it just to trash it. I really don't understand todays society. That is not a trend it's just stupidity!!!

I completely understand how many women would not want to do a "Trash the Dress" session. I was the same way when I got married. I wanted to keep my dress for my daughter to eventually use some day (whether in whole or in pieces) or pass it down to some of the girls that I was a mentor to. However, 6 months after I got married, my husband walked out on my daughter and I. He hasn't been back since, and it's been almost 5 years. I guess you can say that I now look on the dress in spite. When we got married, I got a really great deal on the dress. I didn't spend more than $200 on it. The dress has no meaning to me now, and I am O. of those people that believe that you should not pass on a dress if the marriage ends in divorce. My best friend has recently started into photography so we have been discussing doing a "Trash the Dress" session. It is my way of closure for the marriage that ended the way it did.

I did! The weekend after my wedding, I had a friend take photos of me with my horse. I'm so glad I did. They turned out gorgeous! My horse stepped on my dress, leaving big muddy hoof marks and it got grass stains, too, but I just threw it in the washing machine when I got home. The stains came out and the dress is still beautiful! We were having so much fun with the photo shoot that my friend (whose house we were at), got her dress out of storage and took pics with her horse, too. She was a bit worried her mom would get upset that the dress was taken out of preservation (her mom paid for that), but once she saw the photos, it didn't matter!

Seeing as how people are paying thousands of dollars for a wedding dress that they wear only once. I think it would be stupid to do this unless it was after a divorce!

No I did not. I instead donated my dress to a local community group where they have 16 year olds wear wedding dresses as a coming out at this huge ball (dad or brother or uncle is their "date" in a tux/suit). Before that I let a local theatre group use it for a play, think it was for 7 brides for 7 brothers.

I was going to keep it but I am never going to wear it again, loved it but never going to wear it again, and morethenlikely my daughter will not want to wear so I decided to get more use out of it by donating it and letting others use it.

I vaule the dress & memories but to be honest I do not want to keep something around that takes up a lot of space that I never will wear again. Plus I have pics.

Even with the trend explained ( thanks Terri R.) - I still don't understand it.
If you have so little respect for the dress you married in, why buy O.?
People use to get married in a suit or their Sunday best.
The logic runs something like "lets spend lots of money on something special then take a sledge hammer to it". Would this make sense if it were a car, or a house or a piece of furniture?
The whole smashing the glass thing (or a guitar, I guess) after a particularly good wine (or performance) is so it will never be used again for a lesser purpose. It never made sense to me either.
There's be no more Stradivarius violins left if everyone thought that way.
"Ming Dynasty porcelain? Hey, let's smash it!! It would make a cute picture!"
Are you out of your flipping mind?
How cute a picture is just throwing money out the window or burning it?
How amused would the photographer be if he learned his payment just went up in smoke?
Destruction is easy - and horrible.
I refuse to view it as an artistic statement or anything positive.
People will do things in mobs that no sane individual would contemplate doing. A lot of what I see on Facebook and Youtube resembles mob behavior.

I just googled it... looked at a few photos, and personally, I find many of the images disturbing! Women with the dress they are wearing on fire, women in the mud (degrading) dirty. O. even had the legs of a woman in a dirty wedding dress poking out of the back of a trunk (on abc.com). I'm sorry but I think that is disgusting. Please donate your dress to charity if you do not want to keep it. There are thousands of women out there who can not afford a dress.

What a waste of resources.

J.

I didn't have a traditional dress. I designed it, sewed parts of it myself and paid to have others sewn. I also sewed a lot of the bridal party's clothing including my husbands pants. I wore the under skirt & bodice with a top my mom sewed for me when we went to tea with my husband's family in England on our honeymoon. I wore the floral head wreath(artificial flowers) for our handfasting a year later with another dress I made(more the color I wanted for our legal wedding but my mom would have nothing of me in a rosey red instead of white o_O)
I still have all the parts. I didn't go through all the preserving or anything but I have it. I would never trash it!

I think that sounds like a fun idea. I haven't "trashed" mine, but it is currently being made into a quilt. I have no use for it again, and I doubt my daughter would want to wear my dress when she gets married...she deserves to have her own dress.

I don't think this changes the way we "value" things at all. I'm curious as to why a wedding dress needs to be preserved and saved in a box in the closet?? How does that show the value?

I made my daughter christening dress out of mine... It was nice to know my daughter wore my dress, and hopefully she will use the dress for her daughter (if she has O.!)

I sold mine to my best friends sister....who turned out to be the same exact size and didn't do any alterations to it.
I think it got good use out of it.

I didnt, but I want to. The only reason why my wedding dress is still in a bag in my closet is because my husband wants to keep it for sentimental value. I wish I could just get rid of it, though, it takes up room. I did only pay $100 for it, and the seamstress messed it up and had me pick it up a day BEFORE my wedding. I really didnt like the dress or how it fit on me. I took it off immediently after the wedding in the church bathroom.

No way! My dress was "only" $600 but that makes it the most expensive article of clothing I have ever worn. It's really pretty and fairly basic...and therefore classic (I hope). If O. of my sons partners with a really short woman, I plan to offer it to her...I was 5 months pregnant at my wedding so its' wide enough to accomodate a lot of body types!

Shoot, I plan on giving up all my expensive wedding jewelry over the years too (to grand-daughters? daughters in law?). No point in destroying any of it (or taking it to the grave:).

I wish I had, I would have taken my dog Jake to the creek and played ball and had pictures taken, but I never thought of it. I would have loved to have had those memories. He was my the very first love of my life and is gone forever, and the dress sits (somewhere). My husband is still alive and well and we have our pictures so I wish I had though of that!

Wow! How sad. My wedding dress was the only thing I really liked about my wedding (well...and getting married to DH of course).
I would never. I still marvel at how much my parents spent on it and it wasn't super expensive.
Maybe O. day DD will want to wear it...but DD and I seem to have little we both like. Lol. Plus, I think she's gonna be about 6" taller than me. :)
Just can't imagine...

"This is just another example of how little our society values things."
So very true.

Nope...Had mine preserved! It cost 7K!!!!!!!!! So there is no way I'd do that plus I want to give it to my daughter if nothing but for a keepsake. :)

I wore jeans and a t-shirt (not even sure which O.) to the DJ LoL So no, I didn't. I don't think I would either. . .

I had to buy a new wedding dress the day before my wedding because the dry cleaner (and their seamstress) screwed up my original O.. Our photographer told me it would be really neat to Trash the Original Dress by photographing my new hubby and I jumping into the pool at our reception. I would have, but I spent a fortune on hair, makeup, etc, and I didn't want to spend my wedding dance soaked to the bone with mascara streaking down my cheeks. I don't regret it. I still have the dress I got married in, but about a year later, I literally trashed the original dress.

I can't see the point of deliberately ruining the clothes you wore on such a special occasion.