Trash the Wedding Gown!

Let me ask you, what normally a brides do with her wedding gown after wedding ceremony? Keep it nicely in a box or as treasure that pass from generation to generation? Well let me tell you the latest trend: TRASH IT. This trend was started by a Las Vegas photographer John Michael Cooper, and then it started to get more and more popular.

He was freaking bored with the cliche wedding photography, so he started to convince his clients to get wild and extraordinary. According to him, the fashion photography often put “pretty people into ugly scene”, so he wants to apply that into wedding photography too.

There is even a website dedicated to it: TrashtheDress.com, created by Mark Eric to highlight his dress trashing experience & became a place for other photographers to share their trashing too. Here is the manifesto of the site:

Go ahead, you know you want to. Trash it. Get it dirty. Get it wet. Roll around in the mud. Drench it in the ocean. Totally trash it.

Why? … Why not? You’ve made a commitment to your husband. He’s your one and only true love, right? Then you’ll never need the dress again. And no, your daughter won’t wear it in 20-30 years. So you have two choices:

1) Suffocate it in plastic and throw it in a closet
2) Show your husband how committed you are by trashing the dress, and get some great fun pictures while you do it!

According to Associated Content, Trash the Dress phenomenon has been touted as a way for women to celebrate their wedding without becoming obsessed by it. For some, the images are a cathartic release of wedding-related stress. Maybe they want to keep their memory through photography only, the wedding gown symbolizes their past and has no meaning to them anymore.

Although it gets a lot of criticism, but it actually attracted the alternative crowd that is seeking for individuality expression. For me, I think the trash the dress phenomenon is creative and make sense. Why make sense? Wedding gown is a dress that you wore once in lifetime, so what for keeping it and it actually lose its functionality after the wedding ceremony.

So, instead of keeping, why not seeking out a way to “get rid” of it by doing something creative, like what the manifesto mentioned above? I just run through those photography showcase, and it actually not bad and more meaningful, like “Oh yeah, by this photography, I’m become mind-free and cherish the rest of my life with my love one”.

I absolutely support this. But not sure in Malaysia will have this trend or not. More pictures below, credits to NYTimes and trashthedress.com.