Weddings Dresses

Their Weddings Dresses might have hung in a closet, never to be worn again. But that just wouldn't be as much fun. "Trash the dress" or "rock the frock" are new terms for a trend that is's spreading fast via the web.

Trash the dress, AKA intrepid bridal or rock the frock, is a kind of marriage photography that contrasts stylish clothing with an environment in which it is out of place. It is in general shot in the style of fashion and glamour photography. Sometimes brides decide to have photographs taken on a beach, but other locations include city streets, rooftops, rubbish dumps, fields, and abandoned buildings.

Some sources claim that the trend was originally started in 2001 by Vegas wedding snapper John Michael Cooper. However, the idea of destroying weddings dresses has been utilized 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. No longer are weddings dresses remaining castaways in trunks, closets or basement storage rooms. Women are donning their weddings dresses again and trashing them in the most weird of ways.

It's the kind of idea that brought 3 best mates to a Peterborough car wreckers yard. With their hair styled, makeup done and a professional photographer to boot, the 3 former Peterborough ladies put on their white dresses and descended on McIntyre Auto Wreckers on Keene Rd.

Sonya Jamieson, 30, Shannon Pickard, thirty three, and Deanna Chisholm, 33, wanted "one more go" with their weddings dresses. "How often do three best friends get to wear their weddings dresses together?" Pickard said. The three weren't trashing their dresses, but they were racking up some expensive dry cleaning bills walking around in the mud. The concept was about reliving their marriages days and getting one more use of the dresses before the 3 move onto different chapters in their lives, Jamieson claimed.

Among the posy photographs and puffed-up bios that involve the wedding announcement section of sunday Times Style Section, there had been an interesting article on the rising trend of supposed Trash the Dress marriage photography.

Trash the Dress, you say?

It's precisely what it sounds like -- following the sanctified event, the bride straps on that gorgeous dress once again for a last farewell photo to the gown she spent a fortune to wear for one day only . Only rather than posing in some predictably idyllic setting, the picture is shot in a scroungy back alley or a mossy lake.

These supposed Trash the Dress photos became very popular with brides who want to add something radical to their marriage albums. And radical they're -- particularly the photograph at right in which a bride has set her wedding gown on fire, a la Joan of Arc. This shot was taken by a photographer named John Michael Cooper, who coined the phrase Trash the Dress.