Trash The Dress. Really? Really?

Maybe you’re only going to wear it once, but should you trash it?

Some brides trash their dress just for the photos (is there any other reason?). They dive into lakes, jump in the ocean, splatter paint, even set the dress on fire (that one looks completely insane right on the face of it.  DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!).

As I mentioned in my “Queen For A Day” post, in more than three hundred and fifty weddings I’ve never been asked to do a “Trash The Dress” photo session.  Maybe it’s just the kind of people who hire me, or maybe we live in a more straight-laced section of the country (although it’s not conservative, that’s for sure), or maybe the whole thing is a little less common than people think.  There aren’t any statistics to tell us how many brides actually opt for it.

But none of that stops me from having an opinion (surprise!).  I’ll be blunt and go right to the point: I don’t get it.  Sure, I can see it makes for some really cool pictures, but wouldn’t the appeal of those images wear off after a while?  Aren’t the photos that matter those that tell the story of your actual wedding: the smiles, tears, laughs, and hugs?  I just can’t see how a heavily orchestrated clown show would somehow trump the emotions of the real thing.  But that’s just me.  And if someone asked?  Sure, I would do it.  As always, you should do whatever makes you happy.

According to accepted legend, this all started with a Las Vegas wedding photographer in 2001 and quickly became trendy.  But now let’s talk about the logistics and the bottom line.  The average American wedding dress costs about $1100, ranging from the $500 bargains to the $6000 (and up) designer models.  Is that really something you want to wear once and grind into the dirt, or submerge in a swamp, or make into a kindergartner’s finger painting?  I imagine if the worst you do is jump into a swimming pool, the dress can bounce back after a trip to the cleaners.  But these other scenarios spell doom for all that taffeta and tulle.  When you factor in hiring the photographer for another day sometime after the wedding, it gets to be a pretty expensive set of gag photos.  If you’re in the one percent, by all means go for it, but the rest of us might want to think about it.

When I think of all the hours (days? weeks? months? years?) of anguish that go into selecting the dress, and the full day of primping to make it look just right, I’m amazed that anyone would want to chuck it out like last year’s softball uniform.  And I’ve seen heroics performed to save gowns from catastrophe.  The mom who had to remove some runaway marinara sauce from the front of her daughter’s dress about an hour before the ceremony comes to mind.  After all that, were they just going to douse it with Prego?  Don’t think so.

And while I’m on this rant, what about the potential sentimental value?  At my own wedding my wife wore a gorgeous wedding gown that had been worn by her mother, her aunt, her sister, and two cousins.  Would you turn that into something you use to polish the car?  It’s still in the attic, just in case someone in generation next takes a shine to it.

 But as always, I can be totally wrong about this.  Send me a comment and let me know.  And if you’re going to trash your dress, by all means be safe!   Those dresses get really heavy when they’re wet, and the gators in that swamp move mighty fast.

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Groomzilla?

I AM GROOM, HEAR ME ROAR!

I mean no disrespect to my own gender, but most of us recognize that almost the entire wedding extravaganza is about the lovely lady in the white dress.  Grooms are of course essential to the event, but one of them summed up his role to me in five succinct words: “Show up, and shut up.”  He was kidding of course, but that’s within a few “I Do’s” of the truth.

But every so often I’ve witnessed an almost complete role reversal: a bride who smiles sweetly and says “Whatever you would like,” and a groom who takes charge of the whole affair.

That’s right, the groom. Not the bride or a monster mother, but the groom.

I remember one couple who had set aside an unusually long period of time before the wedding for formal photos.  They were already in bridal gown, makeup, and tuxedo a full three hours before the scheduled start of the ceremony, and they had made sure the wedding party and almost everyone else was ready as well. The reason for this uber-punctuality?  The groom wanted a picture of himself with everyone at the wedding. And I mean everyone. He wanted a picture with his second cousin, then his second cousin’s daughter and then his second cousin’s daughter’s niece. And these weren’t group photos, but individual shots only with himself.

He wanted a shot with each individual bridesmaid. Each one. His bride’s best friends.  Never seen anything like it.

Now these photos weren’t the candid type when I happen to catch him speaking to the second cousin’s daughter’s niece.  No, these were posed pictures. We were like a photo studio doing prom pictures with the wedding as an afterthought.

This process took up every single minute of the three hours before the wedding, and we were still at it when someone’s mother (I’ll give you two guesses which mother) called a halt to the proceedings because the ceremony was about to start.

I guess in these days of alleged gender equality it’s fine to be an overzealous groom, believing you are the temporary center of the universe. After all, brides do it. But if you want to have every minute captured on camera, it’s better to roll out a red carpet and hire a team of paparazzi to follow you around just like Will and Kate.

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