How To Trash A Wedding Dress

Melanie and Ryan chose to do their “bridal” session after their wedding. Melanie and I talked about doing a “trash the dress” session. Trashing the dress is also known as “free to flaunt“, “rock the frock”, and “fearless bridal”. Sessions like these are not about trashing a wedding dress for the sake of doing it. It’s about creation, taking a sometimes-crazy idea, and executing it. The exciting thing about it is that you start with an idea and new things you never thought of, start to develop during the shoot. In fact, we weren’t planning on Ryan being in a tux, but he remembered he had one from a wedding he was in, and sort of forgot to return. Oops! The tux just completed the picture perfectly (no pun intended).

These sessions can range from fairly tame to totally wrecking the dress (as a side effect of the brilliant concept, of course). It could simply mean sitting on rocks, on the ground, getting the dress wet (all of which can be cleaned) to something like we did for Melanie where we painted and burned the dress. We definitely trashed the dress. Oh my!

These two have kind of a rock and roll style, so I wanted to customize their session in a way that was a little edgy. I can’t quite remember how it all came about, but I think Melanie mentioned the Great Salt Lake. That made me think of the graffiti building by Saltair, which made me think of spray paint, and the fire thing–I don’t remember where that came from, but I envisioned them sitting on the ground enjoying the fire, ironically, in their wedding attire.

Before we destroyed Melanie’s dress, we thought we’d do some pretty bridals. Melanie’s daughter came along, wearing her matching gown. The snow was perfect, soft and floaty, blowing gently around them, and there was a touch of sun filtering through the clouds, which really enhanced the falling snow.

We had an awesome time doing this. I mean, how often do you get to trash a wedding dress and tux?