Letters to the Editor
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From wedding to the real-world.
Many of these pictures that I've seen don't even actually end up trashing the dress. When they get wet or muddy, okay, but an awful lot of the "trash the dress" pictures I've seen friends take have had little actual negative impact on said dress. Instead, they're of the brides outside, in the city or the country, in the places that they love doing things that they love, and doing them in a wedding dress. These are activities which might be peripherally dangerous to the dress--it could get dirty or torn--but the emphasis, to me, isn't on the dress at all, whatever the act is called.
These pictures seem to me to bridge the gap between Wedding and Life. For those of us planning our weddings, the capital letter seems appropriate. They take over a portion of your life no matter how small and casual you intend for them to be. They are held above every other day, made special and sacred, and we spend months or years trying to make them perfect. And then what?
The "trashing" photo is the "after" that goes with all those perfectly poised "before" pictures taken right after the ceremony when you're exhausted and stressed out and overwhelmed. They're the interfacing of the Bride, with all those sacred implications we give that concept, with the world she's going into as a married woman. (I've seen a few with couples, too, which I think are even more powerful.)
There's some decadence to it, but I think it mostly comes down to, "This thing is going to sit in the attic for the rest of my life, why am I stressing out over the possibility that I might get a spot of dirt on it?" Even women in $100 dresses can have pictures like this taken, and I might, myself. We pick the dresses for that one day, with all the attendant expectations and pressures, but what we do afterwards to them, we do for ourselves.
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Awesome
What wonderful fun! The pics are so interesting ... full of such rebellious joy and sass. Admit it ... some of these images are downright disturbing. They make me smile darkly ... I love art.
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What's wrong with these pictures?
I think it's a nice idea, and not because I have a desire to "trash" my wedding gown. My wedding gown was legitimately a beautiful piece of art. It wasn't designer, or wildly expensive, but it was beautiful, and was altered to fit me precicely. Not many (if any, really) peices of clothing that you will ever have in your life are precicely tailored so that they flatter you perfectly. It would be nice to have a series of "arty" photos of myself, in my favorite piece of clothing, that weren't taken at the wedding. Personally, I loved that dress, and I loved it both because it was my wedding gown AND because it was a gorgeous dress that I just loved to wear. I tried it on millions of times before my wedding, it made me feel special and beautiful. And I don't think that's pathetic, as deering suggested. I don't know - there's a lot of bride-hating going on recently (Slate recently had a wedding issue that was an explosion of bride/wedding hate) and I just don't get it. What's so awful about being excited about owning/wearing a beautiful dress? What's so terrible about wanting pictures of yourself in it? I agree with the posters that say it's less about ruining the dress and more about art. Many wedding photos are more concerned with getting every important family member in at least one, they're not about capturing the dress and the woman wearing it as art in and of itself.
I think a lot of it is that people just want to feel superior to others, and by so doing they need to condemn whatever it is that they themselves are NOT doing. Call me vain, but I like looking at my wedding album. I think I looked great that day, and I like having a series of pictures I look great in. Why shouldn't I? That dress was gorgeous - and in fact, I have several pictures just of the dress itself, without me in it. I wouldn't mine more. I don't think that makes me a bad person.
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Aesthetic Recycling
Let's not get too tsk tsk-y about beauty. Beauty is a good thing. Every once in a while our Puritan roots rear up and we start having trouble seeing the difference between a reasonable and joyful expenditure on something with aesthetic value and a hollow narcissistic excess. Not all wedding dresses and not all weddings, even some of the ones that cost a bit of dough, are the latter. There are certainly ethical issues (e.g. who made the dress and how much were they paid?), and practical ones (e.g. is this the fruit of your own labor, a loving gift from family, a resented gift from family, or something that's going to put you into major debt?), but there are ways to navigate those potentially troubled waters and still do something beautiful.
Making beautiful pictures that you will put on your wall and look at every day is a much better use of the money you spent on the dress than keeping the thing in a closet for eternity. I agree that donating the dress is an even better idea. But why begrudge people for making some unique and interesting photography out of something they had already purchased anyway? For goodness sakes, we are always bemoaning how dull and formulaic our wedding traditions are. Here's something that is original and vital, at least for now. Hooray for that! It's aesthetic recycling, if you ask me, and I'm all for it.
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Make "Grandmaw gasp"?
Real grandmaws will shoelace your nuts if you try to call them 'grandmaw,' let alone attempt to make them gasp.
Is there no one clued into the real world anymore? What is so interesting about all of these empty anonymous people in their shiny clothes that are worth more than they are?
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That's not what I said...
>Personally, I loved that dress, and I loved it both because it was my wedding gown AND because it was a gorgeous dress that I just loved to wear. I tried it on millions of times before my wedding, it made me feel special and beautiful. And I don't think that's pathetic, as deering suggested.<
Um, what I _said_ was pathetic was the notion that:
>>...for once (perhaps the only time) in thier lives, when you put on your wedding dress you do have a "mantle of beauty" that no one can take away from you<<
That nonsense is the reason women become Bridezillas--and why weddings become a trial for a lot of people. That idea that a woman's greatest day is always the day she gets married 1)is false; 2) causes too many women to lose their sense of proportion. It doesn't make sense to invest that day with so darn much import--it's as if that day is the only one in which a woman becomes a person with beauty/power/autonomy, and that's simply not true. Let me ask you this--what _does_ that day symbolize to brides? If it's anything more than "I'm marrying the man I love," then it's too frickin' much.
>I don't know - there's a lot of bride-hating going on recently (Slate recently had a wedding issue that was an explosion of bride/wedding hate) and I just don't get it.<
Because society is wedding-crazy, and "bride-hating" is a way to strike back at the incessant media coverage and underlying pressure to get hitched. As well, it's a way to say that being married is not the only great way to live one's life.