Trash the dress

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Examples from a trash-the-dress shoot

Trash the dress, fearless bridal, and rock the frock refers to photography that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is completely out of place. It is generally shot in the style of glossy beauty and glamour photography.

Usually brides decide to have pictures taken on the beach, but possibilities are endless. City streets, rooftops, garbage dumps, fields, and abandoned buildings are only few examples of trash the dress session locations.

Some sources claim that the trend was originally started in 2001 by Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper^[1]. However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used 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.

A model often wears a ball gown, prom dress or wedding dress^[2], and may effectively ruin the dress in the process by getting it wet, dirty or in extreme circumstances tearing or destroying the garment.

It may also be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away, never to be seen again.