A dress you only wear once?

July 18, 2012 A dress you only wear once?

I have heard people refer to a wedding dress as a dress you only wear once so many times. I love love love that this is becoming less and less a trend. However, it’s not a no-brainer to everyone. A majority of brides these days still pay the large fee to get their dress preserved in hopes that their future daughter, if they even have a daughter, will want to wear it one day. For me, picking out my wedding dress was one of my favorite parts of wedding planning (except of course planning the trip to Hawaii!) and I wouldn’t want to deprive my non-existent, hypothetical daughter of that experience!

I want to share with you all, and maybe inspire you a bit, with what I did. I loved my dress and I loved the way I looked and felt in it. I spent a good deal of money on it and I wanted to make sure I got my money’s worth!

I wore it on our wedding day, obviously. (Photo credit to the amazing Jennifer Smutek!)

And then the next morning we met up with Jen again for our “trash the dress” session. Even if “trashing” the dress isn’t your style, you can still do a day after session to get more photos of you and your honey all dolled up, without taking more time away from your guests. You may feel a little more adventurous about doing things that you may not have been willing to do the day before like… oh, lay on some lava rock (not that we have lava rock in MD… but I am willing to fly to Hawaii with you for your TTD ;) ), get in the sand or the ocean!

I did get in the water with my wedding dress but I didn’t go any deeper than knee deep. At the time I had second degree burns on my upper thigh that had not fully healed, and the last thing I wanted was an infected burn wound on my honeymoon. I wish that hadn’t been the case because I would have loved for some more adventurous photos, but I’m SO happy with what we did get! After laying in the sand my dress was COVERED with sand, so I stripped it off and rinsed it in the ocean before carrying it back to our room. It got the sand off and it looked amazing afterwards. I’d heard others say that their dress was actually cleaner after the trash the dress and for me it was true too! Oh and don’t worry, I wore a bathing suit under the dress to the session because I knew I wouldn’t want to wear a sopping wet wedding gown back to our hotel room. And by the way, even just getting knee deep the dress got heaaaaavy so if you plan on doing a trash the dress that involves getting the dress wet, make sure you bring something to throw on afterwards so you don’t end up hating life with an extra 20 lbs (probably exaggerating here) of weight on you back to the car/hotel room/wherever you’re going next.

Oh, and another fun thing about the TTD session is that I got to wear my hair differently for it. I wanted to do a half up/half down ‘do for the wedding day but decided against it for comfort in the Hawaiian sun. It was definitely the right decision! But this way I got the best of both worlds! Comfort and cuteness on the wedding day, and I still got to have some photos of me in my dress with my love with my hair mostly down.

Another note: Both of our moms only bought prints from the trash the dress. They were everyone’s faves!

Oh but that wasn’t all that I did with my dress! When we got back to Maryland we had a reception with our closest friends and family. Between our arrival back home and the party, I got my dress cleaned. It again looked flawless! So even though I got in the ocean, rolled in the sand (not really), and sat on lava rock and drift wood, my dress was back to perfect for our reception. Steve’s shirt didn’t fair as well. We had to buy a new one, and the second actually matched my sash better, whoops!

The photo on the right is after my darling husband smashed a cupcake in my face. I told him if he was going to smash to smash down. He didn’t. The cupcake smelled divine. I couldn’t tell you what it tasted like. I wish I could say that I got him back, but I didn’t really. His reach is much longer than mine. Jerk.

After partying the night away at the lovely Hunt Valley Marriott, the bottom of my dress was BLACK! It wasn’t discolored getting out of the ocean, but after the reception it certainly was. Oh, but that isn’t where this story ends either! This is the never-ending story.

Following our wedding marathon I made an appointment at Alfred Angelo to get my wedding dress shortened. They charged me a smaller fee than the original hem job since, well, I’d already paid for a hem job. She shortened it, changed the shape of the bottom a bit, and took the “bling” off of my sash. I now have a super cute dress to wear for our anniversaries!

I took it to get cleaned again after it was altered and now that it’s a “party dress” and not a wedding dress it cost me $11 to get dry cleaned. Love!

I realize that this isn’t for everyone, but I love that my dress has had so many lives! Even though it started out as an expensive dress that could have only been worn once, it’s turned into much more. Your wedding dress is the single most documented article of clothing you’ll ever own, and for me that goes quadruply so.

Maybe you don’t think your dress would work at a shorter length, or maybe you’re still looking for something to do with it after you do your trash the dress session. Consider donating your gown to someone in need. There are several organizations that take donations, Brides against Breast Cancer being one of them, and there are more listed at DonateMyWeddingDress.org.

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