A wedding dress can mean many different things to a woman...
A symbol of purity, grace and love. A gown can represent her personality. A dress that will allow her to feel her very best on one of the most important days or her life. A chance to feel like Cinderella for the day. A little girls dream come true.
For me, the dress symbolized something else. Creativity.
My wedding dress was not my first choice. Actually, it was the first wedding dress I had ever tried on but thought I wanted something different, so back on the hanger it went. After numerous dresses and stores later I came back to the original dress and fell in love. In this case I guess it wasn't love at first sight...but love at second glance.
I wouldn't class it as over the top or simple. Nor would I class it as ultra glamorous or modern. My dress would fall into the classic yet spruced up category (yes, I made this category up, just go with it).
Ya ya, pretty dress. Truth is, I knew I always planned on "trashing" my dress from the get go. Don't get me wrong, I loved my wedding dress but I also wanted to utilize it to the fullest. As a generous wedding gift to myself and my husband, a friend of ours gave us a photo session. A "trash the dress" photo session of course. Hayley Rae Photography came with us to Derby Reach in Langley, which runs along the Fraser River. This is the location where the magic happened...
I have never and will never regret what I did to my dress. These photos are more meaningful to me then the dress ever was. Some think I am crazy, others understand the artistic side in me can not go unheard. The dress was diamond white (this is the whitest white you can get a wedding dress) and I was able to turn it a slight yellow down the front from laying flat in the mud. No harm, just a little discoloration. To tell you the truth, I didn't even have my dress professionally cleaned afterwards. The cleaning process went a little like this: I hung my dress in the shower, sprayed it with some spot cleaner, waited, scrubbed it with a scrub brush you wash pots with, then rinsed it off with water. Good as new...sort of. The only issue I had was the ground in dirt underneath the train, I still took this cleaning as a win and called it a day.
You would think at this point I would be satisfied with the use I got out of my wedding dress.
Wrong!
Next up, my creative juices continued to flow. With the idea to get a bunch of wedding industry vendors together to collaborate a mock bridal photo shoot, the dress would be needed once again. This time a model wore my dress for a "rustic" bridal portion of the shoot. I took off the rhinestones on the front and replaced them with a burlap sash with silver embellishments. With the help, once again from the very talented Hayley Rae Photography, we achieved our goal and created gorgeous shots!
Two months of planning was well worth it!
Ok, this dress has seen more things in life then many others have, but there was just one item left on its bucket list.
Halloween...it has to be one of my favorite holidays. Being a make-up artist I am allowed to come up with costumes that are a little out of the ordinary and have the ability to do my own make-up for it. Sugar skulls seem to have taken over Pinterest lately, thus inspiring my costume this year. If you have never heard of a sugar skull picture a skeleton with pretty colors and designs. The fact that I was able to incorporate rhinestones into my costume made me very excited. Originally, I had decided to wear a black lace dress for my costume, one I have sitting in my closet, because I am a firm believer that you can use what you have and create it into something different. Is this classed as recycling?
I have high hopes. The idea then popped into my head, bride and groom. I always like doing couples costumes so this way my husband could be apart of the fun too. Perfect, one more use for the my wedding dress, score! This time, I did it. I cut up my wedding dress. Yes, cut it! No going back. The train I once had that was repeatedly stepped on at my wedding was chopped off. Surprisingly I wish I had of done it on my wedding day. The dress was so much lighter and would have made dancing much easier to do. Keeping the back long, I cut the front of the dress short. Up to just above my knees. I added some hand made fabric flowers (a chore in itself) and black spiders. With a sash, a necklace, earrings, lace stockings and a feather hat, my costume came together perfectly. I had a girl ask me "how much did you pay for your dress?" My answer was, "you don't want to know"...
We got many compliments on our costumes, so it made me thankful that the cutting of my dress wasn't for nothing.
I will continue to change this dress into different things down the road, and as long as it fits me I will find some reason to put it on again and again. Who else can say that they have used their wedding dress four times?! Don't take me as someone who doesn't value my marriage because my husband means everything to me. Rather, take me as someone that loves their marriage so much that I can not bear to leave my dress just sitting in my closet collecting dust. I am reminded of my wedding day every time I get to put that dress on, I get to relive that feeling of having it zipped up over and over again. No, that feeling does not fade...
$900 for a wedding dress, $250 for alterations, $50 for new dress accessories, four different ways to get use of our your gown...priceless.
