Trash the Dress?

One of the most important and exciting parts of planning your wedding is picking out your wedding dress! But what do you do when it starts taking up valuable space in your closet? After the wedding is over and you finish unpacking from the honeymoon, what exactly does one do with their wedding dress?

I, for one, still have my wedding dress hanging in my closet! I can’t yet decide what exactly I want to do with it. Every once in awhile I like to go in there and take a look at my dress. It brings back such wonderful memories of my wedding and I’m not yet ready to part with it (it’s only been 6 months).

Here are some different options for brides to determine what to do with their dress after the big day -

• Hold on to that Dress

Preserving your wedding dress is probably the most common choice among brides. Brides will have their dresses professional cleaned and packaged in a special box that will keep the dress from fading or getting dirty. While this is great option for the sentimental bride, it can also take up valuable space in the closet as the box can be quite large (depending on your style of dress).

• Donate it to Charity

Helping out those who can’t afford a brand new wedding dress is a charitable option for your dress. There are lots of organizations that sell perfectly clean and only slightly used wedding dresses at a discounted price to brides. Think of how great you will feel knowing you have helped to make someone else’s big day as perfect as yours was! (Many organizations will also give you a tax detectable as well)

• Make a little Money

Selling yoour wedding dress is a good option for those brides who might have gone over their budget and want/need to make some of their money back. I would recommend having your dress cleaned first and then try your hand one of the many online selling sites. When setting your price, remember your buyer did not have the same experience of going to a bridal store to find their dress. Even if the dress was used only once, it is still used! They are doing you a favor!

• DIY Crafts

If you know that you won’t use your dress again, cutting up it up to make other items is a great choice. The beautiful white/ivory material would be perfect for a ring bearer pillow or the lining of a yarmulke basket. I have heard of brides that cut the skirt off their dress to make a Christmas Tree skirt. There are lots of great uses for the material that will remind you about your wedding each time you look at them.

• Trash it!

A new trend in wedding photography is a Trash the Dress session. This is a photo session taken after the wedding where the bride will put her dress back on and have a photographer take photos of her trashing her dress. Because the bride feels she will never wear the dress again, this is her opportunity to take all those risky photos she didn’t want to take her on her wedding day as worried about getting her dress dirty. Now that all the stress of the big day is behind her, she can relax and enjoy taking these artistic photos of her in her wedding dress one last time.


photo by Jeremiah Guelzo of Stone Blue Productions

photo by Rachel Kuchar Blue Nalu Photography

• Make it a Work of Art

If you didn’t already know, I am a reality TV junkie and I got this idea from Molly Mesnick from The Bachelor. She thought of her dress as a piece of artwork and wanted to display it as such.



photo from Molly Mesnick - Reality Through My Eyes



What did you do (or plan to do) with your wedding dress after the day? xox - mrs. p.