Lifestyles

Sure, the petticoats can get torn, the silk might get grease smudged and the hem ends up as raggedy black trim on a white dress, but it's not like the brides are taking scissors to their gowns, splattering them with paint or soaking their satin in water.

Usually.

The latest trend in bridal photography is about trying to capture candid, artistic and edgy shots of a woman in a beautiful wedding dress, rather than assembling a rigid lineup of the bridal party and telling them to say "cheese." Things just tend to get a bit more messy with the "Trash the Dress" style.

The dirt, graffiti, junkyards and forests set the backdrop for "Trash the Dress" photos, but it's the dress that really adds the edginess.

"I think the appeal of the wedding gown is that it's so out of the ordinary, and it's such a dichotomy to see this woman in a gorgeous gown that you're used to seeing in cathedrals," says Kim Reed, of Kimberly Reed photography in the North Side. "I think it's almost a little bit of the shock factor to it."

Many photographers say the stains on the dress will come out with a good dry cleaning, but rendering their wedding dress unwearable is another appeal for brides -- the idea is that it shows the bride's dedication to her marriage.

Reed photographed Erica Bowlin, 30, of Mt. Lebanon, in urban settings Downtown in January. Bowlin says she had no concerns about wearing her dress in dirty T-stations, a North Side garage or on a cement church stoop.

She says after the wedding, her dress already was a bit trashed from mud, drink stains and snags in the satin made by a bracelet she wore.

"After we got married, we got home from the honeymoon, and I hadn't touched it since," Bowlin says. "It was an inexpensive, basic dress. It wasn't something that was going to be kept as a keepsake."

Joel Wiebner and his wife, Rita, who own The Wiebners photography studio in Lacaster, are administrative staff on www.trashthedress.com, a blog that promotes and documents the edgy photography trend since September 2006 under the tagline "It's about creation, not destruction."

"We don't like the word trash," says Joel Wiebner.

But he says the word's sensational nature brings lots of visitors to the Web site, which has almost 700,000 hits. The Wiebners have done one "all-out-not-worrying-about-ruining-the-dress" session, and photographed brides in places like a closed down, "gorgeous, but crusty" penitentiary in Philadelphia.

"But we don't go out and try to do 'Trash the Dress' sessions," Wiebner says. "If the idea comes up for something really cool, for something that might get the dress dirty, then it might qualify as a 'Trash the Dress,' but we don't really classify things like that," he says.

"People think photographers are out there wanting to rip and tear and destroy dresses, when really, all it is for us is removing a layer of questioning during the session," he says. "If they know they might get dirty before the session, then we don't have to ask them politely, 'Do you want to step into the creek?' "

Photographer Heather Fowler has a "Trash the Dress" category on her price list for her Philadelphia-based business, priced similarly to a bridal portrait. She'll do one of the shoots even if she wasn't the photographer the day the couple said their vows, as will most photographers.

Brides often book one of these post-wedding sessions as a surprise to their grooms.

"They do it to get the pictures that they really want, and not feel like they need to put on the idea of what a bridal portrait should look like," Fowler says. "I have been to a lot of weddings where maybe the bride doesn't care, but the mother is freaking out about the dirt."

Even though they usually don't participate in the shoots, husbands are fans of "Trash the Dress" photos.

"What guy wouldn't want some really sexy, wonderful, artistic photos of their wives?" says Reed, who has photographed brides among prickly fields in Cranberry and in a playground in Aspinwall.

Don Michael Oesterle, 32, of Crafton, had been bugging his wife, Simone Hudson, for photos like that since they got married Aug. 7, 2005. For their second anniversary, he joined his wife in front of Reed's camera for some dress trashing, or, rather, dress dousing.

Hudson, 30, donned the beaded orange sundress that she wore at her wedding. Before the shoot, she wasn't sure whether she'd be up for climbing into the dancing fountain at Bessemer Court.

"I think you'll get a citation if you go in," she says.

The couple got drenched when rain came pouring down at the end of their shoot.

Station Square was the scene of what Hudson calls their first "official" date. After dinner at Buca di Beppo, they went for a walk across the Smithfield Street Bridge.

"That was the first time he held my hand," she says. "He pretended to be shy!"

Hudson, who owns a wedding-planning company called 5senses, wears her wedding dress on special occasions like her birthday or their anniversary. But she says she wasn't worried about the dress during the shoot.

"Hopefully whatever it is will wash off. If not, I'm sure there's a dressmaker in town who would fix it," she says. "I want to give my dress a good wear before it becomes moth-eaten or something."

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