Sentimental Value

Do you believe in sentimental value? Keeping an object for the sole purpose of having it, even though it provides no use? Here is what usually happens for me. I keep it because I can't bare to throw it out. Then I have to move and all of the sudden, my attachment to said object becomes non existent. Like old tee shirts from high school. Totally tossed them in my last move. Or that ugly stuffed animal from that one Valentine's Day... gone. And what do you do with the millions of cards you get every year on your birthday? You keep them for a bit, then toss them while trying to ignore your guilt. I basically feel that if I am going to keep something forever, it better be exciting to someone some day, like my future children.

So when it comes to wedding dresses, most people carefully store them in a box and never pull them out again. They have delusions of their children wearing the dress someday in their own wedding or some nonsense like that. It will never happen because your spoiled child is not going to want to wear a dress from 20 years ago that they didn't get to pick out. I picked out a simple but elegant dress. It was not custom embroidered by Mark Jacobs and did not cost me a fortune. So when I was speaking to my wedding photographer / amazingly talented photographic artist Megan Resch, and we started talking about cool places to take pictures in your wedding dress, I was interested. I wanted a wedding photo with a cactus. I enjoy cactus. And I love pictures. What better sentimental keepsake from the wedding than pictures of my dress in interesting pictures.

And "Trash the Dress Photo Shoot" was born.

Saturday, we explored various locales while I wore my dress and it was really cool. I got a lot of weird looks, and it was a bit hot hiking around in the desert in the middle of a 90 degree day but it was definitely an adventure. The desert photos are from Lost Dutchman's State Park and the fair shots are from the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix.

Megan blogged about the adventure here, but I will throw a couple of pictures up on this site as well.

The fair may have been the dirtiest place that I could have gone to trash my dress but it was awesome watching people do double takes. I may not throw my dress out completely, but I think the ridiculous black smoot all over the bottom adds character. I love this photo. I rest my case.