VICKSBURG, Miss. - Dustin Sanders of Ruston, La., loads his weapon with pink, orange and yellow paintballs, takes aim and fires. His target: a $500 partially beaded wedding gown worn by his bride of four months, Jessica.
As the paint blasts onto her gown, Jessica, 26, screams. Then she holds up a paintball gun and fires back, leaving her groom bruised and painted pink.
A wedding photographer captures it all, then follows the couple as they wash off in a fountain.
"It's different, and we're pretty unconventional," said Jessica, adding that she and her new husband didn't want to destroy the dress - just capture some unusual pictures that reflect their sense of fun.
"Trash The Dress" photo shoots like this have become an offbeat phenomenon. In many, brides in white gowns simply pose where they're bound to get wet or dirty: in the surf, in trees, in cornfields, on horses, in trash-strewn city alleys, on boxcars, on tractors.
Photographers say most such shoots aren't necessarily about destroying or damaging the dress.
"It is just taking it in a place that you wouldn't normally go. Not worrying about it too much," said photographer Adam Hudson of Ridgeland, Miss., who has shot recent dress-trashes in the mud and at the State Fair.
"I think that a lot of brides are getting tired of the stand-in-front-of-the-altar shots," he said.
Racheal Hollowell, who shot the Sanders' paintball adventure with her husband, Eddie Hollowell, agreed.
"'Trash the dress' is such a harsh term," she said, adding that most brides opt for just a dip in a swimming pool, and the dresses are usually salvageable.
A year ago, Louisiana-based photographer Mark Eric created a website devoted to the Trash the Dress trend. "It's about creation, not destruction," declares the site, which has led to two sister sites: Trash the Dress Europe and Trash the Dress Australia.
The U.S. site features pages of photos from around the country. David Baxter of Ohana Photography in San Diego wrote on the site that such shoots are "about letting a bride express her beauty in the dress she has dreamt of wearing for so long, but will put away all too quickly."
Limelight Photography in Tampa, Fla., started offering "Trash the Dress" shoots several months ago at a bride's request, said owner Rebecca Zoumberos. That shoot was on the beach and ended with the couple having a sand fight. Since then, Limelight has shot four "trash" shoots and plans a dozen more.
Zoumberos likened trashing a wedding gown to bra-burning.
"For the brides, it is really liberating," she said.
And potentially costly. In 2007, the research group The Wedding Report said the average bride spends $1,564 on her gown, and another $285 on veils and headpieces.
Jessica Sanders said her parents bought her dress, and her mother "wasn't thrilled" with the idea of trashing it. But her father, John Toney, of Tallulah, La., showed up to help.
"This is going to open up a whole new thing for people when they see all they can do," Toney said.
The groom, Dustin Sanders, is an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant and an avid paintball player. So the method of destruction was obvious to the couple once they decided, soon after their August wedding in Vicksburg, to trash Jessica's dress.
