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I was going through my closet last week when I came across some old articles of clothing. I found my old high school prom dress as well as the first of my four wedding dresses.
I got to thinking about how expensive they all were at the time for the one-time use garment. There had to be other uses for a special occasional dress that can’t be returned once pit stains have set in.
Prom, homecoming, engagement, wedding and bridesmaid dresses all fit into that disposable dress category. What’s with bridesmaid dresses anyway, as everyone knows two women should never wear the same dress to the same event because one will always look better, for cryin’ out loud.
I decided to get together with some girlfriends who’ve also hung on to these one-time, non-refundable pieces of material for a little “splash and trash” party.
I called a photographer out to take photos of the party. Uncle Vinny wanted to do it, but he always cuts people’s heads off.
So with the photographer ready and our dresses on we all set out to destroy
our garments in a fun and portrait worthy way. I did have a portable dressing room set up for the next set of clean dresses to be donned.
We started with a tug-of-war game set up over my wet and muddy pig’s pen. What a hoot – the bridesmaids beat the prom dresses in that one round game but we came back to beat them in a game of muddy Twister with our teams, then donning the engagement and cocktail dresses.
For some of the ladies who owned more than one wedding dress, we loaded up the guns with paintballs and had a free-for-all with our remaining white gowns.
They ended up looking like Jackson Pollock art pieces. In fact, I sold mine online for $150 – a drop in the bucket compared to Pollock’s price tag.
Our dress-destroying party began drawing quite the crowd. A couple of ladies were still hanging on to the puffed sleeve dresses they once owned – go figure.
I borrowed my husband’s air pump and blew air under the dresses – the photos were great, and we all looked like human hot-air balloons. I even got a request to be the entertainment for a local party someone was having in honor of a balloon pilot. The price tag for the job was better than what I received for my “Pollock” dress and all we had to do was stand around looking puffed up.
My neighbor got married in a bubble wrap dress – don’t ask because I won’t have an answer for you. We destroyed her dress by popping all the bubbles; it sounded like rapid gunfire. It was so much fun, however, that came to an end quickly when a couple of cops showed up with their hands on the firearms.
It all worked out after explaining what we were doing, and one deputy actually started popping her dress with us. She did decline to be in the photo, however.
With the homecoming dresses the last ones on the pile, we had a front yard food fight with all of our leftovers. A couple of the neighbors even joined in.
When it was all said and done, we were all happy to have gotten rid of our aging frig food. The only downside were the endless hungry raccoons scurrying to my front yard.
I offered our dresses up to a major laundry detergent company for stain removal testing and advertising of their products. Apparently, they were so happy with the transfer of our dirty clothing that they offered me a contract for more dirty attire.
Looks like I’ll have to search my husband’s closet for all his old concert T-shirts and some old football and baseball jerseys from Ty Cobb, Joe Namath and some guy named Baby Ruth. Someone scribbled writing on each of them, so let’s see if the soap company can remove all the ink with their detergent.
Anngee Quinones-Belian lives in Murphy. She loves humor and believes the world needs more of it. Email her at anngeeq@gmail.com.