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Honey, I trashed my wedding dress!

Brides are destroying their wedding dresses and posing for risqué bedroom shoots in an attempt to create memorable wedding photographs finds Shraddha Uchil.

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Ramona Gonsalves had an important post-wedding task she simply didn’t want to miss. It didn’t involve her family or her in-laws or anything religious. The bride was looking forward to some ‘fun’ time with her husband and a photographer by a deserted lake. Don’t get ideas yet.

The hospitality industry professional was eager to complete the ‘Trash the Dress’ ritual, an emerging wedding photography trend in India. “I was never going to wear the dress again,” she says. “Gone are the days when you pass your dress down to your daughter.” The pictures from that shoot now adorn the couple’s new home, along with their traditional wedding photographs. 

Shock and effect

Over the past few years, wedding photography has evolved. From standing with relatives and staring at the camera till their smiles froze for photos no one could bear to see later, couples have turned to pre-wedding and post-wedding shoots.
Sometimes these shoots are extreme, like in ‘Trash The Dress’ photography, at other times they are risqué, like boudoir photography.

‘Trash the Dress’ is a style credited to Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper. While Cooper has gone to extremes such as encouraging his brides to set themselves on fire (really!), photographers in India are more sedate. “Most brides I’ve met don’t mind trashing their dresses. One bride let me shoot while she lay down by the shore where the water drenched her beautiful white dress,” says Goa-based photographer Edric George.

Not for purists

Bridal boudoir is for the adventurous. The photographer shoots the bride wearing sexy lingerie and the photographs are then gifted to the groom on the day of the wedding. Although this trend is yet to pick up in India, a few women are cautiously testing the waters. Mona Kalra (name changed) was extremely enthusiastic about gifting her to-be husband some racy pictures of herself. “I don’t have the perfect body but that didn’t matter. My photographer made me feel very comfortable and the pictures she took were beautiful and not vulgar,” she says.

It’s clear from the number of boudoir shoots photographers have done that the trend is picking up. Mumbai-based photographer Stuti Sakhalkar has executed several boudoir shoots for brides, most of whom have been close friends. “It could be the association and because I am also a woman. There’s this level of trust not only with the body but also with the aesthetics,” she says.

A new timeline
Pre-wedding photography is not just restricted to the risqué and the destructive. When Priyam Datta and Punit Gandhi decided to tie the knot, they didn’t want their wedding memories to be ordinary so they got pre-wedding shoots done with everything they loved to do together — taking photographs, riding bikes and satiating themselves with good food.

Such shoots often works as a stress-buster for couples, as preparing for a wedding usually takes a toll on them.

Sometimes, there’s an added advantage. Advertising professional Aditi Rungachary, who married earlier this year, says the pre-wedding shoot “was a great way to break the ice with the photographer” in the run-up to the wedding.

A pre-wedding shoot makes sense, but a photo shoot after the wedding sounds absurd, especially if it involves dressing up in wedding finery all over again. But many couples — and photographers — prefer it since it gives the trio another chance to capture all those moments that weren’t clicked in the earlier chaos.

“For the most part, the pre-wedding shots revolve around the couple’s story. I had a ballerina and a football player as a couple and the shoot was mostly based on how they met,” says Chandni Dossani, a Toronto-based photographer who often travels to India on assignments. Chandni chose dabbawalas as a theme for a couple who opted for a traditional Maharashtrian wedding.

Instead of choosing a themed shoot, some couples focus on the location. “A client who was having an arranged marriage wanted to surprise his to-be wife. So he got her to Hauz Khas Village in Delhi where we did a pre-wedding shoot,” says Ananya Biswas, a Delhi-based photographer.

So why are so many couples willing to try out a concept that is relatively new to India? Dossani believes it’s because they love the creativity involved — they love to conceptualise the shoot, which they can’t exactly do during wedding ceremonies.

Sakhalkar says today’s generation wants to add that little something extra to their wedding memories. “They want to celebrate more than just the ceremony — it’s about the story; everything leading up to the ceremony, and the wonderful afterglow.”

Social media, especially new photo-based sites like Pinterest and Instagram, has helped spread the popularity of such wedding photography trends. George got a lot of business after couples saw his work on Facebook.

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