And you all thought I was crazy!

So I've gotten a lot of grief over the last week about my decision to trash my wedding dress; I think part of this is just due to the fact it's not a popular idea in Utah yet. Web sites such as www.trashthedress.com and http://trashthedress.wordpress.com/ show pictures of the ever growing trend from back East such as the ones shown below. In an article in the New York Times by writer Caren Chesler titled "Is this any way to treat Vera Wang?", Chesler talks to women who are about to trash their dresses and finding out what crazy reason they had behind it.

John Michael Cooper, a Las Vegas wedding photographer, is credited for the original idea back in 2005. The idea behind trashing the dress was simply this: you wear your wedding dress pretty much twice, once for the wedding and once for the bridal portraits. Now if you're spending all that money on a wedding dress, why not have a little fun with it?

I got lucky and only spent $500 on a dress I absolutely fell in love with, but still I wanted to have a little more character to my photos and bring out myself, not just another pretty picture that looks like every other pretty picture ever taken. Why not? I had a wedding that ended up being a dream come true with it's added touch of humor, why not just add a little more in my photos?

Now of course some of these photos from these Web sites are really neat simply because where they were shot, but also because it's so out of the ordinary. These photos, to me, were beautiful, but for my style it just wasn't fun enough. So I had to become a little bit more creative with my ideas as to how I was going to trash my wedding dress. That's when I saw these photos of people using unusual places to capture unusual moments and I knew I could find something cool.






These photos, found at www.photoalberta.blogspot.com, http://blog.2020images.com/2008/04/07/urban-style-trash-
the-dress-wow.aspx and http://www.weblo.com/domain/
available/trashthedress.com/ (shown to the right) showed a lot of personality and style, most of all they showed attitude. This was more my style. You're probably looking at the photo of the paint and thinking, "Oh my God is she crazy!" I can't say that paintballing didn't go through my mind at some point in time, but that's not what I ended up going with.

The photographer who was doing the portraits had never done photos like these before, so she went out hunting for spots, and I spent time brainstorming with my friends and family.
Ultimately my mom came up with the idea of going

to the splash pad on Main Street in town, and my photographer, Toni Rowley, came up with the dramatic alleyway idea. We shot the photos on Monday, and will take about two weeks to get back after editing.

In the end it all comes down to this: Chesler, yes that is the way to treat the dress. And would you rather have your wedding dress sitting in a box in the back of a closet for life, or have some great photos to remember it all?

To read the article "Is this any way to treat Vera Want?" visit http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/fashion/weddings/10trash.html.

Oct. 4, 2008: The Wedding

It took me until the rehearsal the day before the wedding to realize that I was less than 24 hours away from a wedding. With over a year of planning and many appointments later, the final touches have been added to my wedding, and all that can be done is walking down the aisle. I got to experience seeing others contribute to my wedding in different ways from my maid of honor, Stephanie Bukowski, taking me out on the town in Las Vegas to Bloomers creating my flower arrangements. There is always more to view than just one person's experience, and sometimes we miss the details. Here is a series of photos from start to finish of the week before my wedding.

-Casie Forbes

I had to look through hundreds of songs to come up with the music for the wedding. We went through 30 CD's to put together our music, which will be played by my younger brother Donald. Most DJs will use premade CD's for multiple weddings to save on time and money for downloading songs.








After over a month of renovation, we finished our apartment. We had to patch the walls, paint everything and re-do the whole bathroom. In the end it came out better than expected.





















Stephanie Bukowski, the maid of honor, and Taylor Forbes, the groom, stand in front of a fountain in the Forum Shops in Las Vegas. We went down to Las Vegas on Wednesday night and walked the strip while drinking pina coladas and beer.









F. A. O. Schwarz houses a lot of different toys and fun houses including this tower of mirrors in the leg of a giant wooden horse. The mirrors are angled and cut into different shapes to reflect multiple images.










During the bachelorette party we attended the show at the Pussycat Dolls Lounge. There were tables underneath the stages, which were reserved for $300 a place.











The Pussycat Dolls play in Caesers Palace in Las Vegas. There is a singing Pussycat Dolls group, a performing group in Las Vegas, and a soon-to-be performing group in Los Angeles.

Taylor tries on his tux one last time on Friday with Adrian's sales representative Kyle Ferguson. The tuxes were one of the last items to be picked up.

The Bell Tower Reception Center was where the wedding took place. The bride's room, as pictured below, has a bathroom, a couch, mirrors and a sink for the bride on her wedding day.

Champagne colored sashes are tied to all of the ceremony and reception center chairs. The colors match with the wedding dress and bridesmaid and groomsmen outfits.

The bride's bouquet consisted of roses, dahlias, cymbidium orchids and many other flowers. Bloomers designed all the flower arrangements as well as bouquets.