DECATUR, Ala. (AP) — Wedding dresses often represent purity, love, and commitment.

When a bride pulls her dress out of the closet, she may hear the music of the wedding march and smell the sweet frosting of her wedding cake.

Or she may smell the mud from the river she jumped in or see the grease streaks from the car garage she walked in.

Some avant-garde brides are making their mothers sick to their stomachs by embracing the photography trend that encourages this irreverent behavior. The movement — called “Trash the Dress” — is based on the idea that A) the bride’s daughter will probably not wear her dress and B) the bride is committed to her husband so she will never need her dress to get married in again. The trend started in larger cities several years ago and is trickling down to the South.

“It’s just a fun way to get more wear out of that $1,000 dress over that 30 minutes that you stood up and said your vows,” said Jamie Waldrep, a Decatur photographer who began shooting “Trash the Dress” sessions one year ago. “It’s real high fashion. … The art you can get out of it is awesome.”

Many girls are scared off by the name or don’t understand the sessions, local photographers said.

“I look at it kind of like a misnomer,” said David Higginbotham, a Decatur-based photographer. “The reason it’s called ’Trash the Dress’ is to name it and market it. If you were to describe it, it’s really not trashing the dress; it’s doing something fun and fashion-oriented outside of a church.”

Like many other local photographers, Higginbotham said he hasn’t had any local brides interested in one of the sessions yet, though he sees “TTD” photos all over photography blogs and Web sites he checks regularly.

“It could appeal to everyone because there are so many different levels you could go for,” said Krysee Wright of Trinity, who trashed her dress with Waldrep clicking away last summer. “It’s kind of is an extension of a person.”

Wright and Waldrep, who is her sister, trekked into Bankhead National Forest one weekend morning for the shoot. Wright chose the location because she loves the outdoors, and eventually ended up jumping into Borden Creek, dress and all.

“I was really delicate with it at first,” Wright said. “But then something snapped in me and I said, ’I want to just leap off a rock into the water.’ … After it happened it was just this rush of adrenaline, it was like driving a car really, really fast. The hard part was over in a split second. It was almost like it was all downhill after that.”

A glimpse at the startlingly beautiful photographs of Wright lying in the creek and sitting on a tree limb in the lush forest would probably convince many skeptical brides to try the idea.

Wright married her husband, Seth, five years ago in a spaghetti-strap wedding gown that she had altered to rid it of its long sleeves and tall collar. The “blood and sweat” she had put into those alterations made it a little bit harder to mar it, she admitted.

But after the session, she hosed off the gown outside, and once it dried, put it back in the house. Surprisingly, the only imperfections now are some small spots on the bottom and some loose thread, she said.

But, “it’s about creation, not destruction,” — or so goes the tagline of TrashtheDress.com, a Web site devoted to the craft. New Orleans-based photographer Mark Eric started the site after reading an online article by Las Vegas photographer John Michael Cooper, who is credited with starting the trend.

Leslie Braswell of Decatur also recently donned her wedding dress for Waldrep’s lens. The bride, who was married nine years ago, spent a Sunday afternoon getting her pictures taken in a garage with a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle and a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro.

The “down and dirty” garage theme was Waldrep’s idea, who tried to find a garage to use for weeks before finally finding Brandon Pitt’s in Trinity. Her inquiries were usually followed by confusion.

“Why would someone want to do that?” was a question she heard often, Waldrep said, laughing.

Waldrep and her assistant used the cars to create fashion-oriented photos that contrasted the pristine, feminine nature of a wedding dress with the inherent grease and masculinity associated with a garage.

“You have to have a little bit of artsy side to you to ever want to do that (the sessions),” Braswell said, who said she was excited to finally have some photos that were different from the somewhat plastic, posed shots from her wedding. “People who are more conservative are more worried about that dress and it will stay in that box.”

While dresses used to be passed down from generation to generation, today they’re often mass-produced and purchased at bridal stores — decreasing the sentimental value.

“If it were my grandmother’s, it would be different,” Braswell said.

Besides, marriage isn’t even really about the material things like the dress, though the tradition and infatuation with the wedding is especially hard to break in the South, Wright said.

“I think people get so wrapped up in the details of that day that they lose focus of what marriage really is about,” she said. “It’s not about the dress. It’s not about the white cake. It’s about spending the rest of your life with this person you absolutely love.”

On the Net:

Trash the Dress, www.trashthedress.com.

Jamie Waldreps Trash the Dress sessions, www.yourstorycaptured.com.