I recently photographed Samantha as she took her wedding dress out of the bag for the first time since she got married years ago. She has a beautiful grey mare Eva and she decided she’d like to Rock the Dress and ride Eva in it!
I met her at her farm in Exeter, RI on a warm sunny summer afternoon for her session. Here’s the thing about horse girls. We see no issue in shoveling manure, cleaning tack with smelly oils and conditioners, having so much dirt under our nails that we need to scrub them to get it out, and we spend every spare penny we have on our beloved equines. Getting our feet stepped on by a 1200lb horse is a “when”, not an “if”. If we get bucked off and go sailing through the air, we expertly roll upon impact, get up, brush the dirt off and get back on to try again and most of us only want to know if someone (ANYONE!) caught the acrobatics on camera.
We are tough broads.
But boy do we clean up well. That is of course after our horses are clean. This beautiful grey mare got two baths today. Two! And she was actually gleaming. If you don’t have horses, here’s a tidbit of information: it is not easy to make a light grey horse look shiny. But Eva was shimmering in the light, perfectly groomed from nose to tail.
Her owner Samantha made me laugh the minute I arrived to the barn for her session because she stripped down right in the barn aisle, after working hard all day to prepare Eva for the shoot, and shimmied up into her wedding dress and climbed aboard her mare. “I’m ready!” she said, and patted Eva on the neck.
It was a fantastic session and she most certainly did rock the dress!
“She’s such a good girl, but only when she wants to be. She’s a mare; it’s got to be her idea, you know?”
Samantha’s two little girls were at the barn yesterday, watching this shoot take place. “Mommy looks like a princess!” her oldest daughter said.
Yes, yes she did.
I can’t stand the term “trash the dress” because as usual, this dress was not trashed in the least! No one likes the idea of buying an expensive wedding dress and then literally destroying it. I prefer to think of these sessions as getting out there one last time to enjoy feeling like a gorgeous bride, and being able to wear the dress more than just once. It was extra special that Samantha’s little girls were there and could see their mommy all dressed up.
For more information on my Rock the Dress sessions, click here.
To contact me to schedule your own Rock the Dress session, click here.
