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Most people call friends and family to celebrate their union as they exchange vows, promising to spend eternity together. After the film The Divorce Party, many people got the idea of commemorating their unsuccessful unions.
Kimberly Santleben-Stiteler decided to blow up her wedding dress as way of letting go of the memories of her marriage. The 44-year-old asked her family and friends to gather around and witness the experience.
Commemorating the end of her 14-year marriage, Kimberly filled her wedding dress with explosives worth $200 (about R2 940). She then took a rifle and started shooting at the dress which was placed some distance away, thus activating the explosion. The event took place on her father’s farm in Texas, U.S. with forty guests by her side.
“The explosion was huge. It was liberating pulling that trigger. It was closure for all of us,” she told Star-Telegram.
With the help of her father and brother in law, including a family friend who is a bomb technician - the explosion ended up being so massive that it was heard and felt by neighbours who were not at the event.
Before deciding on exploding the dress, Kimberly was confused as to what she could do with it as she wanted to get rid of it.
“I had a lot of advice and suggestions from friends and family, like donating it for premature babies and baptism gowns. However, to me, the dress represented a lie. I wanted to have a divorce party to burn the dress,” she told Star-Telegram.
With the 9kg of tannerite, she went on target practice with the dress before the party. With that much tannerite, the family was nervous at first, they weren’t sure that shooting the dress would be safe enough. But the explosion was a sccess with no incidents reported.
Kimberly shared a video of herself exploding the dress on social media. After it went viral, she then posted a picture of the flames on Facebook speaking about how amazing it is to have a family that cares enough to help you with your plans.
Most of her followers praised her for the decision and others wished they had attended the ceremony.
“Burning things is satisfying too congrats,” one Facebook user wrote. The another wrote, “I love all of this! Wish I was there to party!”
Kimberly sure knew how to go out of a marriage with a bang when she celebrated her divorce being finalized.
Kimberly is not the only former bride who decided to destroy her wedding dress.
Khristella Joseph decided to set the dress she had worn to get married on fire.
According to her Facebook post that has been deleted, she primarily tried selling her wedding dress , including other items from the wedding.
After failing to do so, she then resorted in setting the dress on fire. Khristella filmed herself as she was starting the burning ceremony. She said her last few words, while closing a painful chapter of her life.
“I’m getting ready to burn this bad [profanity] memory,” she said. “There goes the end of the bad memory of a wedding dress somebody pays for and says that your relationship is just a “joke and they never loved or cared about you in the first place.”
What did you do with your wedding dress after your wedding or divorce? Tell us here.
SOURCES: Star-Telegram, Facebook, Daily Mail
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