Texas woman celebrates divorce by blowing up wedding dress
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This is one marriage that ended with a bang.
A Texas woman celebrated her divorce by blowing up her wedding dress on the family’s farm in LaCoste, 25 miles west of San Antonio, KSAT reported.
Kimberly Santleben-Stiteler obtained a divorce Friday in Medina County after 14 years of marriage to Henry Jordan Stiteler. On Saturday night, the 43-year-old celebrated with her parents, sisters, and brother-in-law by filling her wedding dress with 20 pounds of Tannerite, an explosive target material, KTRK reported. Santeben-Stiteler used a rifle to take a shot at the dress, positioned 200 yards away. Her shot was true, and her wedding dress went up in smoke.
“I wanted to remove all things from our marriage from our house,” Santleben-Stiteler told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Photos in the attic, ring in the safe (but probably going to sell it) and the dress I wanted to burn.
“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.”
The explosion, met with cheers by Santleben-Stiteler’s family, could be heard for miles.
“We were all getting messages asking if that was our explosion people were feeling and hearing around the county, up to at least 15 miles away,” Carla Santleben-Newport, Kimberly’s sister, told the Star-Telegram. “It was like, ‘Uh, is everything OK over there?’”
It may have not been a shotgun wedding 14 years ago, but it was a one-shot divorce celebration Saturday night.
“On the one hand, it was like being on (the) set of some action movie. The explosion was huge,” Santleben-Stiteler told the Star-Tribune. “It was liberating pulling that trigger. It was closure for all of us.”
