A NEWLY-DIVORCED woman decided to celebrate the end of her 14-year marriage with a bang over the weekend.
43-year-old Kimberley Santleben-Stiteler made the local news in her native Texas after marking the dissolution of her unhappy union by blowing up her wedding dress on Saturday, November 10th.
"I had a lot of advice and suggestions from friends and family, like donating it for premature babies and baptism gowns," Santleben-Stiteler told The Centre Daily Times.
"However, to me, the dress represented a lie. I wanted to have a divorce party to burn the dress."
The scheme, which was cooked up by Kimberley's father and her brother in law, saw the dress rigged with 20 pounds of Tannerite, a type of explosive used in firearms training.
No expense was spared either, with the newly-single Kimberley splashing out $200 on the explosive.
It was then simply a case of Kimberley taking aim at the explosives-laden gown from a safe distance of 100 metres with a rifle.
Impressively she managed to score a direct hit with her very first shot, sparking a huge explosion that was seen for miles and miles.
Luckily for us, someone was on-hand to capture the moment for posterity and, perhaps, closure for the newly-divorced Kimberley.
It proved to be quite the spectacle too, with the 43-year-old's 14-year-old wedding dress exploding in a garage-sized fireball that caught the attention of plenty in the local area - and beyond, for that matter.
"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," Kimberly's sister, Carla Santleben-Newport, revealed.
The explosion coupled with the sight of seeing the dress blasted into a million pieces proved a liberating experience for the new divorcée who is now looking to move on with her life.
That's certainly one way to celebrate your newfound singledom.
It might be easier and a whole lot safer to simply mark the occasion with a couple of drinks down the pub though.
