The Straight Poop on Toilet Paper Wedding Dresses

Wedding dresses can be awfully expensive, but with a little ingenuity -- and a whole lot of two-ply toilet paper -- a gorgeous gown can be rolled out in no time.

That's the premise, at least, behind the seventh annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest being hosted by the bride-on-a-budget website Cheap Chic Weddings.

Every spring, the wedding website holds a contest to see who can make the best-looking bridal-wear out of just a few simple tools: tape, glue and, most importantly, toilet paper. Contestants can sew the toilet tissue together with a needle and thread, but that's the extent of the materials allowed.

Cheap Chic Weddings co-founder Susan Bain told AOL News exclusively that this year's TP contest is set to launch sometime in early April.

She said contestants will have about six weeks to complete their toilet-tissue creations and submit photos of their gowns. After that, finalists will be carefully selected and judged on their dresses until a grand-prize winner is flushed out.

Bain said she plans to announce the winner on or around July 7. The first-place seamstress will walk away with a $1,000 prize, while second and third place earn $500 and $250, respectively.

Although the contest doesn't officially kick off for about a month, Bain said now is a good time for serious contestants to get a jump-start on their dresses, or at least begin brainstorming and sketching out ideas for designs.

It also wouldn't hurt, she noted, to start stocking up on toilet paper because you never know how much two-ply a prize-winning gown will call for.

"I've seen someone use only four rolls for their dress and another contestant use 40. It really varies depending on the design and thickness of the dress. Some people really pack the toilet paper on, and others prefer using less toilet paper and reinforcing the pieces with a lot of glue or tape," explained Bain. "Everyone has a different strategy."

Bain said one of the most clever techniques she ever saw was when a contender decided to use molds to make intricate flower detailing on a gown. She said the woman wet the toilet paper, balled it up and stuck it in a flower mold, yielding perfectly perky toilet paper blooms.

Since there was nothing in the rules prohibiting the use of a little water, Bain let it slide.

No matter what methods contestants utilize to build the perfect TP wedding dress, Bain said each and every entry is judged by the same criteria: creativity, beauty of the dress, use of toilet paper and originality.

Oh, and the dress must be able to actually be worn and taken on and off without falling apart.

"We want to see the dress worn by a model, especially when we get down to the finals. Headpieces like veils or hats are also a plus," Bain said.

She said the entries are judged each year by her, her mother and her sister, who all tend to gravitate toward more traditional-looking gowns with trains and interesting details.

Last year's winner, however, was far from traditional.

Bain said the dress that won it all in 2010 was a short, sexy, one-shoulder number that looked straight off the high-fashion runway. She said the trendiness of the flirty frock helped it triumph over other more conservative entries.

The winner, Galit Zeierman, a graphic designer living in Israel, told AOL News that the TP dress took her about a month to make. For her, the biggest challenge was figuring out a way to securely fasten the gown using only toilet paper.

"I ended up creating a TP lace and threading it through holes in the back, quite like a classic corset," she explained.

By adding lots of glue, Zeierman said the toilet paper took on a hardened, paper mache-like consistency, making the gown fairly sturdy.

She's pretty confident it could hold up as a real wedding dress through an entire ceremony and reception, though it might need another layer of two-ply, just to be safe.

Besides Zeierman's frock, Bain said one of her favorite TP dresses of all time remains the winner of the very first TP dress contest held back in 2005.

"It was a beautiful gown with color in it. The contestant had driven all around town looking for peach- and blue-colored toilet paper to use in the design. It was stunning," recalled Bain. "So many of these dresses end up looking like designer gowns, even if they are made of toilet paper. It really makes you think when something so beautiful can be made out of something so cheap like toilet paper."

Bain believes the contest, which has been sponsored by Ripley's Believe It or Not in New York City in years past, isn't only fun and innovative but also a good way to get brides thinking about budget-conscious alternatives for their big day.

Bain joked that a well-made TP gown, in theory, could double as tissue if worn by a bride during a particularly mushy wedding ceremony.

"You could rip a sleeve right off and wipe your tears," Bain said with a laugh. "And the dress itself would only cost about $20 to make, rather than spending thousands on a fancy gown that you'll only wear for a few hours."

Despite the practical side of sporting a wedding gown made out of toilet paper, Bain said no past contestants -- to her knowledge, at least -- have ever actually walked down the aisle in their TP dress.

She said the closest they've ever gotten to that scenario was a few years ago when a blushing bride from Kentucky won a contest sponsored by Charmin bath tissue that culminated in a highly publicized wedding at the famous Charmin restrooms in Times Square.

Fittingly, Bain said the bride wore to her public nuptials a dress made entirely of toilet paper, which was designed by Hanah Kim, the 2007 winner of Bain's Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest.

Like a good TP dispenser, it all came around full circle.

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