Globe-trotting couple's travel pics have a common thread: Her wedding dress

JENNIFER SALVAGE'S wedding dress has racked up quite a few frequent-flier miles. Jennifer and her husband, Jeff, pack the dress - a white-stretched-lace-over-jersey number - on their treks across the globe. When the mood strikes, Jennifer goes into bride mode and puts on her wedding getup so Jeff can photograph her.

Jeff has photographed Jennifer in her wedding dress in places ranging from New Zealand to China to Las Vegas and back again. The Medford, N.J., couple compiled these testaments of love - to travel and each other - in a book called One Dress, One Woman, One World.

The Salvages, who have been married for three years, lust to wander. They're both academics - he's a computer-science professor at Drexel, and she's a guidance counselor at Strath Haven High School - leaving their summer breaks for country-hopping.

"If you go as a tourist, it's one thing," Jeff said. "But to pull off these photo shoots, you need to interact with these people in a different way. We get a better understand of the country because of the project that we're working on."

The wedding-dress saga officially began two months after Jeff and Jennifer started dating. He went away on a trip that spanned the globe from Chile to Nepal. "I told her I didn't go to Easter Island because I wanted to save that for our wedding," Jeff said.

That Polynesian island, known for its massive stone-carved heads, was the natural choice when the time came for their literal, rather than hypothetical, nuptials.

Jennifer needed to find a low-maintenance dress that could be stuffed into a backpack. She went to a now-shuttered Ocean City boutique and explained her situation to the flabbergasted shop owner, who suggested the Maggie Sottero Destinations gown.

The day of the wedding, the couple hiked atop a crater where heads were forged and got hitched. Because of Easter Island's terrain, the ceremony was small, and Jeff, a part-time photographer and curator at Two Feet Gallery in Medford, was both groom and official wedding photographer. After the ceremony, Jeff needed more shots to get an "iconic image," prompting Jennifer to pose in different situations around the island.

Jeff said the "One Dress" project was inspired by reoccurring images over an artist's oeuvre. Jennifer, on the other hand, didn't want her wedding dress to be stuffed in a closet, taking up space. That's why the two decided to take the dress along on their next sojourn: one month in the Alps and another in China. They stopped often to photograph Jennifer in her dress.

"People at first were excited because they thought they had stumbled upon a wedding, but when we explained the concept, they thought it was cooler," Jennifer said about passers-by who came across them. "The reaction was so unanimous, we thought, 'We have something here that's more than just a fun project.' "

That's why the Salvages decided to compile their photos, with text by Jennifer, into a coffee-table book, which can be purchased on their website (onedressonewoman.com, $30) or Amazon.com ($39.95).

Flipping through One Dress, Jennifer can see how she became more comfortable in front of the camera. "I'm pretty much the farthest thing from a model. I had to buy makeup for our wedding," she said. "But at the same time, it felt like a good challenge. I tell my students to push the envelope and do things they're not comfortable with, so it felt like a good project to take on."

Jennifer prefers the spontaneous shots in which she's interacting with people or participating in an activity. "I don't do well with a still pose," she said. "Madonna, strike a pose? That's not me."

Most of the shoots are planned in advance, but some were serendipitous. While in Egypt, the Salvages went to play pool. "A bunch of kids were peering out through the corner and just started playing with us. They were so intrigued with our clothing and our hair," Jennifer said. "Jeff told me to put the dress on, and they were just thrilled."

In the photo, Jennifer is seen giggling with a couple of children as she leans over the pool table to take her shot.

The impulsive shoots meant that hair and makeup were afterthoughts. Jennifer said she can get in and out of the dress in three minutes, but primping takes longer. In one photo, taken at the Roman baths in Budapest, Jennifer decided to go with an updo and visited a local salon. But explaining what she wanted without speaking a word of Hungarian proved a problem. It wasn't until Jennifer and the hairdresser figured out that they both spoke French that she could convey what she wanted.

The Salvages' next stop is Peru. Jeff is a national trekking trainer for the Arthritis Society of Canada, and Jennifer pays her own way. Their treks, even if they are for business, are two-bird, one-stone trips.

Now that Jeff and Jennifer and the wedding dress have traversed the world, Jeff is looking to get a bit more complicated in the Salvages' own back yard. A recent dress rehearsal for a shoot found them at a local karate dojo, where Jeff wants Jennifer to hold a board while a martial artist breaks it. He's also planning a sequence of photos of Jennifer doing a cartwheel.

"I have some ideas in my head," Jeff said. But he's not the only one.

"Everyone who meets us now has an idea."