Your wedding day. You’ve scrimped and saved and planned, so that everything will be perfect. You’ve spent thousands of dollars on the event, not to mention the dress. The hours of searching, trying, rejecting and finally finding that perfect dress of your dreams could rival the search for Mister Right. Now, due to a new trend, you’re dead in a river before your honeymoon.
That’s what happened in Laval, Quebec (just minutes from where I live) on July 24th, 2012. The beautiful blonde bride, Maria Pantazopoulos, drowned in her wedding dress because she wanted to take part in the latest wedding fad, “trash the dress”.
Trash the dress is a relatively new phenomenon where the bride (and sometimes the groom too) take part in a photo shoot wherein the wedding dress is trashed.
Some brides go the artistic route.
Others go for hangover chic.
Then there’s the ‘From here to eternity’ look.
There are all sorts of creative ways in which to ruin a wedding dress, but some brides feel they must risk their lives for the shot.
Maria Pantazopoulos decided to go with a very popular scenario of wading into water. In this case, the Ouareau River which is rife with many drop offs. Maria slipped on the wet stones, her dress, now soaking wet, weighed her down and pulled her under the water. Both the photographer and a good Samaritan tried their best to rescue her, but were unable to save the bride from drowning. Her lifeless body was found by a scuba diver about 100 ft. from where she fell.
Police spokesperson Sgt. Ronald McInnis said the spot where Maria perished wasn’t particularly dangerous. “There’s not a very strong current there, and not much water. Her dress became full of water. It became too heavy.”
Maria was quoted as saying, before the photo shoot, “I want to have fun with my wedding dress. I want to have great pictures and memories of me in my wedding dress”.
This trash the dress thing is stupid. It’s not artistic. It’s not punk rock. It’s just a huge waste of a very expensive dress… and for what, a shot at the next Darwin Award?