Newlywed Drowns In Wedding Dress During Photo Shoot

CBS ^ | August 27, 2012 9:56 AM | Benjamin Fearnow

[BenLurkin]

RAWDON, Que. – A newlywed was getting one final photo shoot in her wedding dress.

It would be her last.

Rescue teams recovered the body of newlywed realtor Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, Friday after the bride was swept away and drowned in the current near Dorwin Falls in Rawdon, according to CTV News.

Pantazopoulos was dipping her toes into the water to pose but the dress became heavy when wet and the current pulled her to the bottom of the deep, eight-meter section of the lake.

“The photographer put down his equipment and tried to save her. He grabbed her with his hands,” Sgt. Ronald McInnis, provincial police spokesman, told the Montreal Gazette. “(One witness) tried to help, but they couldn’t save her.”

The photo shoot was part of an increasingly-popular rite of passage known as trash the dress, in which artistic photos are taken of the wedding gown being destroyed. The ritual was meant as a joyous celebration of having found her partner for life.

Photographer Louis Pagakis said that Pantazopoulos was small of stature, weighing around 100 pounds, and although she could swim, she was quickly overwhelmed.

“I jumped in, I was screaming and yelling, we tried our best,” Pagakis told CTV News.

The incident occurred at around 2 p.m. and rescue teams recovered her body shortly before 6 p.m.

The two witnesses were treated at hospital for shock.

Another photographer named Mario Michaud told CTV Montreal that he narrowly avoided a similar mishap in a photo-shoot at the same spot in May. In that case, however, the woman was saved.

One experienced diver from the region told CTV Montreal that the current is deceptively strong, as those who venture into the waters quickly find out.

Those who have drowned in recent years near Rawdon have included a 14-year-old boy who died in June 2005, while several others drowned in the area in the mid-1990s.

Rawdon is a town of around 10,000 residents, about 50 miles north of Montreal.

[StAnDeliver]

"Why is it that women do these crazy things?"

They overly focus on the totems, and if anything is missed on the checklist, it's not perfect. And it has to be perfect.

[Ditter]

I have never heard of this “trash the dress” thing. I thought it was saved for a daughter to wear someday or sold for some extra cash.

[Melas]

Hold on now. As a man who’s been married for over 20 years I’m asking, just how big a celebration is too big for what quite possibly is life’s most pivotal event? Everything I cherish in life has come about as the result of that union. I’d say that it would be difficult to overdo it.

[kcvl]

http://stylesizzle.com/bridal/wedding-trends-trash-dress

Wedding Trends: Trash the Dress

http://stylesizzle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bride-ripping-off-dress-in-water2.jpg

http://stylesizzle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/trash-the-dress-wedding-dress-trends.jpg

[Melas]

I thought the tradition was to pass the gown down to your daughter?

I had to show this to my wife. I didn't know about this tradition, but my wife is 6' tall, and our youngest and fully grown daughter is 4'11" tall. Definitely got a giggle.

[kcvl]

Some sources claim that the trend was originally started in 2001 by Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper.

However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used in Hollywood symbolically since at least October 1998 when Meg Cummings of the show Sunset Beach ran into the ocean in her wedding dress after her wedding was badly interrupted. Since then the style has spread around the world and most notably in the UK, with photographers like Steve Gerrard and Mark Theisinger, amongst others, shoot their unique ideas of Trash the Dress.

Brides are increasingly expecting more from their weddings photos, and trash the dress is an example of these expectations. Brides and grooms want to feature in the art on the walls of their homes.

A model often wears a ball gown, prom dress or wedding dress, and may effectively ruin the dress in the process by getting it wet, dirty or in extreme circumstances tearing or destroying the garment.

It may be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away.

In a Mass Trash The Dress event September 9, 2009 more than 150 women wore their wedding dresses once more and were pictured on a beach in Scheveningen, Netherlands.

Huffington Post Divorce blogger, Joelle Caputa, began seeking women to interview for her book “Trash the Dress: Stories of Celebrating Divorce in your 20s” in June 2011. In November 2011, she trashed her wedding dress during a photoshoot on The Style Network show, Glam Fairy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash_the_dress

[kcvl]

The 30-year-old woman had recently bought a house in Laval, started working as a real estate agent with Via Capitale, got married June 9, and went on a honeymoon in the Caribbean.

“She was really, really happy,” said family friend Leeza

Pousoulidis said her friend wanted a way to immortalize her dress, and was excited to take pictures with it in Rawdon on Friday afternoon, as part of a growing trend called trash the dress, in which brides pose for pictures in their wedding dresses, often in unconventional settings like in bodies of water.

“She’s a really fun girl, and she just didn’t want her wedding dress sitting in a box in the closet,” Pousoulidis said. “She said ‘I want to have fun with my wedding dress. I want to have great pictures and memories of me in my wedding dress.’”

[Nik Naym]

"How come the groom does not trash his tuxedo?"

Because grooms are smarter than brides. They don't spend a couple grand on an item of clothing they are going to wear once.

They rent their tux.

[Fightin Whitey]

Why don’t you ask the groom in this situation what kind of “celebration” is too big or too stupid to include?

Does the thought not cross your mind that the bride “overdid” it?

[Melas]

Interesting. I did attend a wedding about 10 years ago where the bride’s dress converted to a mini at the reception. I thought it was incredibly cool. Mrs. Melas, was not as impressed.

[Melas]

My comments was in regards to the price of weddings, not this woman’s drowning. Keep up.

[Nik Naym]

“trash the dress” seems as stupid as “shove the wedding cake in your new spouses face”.

At least the guests don’t have to watch “trash the dress” like they have to watch “smash the cake on the face”.

[Revolting cat!]

Is “Trash the dress” available as a screen name on FR?

[Vermont Lt]

This has been going on for a few years. It is a stupid thing. I think it screams “look at us, we have so much money we can trash a dress that we paid thousands for just last week.”

[Revolting cat!]

(Google Images on 'trash the dress')

[StAnDeliver]

"Huffington Post Divorce blogger, Joelle Caputa, began seeking women to interview for her book “Trash the Dress: Stories of Celebrating Divorce in your 20s” in June 2011. In November 2011, she trashed her wedding dress during a photoshoot on The Style Network show, Glam Fairy."

These Millenials are so incredibly, amorally f'd up. I have speculated that this Second Great Depression was a suckerpunch meant to wake them up out of their game-driven wired-yet-catatonic state.

[Fightin Whitey]

Money isn’t mentioned in your post.

Even if it had been, the money you are so eager to throw around has to be thrown at something. The bigger and more overdone the better, right?

The young woman in this story decided to throw money at a photographer in order to show how very fashionably she could do just that—throw money away.

The gesture killed her. That’s what this thread is about.

Read up or shut up.

[kcvl]

Yep! It had better be all about them or else it is over!

[Fightin Whitey]

But exactly.

[Melas]

Money isn’t mentioned in your post.

Well if you look at the bottom of my post #23, you'll see a little hyperlink that jumps you up to post #6, by Tigerclaws which I was replaying to, and it read:

"How much money is wasted on weddings each year? Insane. $30,000 for the “average”’wedding? That and college spending put a ton of pressure on young couples."

When Jim developed this software, he made it incredibly easy to follow conversations in context. It's a feature that you should acquaint yourself with. It will prevent you from making embarrassing posts in the future.