Joy turned to tragedy as a young new bride drowned in her wedding dress trying to complete the fun and symbolic “trash the dress” trend for social media.
When a young woman died in tragic circumstances just weeks after her wedding, local police sergeant Ronald McInnis warned “this is a story that is going to go all around the world.”
Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, tied the knot with her sweetheart Billy on June 9, 2012. Within a couple of months she was dead, gruesomely drowned in her own wedding dress after uttering some harrowing last words. The Canadian-Greek real-estate agent had been hoping to take part in the viral “trash the dress” trend at the time of her death, in which new brides wreck their wedding dresses in elaborate fashion for their social media feeds.
The photographs are “symbolic, representing the end of the wedding and [the bride]’s transformation of a bride to a wife”, according to Wikipedia. Inspiration pages on websites like Brides.com suggest methods such as splashing the dress in paint or, ominously, swimming into a secluded lagoon.
It was something like that which Mrs Pantazopoulos was imagining when she hired photographer Louis Pagakis to direct her shoot. He suggested that they take the pictures at Ouareau River near Dorwin Falls in Montreal, a fast-moving, 60ft-tall waterfall which, according to Indigenous legend, was once the site of a mystical confrontation between a saintly nun and an evil sorcerer.
He recommended they find a quiet spot so they could shoot uninterrupted. Mr Pagakis recalled Mrs Pantazopoulos posing in the mossy waters around the fall before deciding she wanted to swim further into the waters. He said: “She had her wedding dress on and said, ‘take some pictures of me while I swim a little bit in the lake.’”
But there was one fatal flaw in their plan. Mrs Pantazopoulos had chosen a heavier wedding dress whose material quickly became saturated by the water. The sheer weight pulled Mrs Pantazopoulos down and made it impossible for her to swim. Mr Pagakis still remembers Mrs Pantazopoulos’s chilling last words: “I can’t anymore. It’s too heavy.”
Despite immediately jumping into the water to help, Mr Pagakis was unable to pull Maria out due to the weight of the dress. A scuba team pulled her body from the bottom of the waters several hours later. After the tragic death, her family released an official statement. It read: “One thing we are certain about is that our Maria would have never put her life at risk.
“She trusted Mr. Louis Pagakis’ recommendation for the location and felt safe enough to attend the photo shoot alone with the photographers. The family asks the municipal council of Rawdon to work on putting in place stronger security measures to avoid any future tragedies.”
In 2015, a video of a similar incident went viral after newlywed Amy Zuno was filmed jumping off a boat toward her husband, Eric, in her wedding dress. But the garment quickly became water-logged, causing Mrs Zuno to sink. Her friends can be heard screaming “Find her!” and “Pull her dress up!” in the background of the footage. Eventually, Mrs Zuno’s face bobs back above the surface, washed with relief. Commenting on the incident afterwards, the bride reportedly said: “I don’t regret it.”
