Having Fun

That's what it's called when you're bored, when everything seemingly goes too smoothly and there is too little tension in your life.  You've achieved all you've set out to do, and in so doing there seem few challenges left to make life interesting.  And then, newlyweds who have it all come up with a new 'fun project'.  To make additional use of that long-planned-for and expensively-acquired bridal gown.  It will never be used again, so why not do something really different with it.

Maria Pantazopoulos, 30 years old who just bought a house of her own, began work as a real estate agent, was married in June, took a honeymoon in the Caribbean and was really, really happy, according to her best friend, thought up a lark.  She had a photo shoot planned, a photographer willing to take part in her ditsy but oh-so-much-fun plan to memorialize herself in her wedding gown, to accompany her to Rawdon, 75 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
Maria Pantazopoulos via Facebook

This is a trend, evidently named "trash the dress".  Where brides pose happily for photographs in their wedding gowns after the event has taken place, choosing what they feel to be unconventional settings to prove how clever and unique their creative thought processes are.  

"She's a really fun girl, and she just didn't want her wedding dress sitting in a box in the closet. 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'."

 Ill-thought-out high spirits, a sense of adventure, a game, having fun, surprising one's friends with the results.  They're surprised now, and she is in the past tense, although there will be photographs for her parents and her husband and her brother to treasure, of Maria Pantazopoulos in her wedding dress in a truly unlikely setting.

ROBERT VOS/AFP/Getty Images  ‘Trash the dress’ photo shoots are intended to look like high-fashion magazine spreads.

"She had her wedding dress on and she said, 'Take some pictures of me while I swim a little bit in the lake'.  She went in and her dress got heavy, I tried everything I could to save her.  I jumped in; I was screaming and yelling; we tried our best", said the photographer, in anguished memory.

Two police officers arriving soon after Maria went under the water, and photographer Louis Pagakis was unable to save her, shed their uniforms and jumped into the water to find her.  Eventually, however, a scuba diver arrived with his gear and retrieved her body.