Bride Drowns in Shallow Water During Last Photo Shoot in Dress

If you’re a wedding photographer, you might want to think twice about doing a trash the dress shoot in a moving river. A newly married Montreal-area woman drowned this past Friday during a photo shoot in the Ouareau River.

The 30-year-old woman, married just three months ago, stepped into water that was neither deep nor fast-flowing. However, her wedding dress soaked up the river water, making it extremely heavy. She then slipped on the rocks and was carried away by the river.

The Montreal Gazette reports that the photographer, Louis Pagakis, cast aside his camera equipment and attempted to save her with the help of a passerby, but they couldn’t lift her out of the water or stop her from being carried away, simply because her dress was so heavy.

Later, a volunteer scuba diver was able to locate her body at the bottom of a stagnant pool of water about 100 feet away from where the shoot was taking place.

The story serves as a stark warning to wedding photographers, showing the potential danger of mixing large wedding dresses with a seemingly-safe river. We can’t imagine how scarring the experience must have been for Pagakis…


Thanks Adam, and everyone else who sent in this story.


Image credit: Cascades de la rivière Ouareau à St-Liguori./River Ouareau cascades at St.Liguori. by Sylvain Lacroix

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