FROM THE POOL TO THE ALTER:Couple who met swimming when they were EIGHT set to marry at same pool they met

Leger & Rodrigues grew up together in Pierrefonds. Next month they will wed at Versailles pool. (JOHN MAHONEY photo)

Matthew Leger and Celia Rodrigues began taking swimming lessons at the Versailles pool in Pierrefonds when they were 8 years old.

Now 24, the couple will be getting married on Aug. 18 in the park right next to the pool where their friendship began.

"We wanted an outdoor ceremony and we wanted a venue that had meaning for us," Leger said last week. "And, of course, it was the pool."

The youngsters actually knew each other from the age of 5. They lived on the same street in Pierrefonds. But it was when they were 8, taking swimming lessons at the pool, that they became best friends.

"We saw each other every day and became close," Leger said, adding they became boyfriend and girlfriend around the age of 11 - but mostly during the summer months.

Rodrigues broke up with him when they were 13.

"It broke my heart," Leger said. "It took me 10 years to get her back."

For her part, Rodrigues said she was surprised when Leger reminded her of the breakup.

"It surprised me that Matthew remembered that. We were going to different schools and wouldn't have seen much of each other anyway," she said.

They went their separate ways and even though they both went to the same CEGEP and university, they rarely saw each other except to pass one another in the hall once in a while, Rodrigues said.

But one day she bumped into Leger's mother who told her he was on a water polo team.

"I told his mother that I'd like to get into that and she told Matthew to call me," Rodrigues said.

Leger did call, and even though Rodrigues never did join the water polo team, the friendship was rekindled.

"It was as if no time had passed," she said.

The friendship led to romance and the couple started dating. And last November, on Rodrigues's 24th birthday, Leger proposed. She happily accepted.

The couple have no plans to jump into the pool on their wedding day but Rodrigues is thinking of Trashing the Dress - a trend in which the bride (and sometimes the groom) are photographed destroying the wedding dress in an environment that is out of place with elegant clothing - at the pool a few weeks later.