Wedding Gowns & Bridal Fashion

All eyes may be on the bride during a wedding, but it is equally important for the groom to look his best when he suits up for the ceremony. During the final days of the calendar year, Lovetripper looks back at the leading men who donned designer duds in order to tie the knot in 2007.

1) Tony Parker– Standing at the altar of the Eglise Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois in a classic black suit and white cravat from French fashion house DeFursac, the San Antonio Spurs star received an 18k white gold Piaget Possession wedding band from his bride, Eva Longoria. In exchange, the NBA great slipped a white gold Piaget Possession wedding adorned with 107 brilliant-cut and square-cut diamonds on to the hand of the Desperate Housewives star.

2) Usher– One of the decade’s most stylish stars straightened his ivory bow tie and tucked a gardenia boutonniere into the lapel of his black Giorgio Armani tuxedo before exchanging vows for a second time with Tameka Foster during a wedding ceremony held at Chateau Elan Winery and Resort near Atlanta.

3) Howie Dorough– From Orlando Bloom and David Beckham to Nelly Furtado and Madonna, the designing duo of Dean and Dan Caten have dressed the entertainment world’s elite since 1995. On December 8, 2007, the Backstreet Boy donned a timeless black tuxedo and a white bow tie from the Canadian couturier’s label, Dsquared, to marry his love of the past seven years, Leigh Boniello.

4) Ioan Gruffudd– As the sea rushed to the white sands at the One & Only Palmilla Resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, a breeze tugged at the ivory satin tie of the Fantastic Four’s indigo-hued wool crepe Armani suit while actress Alice Evans recited a self-penned poem to the actor during their wedding ceremony.

5) Brandon Routh– Looysen Fine Clothing suited up Superman for premieres of his cinematic blockbuster around the world, and the actor turned to the label once again for his wedding day, when he donned a black cashmere suit for his nuptials at El Capitan Ranch.

6) Scott Baio– Donning a dove grey suit for his rooftop nuptials at L.A.’s Mercury Building with Renee Sloan, the former teen idol could still cause his fans to swoon. Details of the long-time bachelor’s “I do’s” will be revealed when Scott Baio is 46…and Pregnant premieres on VH1 on January 13, 2008.

7) Felipe Massa– Weeks before their November 30, 2007 nuptials, paparazzi captured the arrival of the Formula One champion and his bride-to-be Raffaela Bassi for a fitting at the Milan store of Dolce and Gabbana, who garbed the groom in a black suit paired with a silver tie for his wedding day at the Igreja Nossa Senhora do Brasil in Sao Paulo.

Bill Rancic– Each stitch sewn with love, the Apprentice winner donned a classic black tuxedo and a white bow tie created by Eduardo DePandi, the father of his bride, E! News host Giuliana DePandi.

9) Roger Taylor– Duran Duran’s drummer made his bride’s heart skip a beat when she walked down the aisle at Jalousie Plantation in St. Lucia toward the groom, who donned a white Giorgio Armani suit for their wedding day.

10) Jon Cryer– After saying “I do” to TV Guide’s InFANity host Lisa Joyner at the Chapel at Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, the Two and A Half Men star danced the cha-cha in a white Hugo Boss suit during an outdoor reception.

Source: Lovetripper.com

White silk, lace, embroidery, petticoats… what does your dream wedding gown look like? Have you found the person who will make it for you?

When you ask around the first name that usually comes up is Vera Wang. This creative and talented artist often went with her mother to fashion shows in Paris. She got frustrated with the lack of fashion in bridal wear and decided to create her own shop. Today she is the hottest name in this industry, dressing such glamorous ladies for their nuptials as Jessica Simpson, Mariah Carey, Vanessa Williams and Sharon Stone.

Another name to watch out for in bridal fashion is Monique Lhuillier. This lady always wanted to be a fashion designer. She attended the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising but didn’t go into designing wedding gowns until after she designed her own wedding dress and then she decided to get into this business. Today she designs gowns for such celebrities as Britney Spears, Christine Baumgartner (wife of Kevin Costner), Natalie Imbruglia and Charlotte Ross.

Now, you may be saying to yourself that you can’t afford the price tag of these designers. You may be surprised. While it’s true that to ask these designers to make a gown specifically for you would be expensive, you can get their designs off the rack, so to speak in places like Saks Fifth Avenue and Nieman Marcus. You can also check out the online stores for wedding gowns made by these wonderful designers.

Quite a number of brides don’t wish to waste their gowns, sitting in their closets, just mouldering. That would be a shame. Their generosity, your find, an absolute treasure. Check out the bargains to be had from purchasing used wedding gowns created by these very same designers. They are absolutely beautiful and can make you feel absolutely glamorous on your wedding day without breaking your bank.

Lesley-Ann Graham runs WeddingTrix.com - a valuable wedding planning resource with articles, tips and advice to help you plan your perfect wedding. Visit Lesley-Ann’s wedding blog for more free wedding planning help and advice.

Talento Kanda Uno (32) had her long-awaited wedding in Tokyo yesterday. She married pachinko mogul Nishimura Takuro (37) in a traditional shinto ceremony at Meiji Jingu shrine.

The ceremony was followed by a hugely extravagant reception downtown at the Hotel New Otani. A lucky 777 friends and fellow celebrity guests were invited to the reception and bridal fashion show that is said to have cost ¥600 million (771 actually turned up). Kanda wore a 105-carat diamond and platinum tiara, necklace and earring set that arrived just days before from Antwerp and cost some ¥300 million.

Kanda’s friend Ohguro Maki (37) performed a ballad she had composed specially for the occasion, leaving both the bride and groom in tears. The couple have not yet registered their marriage and plan to do so on October 13, an auspicious taian day on the traditional calendar.

The daughter of a bureaucrat, Kanda entered the world of showbiz in 1992. After many years as a regular on the variety show circuit, recently she has been working more as a fashion designer. Yesterday’s reception featured dozens of her bridal designs. She has never made a secret of her taste for the high life and there was never any doubt that she would marry into money. Nishimura is the founder of the major Nittaku chain of pachinko parlors, with annual sales of ¥200 billion.

Source: JapanZone

HE’S used to designing for royalty - both of the Windsor and Hollywood varieties - working with everyone from Princess Diana to Elizabeth Taylor. But, when it comes to demanding customers, David Emanuel says they are nothing compared to the forthright females he met at the Trafford Centre.

“They definitely tell you straight what they think,” he laughs. “Whereas my couture clients might be a little more, let’s say, tactful.”

The women he saw on his recent jaunt up north weren’t multi-millionaires, flashing a gold card and asking for extra sequins on their evening gowns.

In fact, the dressmaker to the stars was here to meet customers at bargain-hunters’ chain Bonmarché.

Yes, it’s possibly one of the last places in the fashion universe you’d expect to find the man behind Princess Diana’s wedding dress.

But it’s where he has chosen to launch his first high street range, lending his name to a new designer collection in 100 Bonmarché stores.

He’s certainly not the first designer to collaborate with the high street, following Stella McCartney for H&M and Giles Deacon at New Look. But why Bonmarché? Nobody would argue it’s at the fashion frontline.

Down-to-earth

“I’ve had other chains approach me but guarded my name fiercely. But the Bonmarché people were very professional and lovely to work with.

“I’d never been in any of the stores when they first asked me so I went round a couple and visited them. I could clearly see it needed something. It’s clear that the customer base was an older lady and there’s nothing wrong with that. These ladies want stylish things but they also want a good price.”

Deal done he started designing a stylish, yet mature, range to add a bit of class to the plain chain. However, despite decades of experience in the fashion industry, he still had a lot to learn about high street prices.

Not too pricey

“Let’s be brutally honest - people are only prepared to spend a certain amount nowadays,” he says. “If a lady wants a one-off piece they come to me and they have to spend a lot of money, that’s understood.

“But on the high street they want a bargain. I could design the most wonderful things but they won’t work if they aren’t the right price. We’ve been careful to keep it between £10 and £70 max.”

However, his new found love of the high street does know some bounds.

While he reckons high street ranges from trained designers are a bonus for fashion-savvy customers, he’s none too pleased about other famous faces, like Kate Moss at Topshop or Lily Allen at New Look, wading in.

“I’m a trained designer, as is Stella McCartney, and we design clothes. It’s the other people who muddy the waters, I don’t have time for that. I’m sorry but you would need to be a trained architect to design a building wouldn’t you?”

No fan of celeb ranges

Of course, he will always be remembered for Diana’s famous wedding dress of taffeta and antique lace, with its 25ft train, which he designed with then-wife Elizabeth.

But for now, he says, he’s happy to be working on something a little less grand.

“Undoubtedly, Diana’s wedding dress was the ultimate highlight. I never realised I would always be linked with it. But I like to move to on the next challenge.

“I’ve been very lucky in my career, it’s a thrill to dress Madonna and Elizabeth Taylor. But they have an open cheque book. Here the challenge is to get the clothes out looking stylish but at a price that’s affordable.”

Source: Manchester Evening News

Carrie Bradshaw is getting married — or at least that’s what new sneak photos from the set of the Sex and the City movie seem to show. Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays the fashion-obsessed Bradshaw, was snapped yesterday stepping out of a New York apartment in an extravagant Zac Posen wedding dress, before taking a limo to the wedding set.

Joining her were castmates Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), quashing rumours that Cattrall had not returned to the set since an on-set bust-up last month.

However, there was no sign of Mr Big (Chris Noth) in the wedding scene — despite previous scenes of them together holding hands — sparking speculation over the groom’s identity.

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Chris Noth was spotted on-set last week with Davis, whose character Charlotte will be pregnant in the movie.

But Charlotte may not be the only character who will sport a baby bump.

OK! Magazine reported a witness’s account of a scene where Carrie flanked in a flattering peach dress balancing in towering high heels is walking with her best friend Stanford (Willie Garson) before they run into Bitsy Von Muffling (Julie Halston).

“Carrie Bradshaw pregnant! Mazel Tov! When is it? September? October?” Von Muffling blurts out.

However, the UK magazine reported a subsequent take of the scene revealed a different story.

For the full story, fans will have to wait until the movie hits American screens in May 2008.

Source: ninemsn

Princess Diana’s wedding dress will grace Sydney in a major coup for the Powerhouse Museum.

On loan from the Spencer family’s 500-year-old ancestral home Althorp Estate, Diana: A Celebration features more than 150 items that chronicle Diana’s life from childhood through to her rocky royal years.

Her 1981 wedding gown, diamond tiara, veil and 7.5m train help form the exhibition’s centrepiece Royal Wedding Gallery.

Fashion fans can see the Versace, Chanel, Dior and Lacroix dresses, suits and couture gowns Diana wore along with portraits of her ancestors, Spencer family jewels and other precious Althorp artifacts.

Family films from her childhood, photos, personal possessions and private letters offer a rare insight.

During the northern summer the exhibition resides at Althorp House, Northamptonshire, but in recent years has toured US, Canada and Japan in its “off season”. This is its furthest trip and its first time in Australia.

Powerhouse curator Glynis Jones said the exhibit also included material covering Diana’s support for AIDs, charities, homeless people and landmine victims.

“Australians have long had a special affection for Diana, with fond memories of her boundless spirit and her extraordinary kindness and evotion to others,” she said.

Ms Jones promised “a rare and intimate glimpse into her world and the many roles for which she became known, from the young bride who captured our hearts, to the icon of fashion and style, and as a humanitarian campaigner”.

The exhibition opens on September 29.

Source: Sunday Telegraph

A wedding this summer will probably be a washout so, if you are hoping for a bit of sparkle, you might think that Buckingham Palace could present a better option: all the surviving frocks sported by the principal members of her wedding party, brought together along with a small selection of presents, a few bits of memorabilia and the odd snippet of grainy film.

It will, however, take more than the dusty gilding of the Ball Supper Room in which this exhibition is displayed to conjure memory’s golden glow. The young Princess Elizabeth did not want the sort of lavish spectacular that has launched a thousand bridezillas’ dreams. Alongside the savagely competitive nuptials familiar from Hello! magazine, the entire affair will no doubt seem decidedly understated. Princess Elizabeth, after all, was getting married in a time of postwar austerity. It was an era as depressing as our rain-sodden summer.

The gown of a woman better known for her devotion to duty than her dress sense can hardly compete with the great tulle confections whipped up by sickly Hollywood weddings. Nor did it have that twist of irony that can lend fashion its flair. Wedding dresses seldom do: they are about symbolism and sentiment rather than culture’s cutting edge. Norman Hartnell, who had been dressing smart young ladies exactly like their mummies for a decade or two, apparently found his inspiration in Botticelli’s Primavera, whose tendrilled flowers find a faint reflection in the embroidered patterns of more than 10,000 seed pearls that scroll the diaphanous veil. But the two surviving bridesmaid’s dresses, no doubt drawn from mothballed trunks, have turned the colour of old teeth with age.

Then there are the presents. Princess Elizabeth did not come from a family that had to buy its own furniture, let alone the sort of domestic accoutrements that feature on the John Lewis list. Of course, there is the usual selection of candlesticks, tea caddies, goblets and plates, but what do you buy for the woman who has everything?

Henry Channon, it seems, opted for something she could not possibly want: a cigarette case for a woman who never smoked. Mahatma Gandhi contributed a cotton shawl that he had made himself. Then there are the diamonds: rather more tasteful but also more dull than the grinning glitter-ball of Damien Hirst’s diamond-studded skull. The little behind-the-scenes glimpses might make the memories shine – the 500 tins of pineapple chunks sent as a present by the Governor of Queensland; the pages who race indecorously along Palace corridors; the corgi that slips surreptitiously from the royal coach – but it is the flaws in this show that leave their mark on the memory, not the fairytale.

Source: Times Online

ONE joy James Packer must surely derive from his ludicrously huge fortune is the freedom to say, “Never mind what it costs, darling.”

And his current darling certainly didn’t mind. Rumours hardened early that the new Mrs Packer’s strapless ivory silk wedding gown, with its tightly corsetted bodice and descending hooped and waved skirts, cost $100,000 and was fitted in the rarefied atelier of no less than John Galliano of Dior.

When Erica Baxter took her vows in that fragrant arbour of flowers yesterday, she wore the frock of many young women’s dreams, by a designer from bridal fashion’s heavenly “Holy Trinity”: John Galliano for Dior, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel and Valentino.

It will be remembered best for what it wasn’t — not satiny sleek like a million modern bridal gowns and not so puffed that it verged on the dreaded “meringue” aesthetic.

Baxter’s feline prettiness and angular elegance perfectly complemented the not-too-simple, not-too-fancy frock of a lifetime, and incidentally, the beefy bulk of her husband, also.

Source: The Age

It could have been packed away in tissue paper, its one day of glory over.

But the Duchess of Cornwall loved her wedding dress too much to leave it at the back of her wardrobe.

So she decided to wear it again - at the opening of the National Assembly of Wales.

Before and after: Camilla on her big day… and two years on at the opening of the Welsh Assembly

The Prince of Wales, an avid recycler, was sure to approve of his wife’s fashion sense.

The Robinson Valentine oyster coat and chiffon dress was last seen at the couple’s civil wedding at Windsor’s Guildhall two years ago.

Yesterday’s outing had a few minor adjustments, with Camilla swopping her wedding hat for another with an upturned brim.

Then she added a triple string of pearls and a different pair of shoes. She made sure, however, to pin on the diamond brooch in the shape of the Prince of Wales feathers she wore on her wedding day.

Camilla appears to be following a fashion set by her sister-in-law, Princess Anne, arguably the most frugal member of the Royal Family.

She has been proudly wearing the same outfits for up to 30 years.

Source: Daily Mail

Elizabeth Hurley has chosen the Italian designer, Donatella Versace, to design both her bridal gowns for her marriage to Arun Nayar, in the Cotswolds, next Saturday, and the Indian ceremony in Rajasthan five days later, which has a shocking pink theme.

The actress combined final fittings for the dresses with a front row seat at Donatella Versace’s autumn/winter 2007/2008 at the Teatro Versace in the Italian fashion capital last night.

Wearing a short, candy-pink silk dress with a scooped neckline and accompanied by her fiancé, Miss Hurley watched as the designer unveiled a new look for the family brand — “Versace Minimalism”.

The collection marked a high point of Donatella Versace’s 10-year tenure as creative director, following the murder of her brother, Gianni, in Miami, in 1997.

Sculptural tailoring in grey cashmere, stretch jersey and a new techno-wool, treated to look like feathers, emphasised the hourglass figure and gave particular emphasis to the hips.

Column gowns featured delicate, fingertip-pleating from hip to hem and trailing panels which floated like scarves around the body.

Sharply-cut swing coats in vivid shades of lime, turquoise, yellow and red injected hot colour into the opening monochrome palette.

But even the Versace Minimalism allowed space for a little extravagance via crimson-dyed fox “bubble” coats, jackets in silver crocodile, with chinchilla sleeves, and “warrior women” mini-dresses in silver chain mail, crystals and sequins the size of £2 coins, which although relatively modestly cut in front, featured deep, scooped out spinal cleavage.

The Versace “skyscraper” heels, glistening like steel spikes on the mirrored catwalk, took the Milan Fashion Week prize for height, at a teetering 13cm.

The Versace show brought Milan Fashion Week to an end. This weekend, the focus shifts to Paris for the opening of the prêt-à-porter season, the final leg of the international designer shows for next season.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk