Eat, Drink, Then Marry at the Crystal Cathedral

Marisa Romick. John Wayne’s youngest daughter is trying to get used to the sound.

The 22-year-old beauty will marry Olympic-class skier Jace Romick, 26, of Colorado on Sept. 3 during an evening ceremony at the Crystal Cathedral.

Tonight, Claudia Mirkin, widow of Maury Mirkin (who founded Budget-Rent-A-Car) and bosom chum of Pilar Wayne--Marisa’s mum--will open her bay-front Harbor Island home to introduce Romick to area friends. (Speaking of Mirkin’s home: The bubbly brunette holes up in to-die digs in Newport Beach and the star-studded Hills of Beverly. Currently, she is renovating John Barrymore’s old eagle-nest-of-a-house on lofty Tower Grove Road. It’s most recent lovebirds? Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal.)

“I’m doing Mexican food on the dock, on the lawn, on the terrace,” Mirkin said. “The kids love Mexican food. And I’m flying the flowers in from Hawaii. They will all be white--white orchids, white gardenias and white anthurium.”

Mirkin will have Los Angeles attorney Tom Guinn on her arm at the party, and at the wedding. As for Pilar, she’s keeping her glossed mouth shut about love interests. “I have three escorts,” said the woman whose marriage to a local attorney a few years ago was annulled after a few months. “Nothing serious. And I plan to keep it that way.”

Why the Crystal Cathedral for the wedding? “The Duke knew Robert Schuller,” Pilar Wayne said. “He liked his philosophy.”

He does get around: When the Rev. Robert H. Schuller arrived in New Orleans to give the invocation Thursday at the Republican Convention (and watch his wife, Arvella, sit proudly in Vice President Bush’s private box), he didn’t fly in from California. The couple came from Seoul, South Korea, where Schuller gave a lecture at the International Pastors Conference there. The week before, Schuller was in Hollywood hobnobbing with Henry Mancini, Olivia Newton-John, O.J. Simpson, Cybill Shepherd and the like helping Kenny Rogers know when to hold ‘em and fold ‘em at the singer’s 50th birthday bash.

Next week there are hopes that Schuller’s busy schedule will permit him to attend the fund-raising lunch Tuesday for Sen. Pete Wilson at the Irvine Hilton. (By the way, there is still no word as to whether the First Lady will accompany President Reagan to the event. However, there is one new development. The President’s valet will not enter the kitchen to prepare Reagan’s meal. White House security has decided that Reagan’s portion of Meat Loaf Wellington may be selected at random from general fare. Meanwhile, White House security is scouring the Hilton to make it safe for what is expected to be Reagan’s final visit to Orange County as President.)

Morsels: Ol’ violet eyes, Elizabeth Taylor, will be at The Broadway in Crystal Court at South Coast Plaza in mid-September (date to be announced) pushing her Passion fragrance bath line. . . . Four Seasons Hotel manager Dan Camp is staging ultra-chic dinners in the hotel’s Pavilion dining room. Last week, Pavilion guests got to toss down four kinds of Louis Roederer bubbly (ooh) during a meal created to complement the pricey champagne. Camp is a man who plans ahead. He already has lined up a February visit to the hotel by a chef who gets raves at the pink Cipriani in Venice. . . . Emma Jane and Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley will celebrate their 50th anniversary on Sept. 29 (a smallish, relatively speaking, dinner party for nears and dears is being planned). . . . Tom Kendrick, president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and his wife, Judy Morr, were in good company when they attended the world premiere recently of the reconstructed “Strike Up the Band” at the Pasadena Civic. Accompanying them was Roger Stevens, founding chairman of the Kennedy Center in Washington (Kendrick was Stevens’ right arm before he came to the Center). The trio, along with Jane Hermann, presentations director of the Met in New York, stopped by Bonita Granville Wrather’s 3-acre estate in Holmby Hills for dinner before the show.

Going to the Hilton, that’s what: Last week’s blurb on the glittering Tiffany & Co. opening at South Coast Plaza planned for October ended with: “And what are you doing Oct. 8?”

Well, Dennis Goschen, PR director of St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, called to say he knew exactly what about 1,000 locals will be doing. They’ll be at the Anaheim Hilton & Towers, dining, dancing and watching the talented Ben Vereen perform. The price tag: $250 per person, right up there with the heady $300- per required for the tented Tiffany bash. The hospital hopes to make $100,000 for its magnetic resonance imaging center.