Well Worth the Wait
Myrna Lightstone met Stephen Preston when they sat next to each other at the counter of Junior’s Deli in Westwood. Nine years later, she planned their marriage--a first for both of them.
“In the beginning, I wanted to wear something tailored and have a small wedding, as would befit a 49-year-old first-time bride,” Lightstone recalls.
“Then I thought, why be subdued about love?
“My parents were 78 at the time. My sister had died, leaving three young children. I wanted them all to experience some joy, to participate in a truly happy family occasion. That’s how the wedding party mushroomed from two to 17. And the guest list from 20 to 127. And the short, simple dress or suit into a full-length gown. It happened so fast, I didn’t realize I was creating a big wedding.”
Lightstone bought “a delicate, wispy, cream-color lace Gatsby gown” in Nordstrom’s evening wear department and had a headpiece made to go with it. The garden ceremony was preceded by champagne and followed by dinner and dancing.
Was it all she expected? “Look at the beaming faces in our wedding album, and you have the answer,” she says.
Older brides are “a hot topic these days,” says Marcille Hughes of Nordstrom, who adds that her caseload of over-40 wedding belles has burgeoned over the past few years.
Hughes, director of the store’s free personal shopping service, says so many women now find love and matrimony at a relatively late age that all the old traditions are being turned upside down.
“There are no rules anymore,” agrees Catherine Bloom, personal shopper at Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills. “More mature women feel free to wear any color, length and style they think looks good on them; they plan whatever kind of celebration pleases them. Neither society nor propriety dictate what to do anymore.”
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In fact, these days, it may be the older brides who get to have more fun.
First-time brides usually want white or cream dresses, says Bloom. Adds Nordstrom’s Hughes: “Every girl has a fantasy of how she’ll look at her wedding. First-time brides usually try for an appropriate version of that fantasy, no matter what their age.”
But after that first wedding? Look out. Hughes says a recent customer, divorced and remarrying at 55, purchased a red satin dress for what Hughes calls a “kick-up-the-heels cocktail-party nuptial. And the bride looked great.”
Bloom says some recent clients at Neiman Marcus have gone for gold lame, navy blue or other “daring and adventuresome” looks that younger, less confident brides would not consider.
Is white out of bounds for women who may have been married once (or many times) before? Not at all. In fact, the bridal experts say white is a favorite with widows and divorcees of every age.
Ruth Candeub, 70, is one of those. She met Jules Avins, 79, on “sort of a blind date” about a year ago. On Nov. 30, the widow and widower were wed in the library of her Metuchen, N.J., home. She wore an off-white St. John knit suit from Nordstrom, and no flowers or jewelry except the diamond stud earrings her groom had given her. After the ceremony, the newlyweds hosted a 1 p.m. luncheon-reception for 80 guests at a country club. “We had a jazz combo, and our children proposed the toasts. My son sang a song he’d written for us. My daughter-in-law offered a funny kind of David Letterman Top 10 list about Jules, who’s a chemical engineer and very precise about everything. The seating arrangement was crucial. We worked really hard putting people together who’d never met before, but who we thought would like each other. It was a huge success.”
Buff Aaron wore an elegant black crepe cocktail dress on her wedding night. Her groom, Bert Given, wore a brown cashmere suit. But that was to fool the 100 guests who showed up at Given’s Brentwood home, ostensibly just to dine.
“People thought they were coming to a simple dinner party. We told them we’d been going together so long that we felt it was time all our friends met each other. We had cocktails, and then Bert called for quiet and announced our engagement. Champagne and toasts followed.
“Then, as everyone was chatting and sipping, I slipped away and changed into a mid-calf-length periwinkle chiffon dress. My son signaled the orchestra as I returned to the room, and they started playing ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ He walked me down to where our four grandchildren had just come in, holding tall bamboo poles to which were affixed prayer shawls. That formed the canopy under which we were married.” The bride declines to reveal her age, but says she was first married about half a century ago. Her husband is 80. Their surprise wedding, she says, is one guests say they won’t ever forget.
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The most unforgettable part of Gail Weingart’s marriage countdown was a botched wedding dress, purchased at a local store and left there for alterations. The store’s overzealous tailors altered too much.
At the final fitting, just days before the wedding, the very petite assistant city attorney could not fit into her dress. Worse yet, she says, “they’d cut out the fabric, so they couldn’t make it right again.”
A desperate call to Hughes at Nordstrom, who had helped her in the past, solved the problem. “Marcille sent me right over to a place in the California Mart, where I found a dress more perfect than the one that had been messed up.” It was a long, white, fitted gown with a scoop neckline.
Weingart’s wedding to psychiatrist Dr. Robert Bunes was unusual in other ways. “A friend told me, ‘This is the only wedding I’ve ever seen where the mother of the bride is more radiant than the bride herself.’ ”
“And my friend was right,” Weingart says with a chuckle. “I was the only daughter, I was 51 years old and I had never been married before. My mother had waited so long and patiently for this day to come.”
The bride met her husband-to-be, 52, on a charter flight to Aspen, where they both were going to ski. They got together on the slopes, and four years later, in 1995, at the altar.
Perhaps the glitziest love fest of all in 1997 was hosted by Rodeo Drive impresario Fred Hayman, 70, and his bride, Betty Endo, 52. After 18 years together, the pair tied the knot in her native Utah, then held their wedding bash at home in Malibu.
It was a black-tie event, at which the bride wore a full-length white embroidered organdy gown from the summer haute couture collection of Hubert de Givenchy. Two mariachi bands, 75 fiddlers, 90 chefs, a banner in the sky that said “I Love You Betty,” and an 80-member gospel choir belting “Oh Happy Day” were part of the festivities--proving that love can bloom at any age.
