Theme Weddings Are All The Rage

In May a glass coach pulled by six white ponies will carry a bride to her wedding. Trumpeters will herald her arrival. The castle will blaze with twinkling lights. And the fairy godmother will be among the guests at the reception.

This isn't a fairy tale. It's a real-life Cinderella event costing more than $100,000, and it will be among the hundreds of weddings performed in 1994 at Disney World in Florida, where weddings have become so popular that Disney created a special department nearly two years ago just to stage them.

Flamboyant nuptials

The Disney theme weddings, available at both the Disney World complex in Orlando, Fla., and at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, Calif., may be among the nation's most flamboyant, but theme weddings now proliferate everywhere. In the countryside south of Denver, about a dozen 16th-century-style weddings will take place this summer during the annual Colorado Renaissance Festival.

Bagpipers usher in the bride, grooms sometimes are in full armor and King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn - costumed Renaissance Festival actors - always bless the bridal couple, says Lou Yetzbacher, the festival's promotional director.

Renaissance Festival wedding packages start at $1,600 for 50 guests, including a cake shaped like a castle. Last year's wedding parties included bridal couples from Texas and California, according to Yetzbacher. "It's growing," she says.

At the Cinderella gala wedding at Disney World in May, a costumed Disney World staffer will play the Fairy Godmother at the reception, which also will feature a 60-foot replica of Cinderella's castle, complete with twinkling lights, fountains and landscaping, says Rebecca Miller, national sales manager for Disney Fairy Tale Weddings.

She said Cinderella weddings, the most popular theme at Disney World, usually feature music from the movie - especially "Someday My Prince Will Come" - spectacular castle-shaped wedding cakes and rings carried in a glass slipper on a red velvet pillow.

"We kind of like to think most brides do think of themselves as Cinderella on their wedding day, going to meet their Prince Charming," says Miller.

Each Disney wedding is custom-designed, and prices start at about $10,000, she says.

Cinderella, however, isn't the only popular theme: In the past year some Aladdin weddings have occurred - one groom was carried to the ceremony by the groomsmen on a magic carpet - and there have been several "Beauty and the Beast" weddings. There also are weddings based on Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

A year ago, Laura Browne and Robbie Carter came from England to be married at Disney World before 44 guests wearing mouse ears. Mickey and Minnie - costumed Disney staffers - danced with the bride and groom at the reception, and the wedding bands bore Mickey's silhouette.

Most are still traditional

Theme weddings may be more popular these days, but most weddings still are the traditional kind, says Doris Nixon, vice president of National Bridal Service in Richmond, Va., which trains people who work in the wedding industry.

"However, now we find there are those who want to accentuate how they met or some mutual interest," says Nixon. "If you're resourceful enough and it's important to you, you'll do it.

"I think ethnic weddings are increasingly popular, bringing the traditions of your background to the ceremony," she says.

She told of one wedding consultant who specializes in importing fabric from Africa for use in African-American weddings.

"I read recently of a wedding in which the couple met through the miracle of computer matching, and they had computer-generated invitations," says Nixon.

"Holidays also can give you a good theme. At Halloween you could have a masked ball in the European tradition, and the bridesmaids in black cocktail or evening gowns carrying a profusion of fall mums," she said. "At Christmas people might have what's called a `snowball wedding,' with all the attendants and the mothers wearing white."