"Wedding Dress Guy" not just a pretty face

Larry Star is a man of many hats — and one wedding dress.

The 44-year-old Everett resident plays in a rock band called the Buzzcuts, which will perform Friday in Snohomish. By day, he works for Cingular Wireless in Bothell.

He's an author, too: In June, he self-published a book, "Bitter, Party of One ... Your Table Is Ready."

But for many people, he's best known as "the Wedding Dress Guy," the man who last year landed on national TV after modeling his ex-wife's dress on eBay.

It inspired the book, a compendium of anecdotes and satirical lessons.

"Bitter" may be in the title, but Star is funny bitter, not mean bitter. He's even hopeful bitter. The author, now in a happy relationship, remembers finding his ex-wife's wedding dress in his attic while clearing out the detritus of a four-year marriage.

At the time, he felt a mixture of emotions.

"It was like going through old pictures — it's one of your memories," he said. "I didn't know what to do with it. I thought about having a burning party, but I decided, sell it on eBay."

Star had sold items on the online auction site before and wanted to make the ad for the wedding dress a little different.

"When I took initial pictures of it, I thought, 'My God, it looks like a shower curtain,' " he said. "I laid it across a chair — it looked even worse."

Star needed a model.

"I put it on and had the photos taken of me in it, and I thought it was really funny. When I got to work, I put it on eBay. The whole thing took me 20 minutes to write, and it went around the world in a week."

The ad read:

SIZE 12 WEDDING DRESS/GOWN NO RESERVE

SURE IS A BEAUTY! CHEAP! USED ONLY ONCE!

Considering it satire, Star sent the Web link for his eBay auction to friends, including Brandon Hildebrand, who began to manage the auction account for him.

"I put it on the 23rd of April 2004," Star said. "By April 26, I had 50,000 hits. This thing started to look like the odometer in my car."

Thus did Star become "the Wedding Dress Guy" and get national exposure: two appearances on NBC's "Today" show, three appearances on MSNBC's "Countdown" show and an appearance on "Wild Weddings" on the TLC network, plus countless newspaper and radio features.

The media attention encouraged him to write the book, which came out in June through iUniverse, an online book-publishing company.

"I wanted creative control," he said of the self-published book. "If I'm going to go down in a flaming ball of taffeta, I want it to be all me."

Ultimately, the dress didn't sell — the $3,850 winning bid turned out to be bogus.

The ad, meanwhile, appears on the author's Web site, www.weddingdressguy.com, and Star sometimes wears the dress to author appearances.

The New York-born Star, who moved to the Northwest in 1996, has lived in Everett since last year.

He has learned some hard-won lessons that are included in his book. Here's a sample:

• You will never win any argument if you are naked and your antagonist is not. Make sure you are either both naked or both dressed because this levels the playing field.

• Buying a used vehicle is a lot like marriage. You're all enamored with it those first two weeks, then you really start to see what's wrong.

"I wanted to give people a laugh, but more importantly, give women the insight into the male psyche in a way that would make people chuckle a little bit," Star said.

"It's not gender bashing — it's just my funny takes on relationships. Everybody, once in their lives, has screwed up their relationship, as I have many times."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com