Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312190022
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD S. PURDUM THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
The bride wears white, le tout New York is invited, and if an iota of social opprobrium attaches to the event, no one seems to notice.
The Age of Innocence it's not.
But when the bride is Marla Maples and the groom is Donald Trump, when the hotel is his (and his creditors') Plaza and the guest list features O.J. Simpson, Liza Minnelli, David Dinkins, Alfonse D'Amato and Howard Stern, blushing has long since ceased to be an issue for all but the roses on the five-tiered butter-cream cake.
In 30 solemn minutes Monday night, perhaps 900 members of what Noel Coward once called Nescafe Society will witness the culmination of the romance that burst into prominence on the slopes of Aspen four years ago this month.
It was there that Maples confronted Trump's wife, Ivana, demanded to know if she loved him, and professed her own devotion to the once and future self-styled billionaire.
Since then, the world has come to know the story of the broken dates and endless waits, the casino bankruptcies and business rebounds, the Broadway debut, the ring, the rumors and, finally, the birth in October of Tiffany Ariana, the offspring named for the Fifth Avenue jewelry store whose air rights made possible the erection of her father's tower next door.
Friday, after Trump handed over the $30 fee, Dinkins signed the marriage license in the Blue Room of City Hall, gave Maples a long-stemmed yellow rose, and toasted the couple with flutes full of Pierre Marcel champagne from Batavia, N.Y.
The mayor kissed the smiling bride, the sheepish groom kissed the mayor, and Dinkins urged Maples, shivering in a teal green suit, skyscraper heels and no overcoat, to get off the cold steps and into the couple's waiting limousine.
"I know," she murmured. "I've got to keep myself healthy for her."
"It's one of those happy and funny things that you don't really care that much about how it actually comes out," said Liz Smith, the sunny doyenne of New York gossips who broke the story of the Trumps' impending divorce in early 1990, unabashedly took Ivana's side in the bitter case that followed, but is now friendly with all parties and will be among the guests. "It's just a part of the pageant of New York."
But this is one pageant about which the perpetually loquacious Trump has been atypically tight-lipped, on the orders of his new public-relations savant, Chen Sam, the Egyptian-born spokeswoman best known as Elizabeth Taylor's alter ego.
Trump hired her Dec. 9 to handle his affairs, with no hint of anything special afoot, then told her the next day that she had just 10 days to plan a wedding that required issuing as many as 2,000 invitations; by telephone, since time was so short.
Trump's longtime executive assistant, Norma Foerderer, put it a bit differently. "What is there to say?" she said, sighing. "It'll be all over by the time he's married if he keeps talking to the press."
This much is known: Maples' gown is by Carolina Herrera, who has dressed a passel of Kennedys, and it is white. She will wear a $2 million diamond tiara by Harry Winston, though Trump will not necessarily buy it.
There will be white birches and orchids in the Grand Ballroom. There will be sushi and caviar and smoked fish and turkey. There will be exclusive photographs of the ceremony, sold to benefit selected charities of the Trump Foundation. The groom will be attended by his father, Fred, and Maples by Janie Elder, a friend. The bride will take her husband's name.
But is there a prenuptial agreement, long one of Trump's reported preconditions? Cindy Adams, The New York Post's gossip maven, insists Maples has signed one.
As she presented Maternity Moods by Marla, her new collection of maternity wear, at Macy's on Tuesday, Maples suggested she might not mind signing an agreement some day, but implied she had not yet.
So what got the 47-year-old Donald to the altar with his 30-year-old bride?
David Letterman cracked on the air that Trump was relieved to be settling down to marriage, so he could start dating again. Others were (slightly) less cynical.
"I think he truly loves her," said Howard Rubenstein, Trump's former spokesman. "He came off a difficult divorce, and he was skittish. But in all my dealings with him, he was just starry-eyed about her."
Trump says it was this month's fatal shooting of six on the Long Island Rail Road, which impressed on him the fragility and preciousness of life.
by CNB