From Country Western To New York
Ed Massey is not a superstitious fellow. The old saw about it being bad luck for the groom to see his bride in her gown before the wedding goes right out the window when the groom is the one who sculpted the country western wedding dress. That's right--sculpted. Massey, 35, a Los Angeles-based artist whose reputation for creating public art pieces is on the rise, decided he wanted to do something wildly romantic to show Dawn Harris how much he loved her.
When he mentioned that he had an idea about designing her country western wedding dress, Harris, 35, responded, "Yeah, right. I told him it's always been a tradition in my family that my grandmother buys the wedding dress, but he convinced me he was serious and finally persuaded me to let him do it." One steel mesh form, a few elaborately engineered wheels, 1,060 roses individually hand-crafted from cloth and modeling paste, two ducks and 14 ducklings later, the approximately 150-pound gown was ready for its debut. As 300 guests sat on folding chairs arranged around the pool in the backyard of a Beverly Hills home, the trellises fronting the pool house separated like stage curtains to reveal Harris navigating the narrow pathway around the pool toward the chuppa on a wheeled platform. Her wheels got stuck once or twice along the journey and, happily, she did not topple into the pool. The gown does not include a quick release hatch. Harris and Massey met as toddlers while visiting their grandmothers, who were neighbors in Pacific Palisades. Relating the story in Massey's work space at the Century City Westside Pavilion after the couple's wedding rehearsal dinner, Harris recalled, "My grandma says that when we were babies, we played together. I think I saw him once, when I was 11." "I think you beat me up," Massey said. "I was much bigger than he was," Harris said. "For me, it's been like the most incredible dream come true," Massey said. "In a city like Los Angeles, it's difficult to find a really sincere, very genuine, very wonderful, warmhearted person. And to find one who's so unaffected and beautiful on top of that? Finding Dawn was like a home run package. I've never remotely been in a relationship like this. I truly yearn to see Dawn every day." "He leaves me messages on my answering machine all the time," Harris said. "He sings to me all the time. But at first, it was hard for us to cross that boundary past friendship. He made me so nervous, because I had this crush on him instantly from the first time I saw him again." |