What a dress. What a wedding. What a woman!
Tina Turner, at 73, threw tradition out the window and chose a black and green silk Giorgio Armani gown, which showcased her famous legs, for her June wedding to music executive Erwin Bach, the man she has loved for more than 20 years.
The bodice was embellished with Swarovski crystals. The hem of the big, poufy green skirt was picked up at the front (a mullet hemline which few women can master) and overlaid with black tulle.
Tina looked like a rock-and-roll fairy godmother, and she has promised to lend me the gown, except her perfect legs do not come with the borrow, and there is every possibility I might just look like an expensive mushroom.
Also competing for the title of Best Coloured Wedding Dress of 2013 is Reuters photographer Andrea de Silva's red dress, in which she got married at a sunrise ceremony at Pigeon Point, Tobago, at the end of March.
Even with my gifts (mostly imagination) I could not equal her amazing presentation. She looked like a regal scarlet ibis, in a confection of French lace at the sleeves and shoulders with peau de soie for the big skirt which ended above her elegant ankles.
Back in the day, when brides wanted to be rebellious, they wore pink or blue, but remained well within the confines of pastel and wimpy.
Celebrities helped make non-white choices cool and acceptable. Some fools went too far and wore black, like Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex and the City) who later regretted the decision, and swore she would wear white for her next wedding ceremony (ideally, to the same guy, Matthew Broderick).
Amber Tamblyn wore sunshine yellow in 2012 but I had to turn down the invitation to the ceremony because there was a river and a rowing boat and bare muddy feet involved. Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, did it properly in a smashing yellow dress with a bouquet to match and a flowery headdress for her first wedding to Richard Burton in 1964; when she remarried him, she wore green. Neither was her lucky colour, as things turned out.
The great thing about choosing non-white for a wedding dress is that colour can photograph dramatically.
Brides with warm skin tones sometimes look washed out in white and have to compensate with make-up, lighting and untruthful assurances of maids of honour.
Just in case you are wondering, my dear macos, I am much too lazy to spend a year planning a wedding and poring over swatches and negotiating with designers. So I threw on a white and gold something and got it over and done with. Not romantic, but, as I always say, it is what comes after the wedding that really counts.
The really cool thing about Tina Turner's wedding is that Tina is 16 years older than Erwin, 57, and Proud Mary keeps on rolling. Women half her age could not hold a high heel to her. Andrea de Silva is also unreal–she is actually a grandmother!
By the way, Andrea's daughter Leandra Head, 19, will be singing in Porgy and Bess in Budapest this month.
Knowing what a busy woman Andrea is, I have volunteered to make the trip to Hungary on her behalf. Of course, that would mean the necessary borrowing (and much splicing and gussetting of seams) of the fabulous red gown.
The idea is that if Leandra were to feel nervous on that big international stage, she would just have to glance into the audience and see that flash of borrowed red peau de soie and then she would feel as if Mummy herself were there, cheering her on.
You can thank me later, Andrea. Just send the gown. Now.
Send me your fave wedding pictures at wrenchelsa@hotmail.com
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