INSIDE SECRETS OF THE IVANA TRUMP WEDDING
Vegas was well represented at the multi-million-dollar wedding of the year and even billionaire real-estate mogul Donald Trump left his MISS USA beauty pageant so he could attend! After a six-year stormy off-again and on-again tumultuous romance Ivana Trump has married her 23-year-younger Italian stallion Rossano Rubicondi and they are now enroute—via Dubai—to a honeymoon in the Maldives Islands of the Indian Ocean.
Ivana, 59, first met Rossano, 36 in the South of France. He’s been described as an Italian entrepreneur, restaurateur and part-time singer and actor. He had the theme music of Rocky played for his entrance! Ivana was attended by 25 bridesmaids, led by her daughter Ivanka as maid of honor. She was divorced from “The Donald” in 1990 and turned her $21 million settlement into a business empire of jewelry, books, fragrances and real estate. Ivana was once linked to a Strip condominium project opposite the Sahara that eventually was not built but she’s flying to Dubai to oversee it now under construction there.
The wedding was literally a TV production in its own right. It was filmed exclusively for Entertainment Tonight and its companion The Insider show. Starting tonight (MON) segments will air twice daily through Friday like my old Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous show! Wait till you see the 12-foot, 5-decker cake completed with see-through sugar angels that was made and flown in from Germany! The 300 guests were instructed to wear “long pastel gowns for women and white suits for men.” Donald wore his traditional black tux as did America’s seventh richest man, David Koch! They were the only exceptions to the rule and obviously could afford any penalty imposed!
Ivana, who changed three times into one of the five gowns she had made for “the big day” also sold the magazine photography rights for an alleged $1 million payday and as a result all guests at the wedding ceremony had their cell-phones and cameras removed by security—to maintain the exclusivity. A tabloid helicopter crew drowned out some of the poolside ceremony vows while filming overhead!
Orleans headliner Neil Sedaka was among the invited guests—at Donald’s exclusive Mar-A Lago club mansion estate in Florida’s swanky Palm Beach and even gave a piano performance at the wedding dinner of his song “You” specially for the newly weds.
Hotelier Sol Kerzner who is building the new Atlantis themed resort on the Strip was in the bridal party and Turnberry Towers owner Don Sofer who is currently building the new Fontainebleau resort hotel between the Sahara and the Riviera also attended. I joined a group of celebrities including my friends talk show host Regis Philbin and wife, Joy, supermodel Beverly Johnson, ever-tanned George Hamilton, super-lawyer Robert Shapiro, Ivana’s longtime William Morris agent Norman Brokaw, TV sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, bombshell blonde actress Brigitte Neilson who was on my Surreal Life Fame Game series for VH1 and Paris Hilton’s mum and dad, Kathy and Rick Hilton.
We’ll have my interview with Paris’s parents about her new romance with rocker Benji Madden later in the week!
“The Donald” gave me a warm greeting and told me he’d flown through the night from Vegas right after his Miss USA pageant at Planet Hollywood Resort. “I took my own red eye, landed at 4 a.m. grabbed a quick shut eye and was up at 7 a.m. for a game on my golf course. I shot a 74 which is pretty good for getting right off an overnight flight and here I am at the wedding!” My friend, Jason Binn, associate publisher of our sister VEGAS Magazine was with me when Donald reminded me I was the first person to have toured Mar A Lago with him right after he bought it. “We’ve done a lot to it since then—expanded and upgraded. I spent millions turning it into the finest estate in the world. We’ve just been awarded six stars by the hospitality industry making it No. 1 in America. We have 1,000 fully subscribed members and a list of 400 waiting for the opportunity to buy one. It’s an incredible success story.”
His first-wife Ivana seemed completely at ease with two of her four husband’s attending the wedding being held in her former husband’s hotel where he himself had married his third wife, Melania two years ago in the same ballroom! Read that sentence again twice if you can’t quite understand because it took me a while to write the explanation! Her third husband Ricardo Mazzuccheli also watched the nuptials!
Donald laughed: “When Ivana called me wanting to get married here I hesitated and said I needed time to think that one through. But then I thought of our children and knew they would be in the wedding party so I said yes. I couldn’t exactly have her going to the competition could I? You’d want them at the top place in town—not the second best.”
In fact Donald Jr. and brother Eric gave his mom, Ivana away walking her down the circular steps of the estate and daughter Ivanka who did all the design work of the new Trump International Hotel that Donald opened this weekend in Vegas was her maid of honor! “Its unusual to be your mother’s maid of honor,” she told me and added “My bigger concern though is what do I get her for their wedding gift. I can’t give them a toaster!”
The three-days of wedding festivities was a near $3 million affair complete with a singer and 24-piece dance orchestra flown in from Paris! The matching diamond encrusted wedding rings were $500,000 each! The 15-foot towering archway of multi-colored roses, orchids and carnations, where they were married by Donald’s sister Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, was the largest I’d ever seen. The ceremony was delayed 60 minutes to let the blistering sun cool a little for the open-air poolside ceremony. “Finally!” screamed the groom as he went in for the first kiss!
Inside the ballroom there were more staggering arrangements that cost over $100,000 and I was told: “Nobody in wealthy Palm Beach ever spent so much for wedding flowers ever before.” Over 100 people worked on the wedding party planning for the past two weeks. Ivana herself supervised the six-hours of tastings before deciding on the final menu.
Don Sofer told me he was pleased with the progress on construction of his new Fontainebleau Hotel. “We’re actually ahead of the timeline schedule,” he said. Sol Kerzner who will build a version of his successful Atlantis Bahamas casino resort just north of the Circus Circus property told me he was looking forward to arriving in Vegas and starting construction on the Strip in his new partnership with MGM and Dubai World. He said: “Atlantis will be a very ambitious project and we really believe it will bring a new exciting dynamic to the Strip. With Atlantis on one side and the Fountainbleau on the other and with Steve Wynn’s new Encore and the redo of the Sahara that northern section of the Strip will have an entire phenomenally new look.”
The most unusual part of the entire affair was when guests at the wedding were surprised and shocked by the champagne toast that Donald Jr. made to the newlyweds. Aimed at the groom he reminded him that if his mother was ever treated badly that the Trumps were builders and owned building sites where it was very easy to lose somebody under the concrete! Some guests laughed nervously, others laughed out loud and applauded, others remained silent knowing that within the humor a warning had been spoken!
Ivana summed up though: “Love is about a combination of trust, friendship, support and love.”