The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20160119050108/http://articles.philly.com/1993-12-21/news/25940050_1_donald-trump-ivana-storybook-wedding

Marla Finally Becomes Mrs. Trump It Was 'Paparazzi' Aplenty And Glitz Galore As The Couple Pledged Their Troth.

Posted: December 21, 1993

NEW YORK — Convinced by the Long Island Rail Road massacre that life is short, even for him, Donald Trump finally married Marla Maples yesterday till death, tabloid scandal or prenuptial agreement do them part.

Standing in the ornate grand ballroom of the Plaza hotel, which Trump still owns even as he slogs through deep debt, The Donald, 47, exchanged vows with the woman he had dumped half a dozen times, the new Marla Maples Trump, 30.

The Donald had promised a simple, low-key ceremony, meaning of course a wedding as grand and pompous as the coronation of Caesar, who differed from Donald Trump in that he was less well-known and didn't have Liz Taylor's press agent.

Yes, the affair went off as promised by Trump - a quiet, tasteful affair with just family and 1,500 discreet close friends, such as Howard Stern, Don King, Whitney Houston, Kenny Rogers, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the world's most powerful media organizations and most ravenous paparazzi, who were shepherded around by Liz Taylor's press agent.

Trump had vowed not to overdo things with the wedding, but Maples had confessed to reporters in recent days, "You know Donald."

"This won't be the art of the deal," Trump said enigmatically when he and Maples went to City Hall to buy their $30 marriage license. "It will be something nice."

Something nice meant a simple, low-key dress for Marla designed by Carolina Herrera, who did Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's simple, low-key wedding dress in 1986 and charges about $35,000 a pop.

Something very nice was the simple, low-key 105-carat tiara crowning Maples' golden locks, a million-dollar bauble The Donald borrowed from buddy Harry Winston, the jeweler.

Something nice apparently meant The Donald invited Michael Jackson to come out of scandalous hiding to sing at the wedding. The singer never showed.

Afterward, invited celebrities and other commentators proclaimed it a storybook wedding. What story they were referring to wasn't clear.

Officiating at the wedding was the Rev. Arthur Caliandro of the Marble Collegiate Church, who offered Trump counseling back in 1990 when he was dumping his first wife, Ivana.

This was a night of nights, even by Big Apple standards. Bigger than Bill Clinton's inaugural, bigger than Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, crowed New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams. Traffic clogged for blocks all around the Plaza hours before the evening wedding.

The marriage of the billionaire boom-to-bust tycoon, the man who put the ''Me" in the "Me Decade" of the '80s, to the Southern actress for whom he left his wife inspired even the city's savage tabloid gossips to retract their claws.

"There is a Santa Claus, Virginia!" wrote Liz Smith of Newsday, who broke the story of Donald and Ivana's breakup in 1990.

"Marla Maples is now the most famous M.M. since Marilyn Monroe," cooed Adams.

Hundreds of gawkers gathered at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Plaza hours in advance, bundled against the chill. They pressed up against police barricades, stood on benches and even the fountain in Grand Army Plaza, craning their necks to watch Lincolns and Rolls and stretch limos discharge the famous onto the red-carpeted hotel entrance.

College professor Steve Byrum and his wife, Phyllis, of Chattanooga, Tenn., stood on a bench to get a good view with California rare-book librarian Samantha Weyland, Long Island nanny Marielle Cartwright and Greek businessman Steve Jovanvo. Maples' home town of Dalton, Ga., is only half an hour from Chattanooga, Phyllis Byrum boasted, and "I have a friend whose secretary's friend is a niece of Marla's father."

Inside, Donald and Marla exchanged traditional vows in the ornate grand ballroom. More than 100 TV and print reporters from around the world, shut out of the ballroom, crammed into a tiny outer room waiting for guests to slip out.

Tiffany, the girl born to Marla and Donald in October, was too young to attend, but Mom and baby posed for pictures beforehand. Also not present was Ivana Trump, who spent the evening in Aspen, Colo., with her Italian industrialist boyfriend and the three children Ivana and Donald had together, who decided on their own not to attend.

Ramak Fazel, a photo assistant, roamed the crowd snapping portraits of ''doormen, cops, ordinary people," which he planned to present to the Trumps with the subjects' personal notes.

"The best is yet to come," Lisa Parker, 24, and her friend Nicole Kenneally, 25, wrote to the Trumps. "Just keep those reins pulled tight, Marla, and don't let him out of your sight."

"It'll never last," Parker said later. "It's like a publicity stunt."

"She'll milk him for millions," Kenneally said, "take the baby and run."

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