Weddings

Kerry Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo were married Saturday in a ceremony that merged two of America's most powerful political families. They swore mutual commitment to the oppressed--"the people who have disappeared in El Salvador, the children in shelters in New York." The bride, 30, is the daughter of Ethel Kennedy and the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and is executive director of the human rights center in New York City that bears his name. The groom, 32, is New York Gov. Mario M.

So, against all odds, you managed to get your hands on a few shares of Facebook stock via one of the most hyped initial public offerings of all time and managed to survive its messy first day of trading. Congratulations. You're now married to Mark Zuckerberg. The 28-year-old company founder is today one of the most deeply-entrenched chief executives in American business. Thanks to a two-class stock structure, Zuckerberg will own about 28% of Facebook but control 57% of all shareholder votes.

It can cost $150,000 to get married at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, a price tag befitting its namesake. But at $585 for city residents and $915 for nonresidents, couples can get a similarly spectacular ocean view while saying their vows at a small city park next to the golf course. Now Trump, which manages Founders Park rentals for the city, either wants out of the discount wedding business or to raise the price for a three-hour ceremony in the city park to $2,670 for residents and $3,000 for nonresidents.

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. — Days after President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, the Presbyterian Church's Northern California governing body refused to rebuke a retired minister for marrying gays and lesbians when it was legal in California. The Presbytery of the Redwoods, which governs churches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, voted 74 to 18 Tuesday to reject the church's official denunciation and instead support the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, who had been found guilty by an ecclesiastical court of violating the Presbyterian Constitution and her ordination vows for marrying 16 same-sex couples.

On the day the beautiful blond bride married the rich, handsome groom, the wedding dress designer was sick in bed with bronchitis and a broken phone. Narciso Rodriguez, the 35-year-old head women's designer for Cerruti 1881 Arpe, had no idea that down the coast from his New York apartment, news of the John F. Kennedy Jr.-Carolyn Bessette wedding was exploding, and his dress was making fashion headlines.

For eight years she has kept her wedding gown neatly folded in a worn and faded blue box. "I was saving it for my daughter," she says, "but now that I'm getting divorced . . . . " The woman has come to 2nd Look, a consignment store in Tustin's old town that specializes in bridal attire, to see if she can sell the dress she no longer cherishes. Bobbi Lane, owner of the boutique, has grown accustomed to stories of wedding bell blues or bliss.

Not too long ago, Rena Puebla and Ellie Genuardi had a hard time getting distributors to carry their unique cake toppers -- porcelain-like figurines that interchange to make gay, straight and interracial couples. When they pitched the figurines to home shopping networks, executives shot them down. Ditto mainstream stores. No one told them expressly why they wouldn't carry the decorations, but to the business partners who designed the diverse dolls, the message was clear.

In the winter of '97-98, when heavy rains sent a small landslide rolling through a Laguna Beach restaurant, Susan MacDonald was swamped with couples searching frantically for another site to stage their wedding receptions. "I had people scrambling, calling me up and asking me where they could go," said MacDonald, a Newport Beach wedding coordinator. Although some ceremonies were only weeks away, she managed to find a dry place for everyone.

Shahbal Shabpareh and his band Black Cats — a premier Iranian American pop group — have performed American hits with a Persian twist at upper-crust Iranian celebrations almost weekly for years. They've seen lots of lavish weddings, but one stands out as the most over-the-top. As guests enjoyed hors d'oeuvres outside the banquet hall, the bride was placed in a glass coffin. The groom fitted on a white half-mask. Then, the carefully planned Phantom of the Opera theme devolved into chaos.

Mention "mother of the bride" to glitter-and-glitz designer Bob Mackie and he chuckles as he recalls "those dreary dresses we used to see on mothers of the bride in the movies. Well, it's not like that anymore. There's a lot of figure showing." Happily for everyone, "the powdered-down laces and dumpy, conservative evening dresses" Mackie remembers are almost an endangered species.

Beatrix Molnar, 33, fell in love with Jason Whipple, 39, after dating him for just a few weeks. “He came over to my place and sharpened my knives for me,” she said. “It was such a small, sweet gesture that really resonated and stuck with me.” The couple met online in 2010, but realized they lived less than two miles from each other in Long Beach. “His old apartment is visible from my drive to work in downtown and I remember thinking I'd be really bummed if this didn't work out and I'd have to see his place on my drive to work every day,” Molnar said.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Joe Biden gave a nod to same-sex marriage Sunday by saying he is comfortable with the idea of "men marrying men" and "women marrying women" having the same rights as heterosexual couples. In an interview on "Meet the Press," Biden declined to rule out the possibility that, in a second term, President Obama might move from his position of supporting civil unions to backing same-sex marriage. Biden prefaced his comments with the caveat that the president sets administration policy, and then said: "I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.

NEW YORK -- A New York woman who received a free wedding dress, free honeymoon tickets to Aruba and a host of other lavish gifts from well-wishers who were told she had just months to live apparently had longer than people thought. She's been arrested and faces grand larceny and other charges for allegedly faking the illness. Jessica Vega was arrested in Virginia and extradited to New York's upstate Orange County, where she pleaded not guilty last week to six felonies and one misdemeanor.

Step 2 has been completed by the Stanford women's basketball team. The Cardinal breezed through the Pac-12 Conference regular season and completed a three-day run through the conference tournament with a 77-62 victory over California on Saturday at Staples Center. Now comes the hard work. The second-ranked Cardinal, which has been to four consecutive Final Fours and won the national title in 2010, will see its path in the NCAA tournament on Monday. "I think, at this point, it is obvious what we'd like to achieve," senior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike said.

Reporting from San Francisco and San Antonio, Texas -- A retired Presbyterian pastor who spent her career ministering to gay men and lesbians has been censured by her denomination for marrying same-sex couples during the brief time such unions were legal in California. The Rev. Jane Adams Spahr lost her final appeal before the highest court in the Presbyterian Church (USA), which released its opinion Tuesday. The tribunal ruled that the 69-year-old lesbian had violated the church's constitution and her ordination vows when she officiated at the unions of 16 couples and called them marriages.

Salt Lake City - Elizabeth Smart, the young woman from Utah who was kidnapped at knifepoint at 14 and held captive for nine months by an itinerant street preacher, has married her Scottish fiance at a Mormon temple in Hawaii. The wedding was held several months earlier than planned after news of her engagement last month drew widespread media attention. A family spokesman said Smart married Matthew Gilmour of Aberdeen, Scotland, on Saturday on Oahu's north shore. "Elizabeth's desire was for what most women want - to celebrate her nuptials in a private wedding with family and close friends," family spokesman Chris Thomas said in a statement.

In the season for baseball and brides, some couples are opting for a double play: At Dodger Stadium, the ring bearer presented the bands in a baseball mitt. At Camden Yards in Baltimore, the best man threw a ceremonial first pitch. At Comiskey Park in Chicago, bridal parties posed for pictures at home plate. At Edison Field in Anaheim, at least one couple married in the park's Hall of Fame, surrounded by team memorabilia.

In the category of social notes from all over, mark your calendars for an event that even former New York Parks Commissioner Tom Hoving, creator of some of the wildest '60s "Happenings" in Central Park, could not have thought up: The Statue of Liberty of New York and the statue of Christopher Columbus of Barcelona are going to get married. They've set the date, early 1992, to coincide with the 500th anniversary later that year, on Oct. 12, of you know what.

Elizabeth Smart is one bride who knows exactly what she wants. The Brigham Young University student just got engaged last month, and in a month's time managed to pull off a dream wedding in Hawaii. She was married there over the weekend, with close family and friends in attendance. Smart, 24, spoke exclusively to People magazine about the whirlwind wedding preparations. "It's everything you can imagine with planning a wedding. Only, it's compressed into a few days," Smart told People, which is directing readers to its print edition for further details, including a glimpse of the wedding gown.  Smart was 14 when she was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home in the middle of the night by a self-proclaimed prophet and street preacher.

California and the Western United States are leading a nationwide surge in interracial marriage, according to a new study that paints a picture of a broadly diversifying nation, one where color lines are blurring and old taboos fading. One-fifth of all recent weddings in the western United States were between people of different races or ethnicities, said a report being released today by the Pew Research Center. Nationwide, 15% of recent marriages were interracial, researchers found.