Remember, the most dangerous threat is the one that lurks among you. Your client will call them “guests.”
When it comes to keeping a celebrity wedding under wraps, you have to be as precise and secretive as a spy.
“It’s like a military operation,” explains L.A. wedding planner Lisa Vorce, who’s been coordinating the nuptial celebrations of high-profile celebrities, politicians and athletes for nine years.
So if Chelsea Clinton is getting married on Martha’s Vineyard in the next week — and some chatty islanders plus the National Enquirer insist that she is — it should help to have a former commander in chief, a current secretary of state and a brigade of Secret Service agents acting as her co-conspirators. Though they’ve never confirmed an engagement, rumor has it that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s 29-year-old daughter will wed longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky at the estate of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, or some other family friend’s estate. Or not.
Everyone from the Clinton camp has vigorously denied that any such affair is in the works, but that’s a strategy straight out of Secret Wedding Planning 101.
“We deny, deny, deny,” Vorce says. “So if anyone asks, ‘Are you guys doing that event?’: ‘Absolutely not, no. Gosh, I would love to do that event.’ “
It’s all part of the Manhattan Project of event planning: the secret celebrity wedding. And they’re all secret these days. There’s no choice, really. If Madonna or Jessica Simpson were to announce the date and locale of their next wedding, the crush of paparazzi would be so thick that neither bride would make it anywhere near the altar.
Hence, these covert operations, carried out by experts who’ve spent years strategizing maneuvers to allow their high-target clients to wed in private — or at least, what passes for private in the land of the famous.
The mission: A full-scale, tulle-and-tuxes wedding for an A-list client in absolute secrecy.
The enemies: TMZ; Twitter; Us Weekly; an army of paparazzi; camera phones; text messages; helicopters; newspapers; the Internet; loudmouthed Aunt Lucille; the tent company’s receptionist; everyone within 10 miles of the venue; everyone else.
The strategy: Tell no one. Only those who are crucial to the mission’s completion will be informed. Accomplices will be required to take a blood oath of confidentiality.
Administer an alias
“From the very first minute we meet with them, we give them an alias. It’s ‘John and Sally Smith,’ wedding in August ’09,” says Vorce, who from then on is the conduit for her client, telling none of the caterers, venues or florists who the event is for.
Vorce videotapes tours of potential venues; bringing her clients there in person is too risky. She once did an event for Kobe Bryant and met the caterer at the venue; paparazzi tailed her there, stole a logo off the caterer’s van, traced the caterer’s personal connections and called to harass her parents into giving up details of the soiree.
“There are no limits,” Vorce says, to what paparazzi will do in hopes of getting photos that can be sold to tabloids for tens of thousands of dollars. She shreds everything, knowing her trash is picked through regularly. Even as the wait staff and bartenders arrive for the big day, they won’t know whom they’re serving. By the time they find out, they will have signed nondisclosure agreements legally barring them from letting the word out — though Vorce admits this rarely produces foolproof privacy.
Control the guests
The most crucial step to pulling off a secret wedding is keeping the guest list very small — “and I don’t know if that’s possible for a family like the Clintons,” says Yifat Oren, who has planned weddings for Charlie Sheen and Kevin Costner.
Paper invitations are the ultimate liability. Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz risked sending save-the-dates but left off the time and location. Those details were delivered by phone and text message; guests were asked to park at a remote lot and were then shuttled to the wedding.
If you really don’t want guests to let the cat out of the bag, “just lie to them,” New York City-based celebrity wedding planner Michelle Rago says. “You get them there for a completely different reason, and by the time it’s over, it’s over.” (See: Julia Roberts’ 2002 4th of July party, where she and Danny Moder surprised their guests by getting hitched just before midnight; Sandra Bullock’s 2005 birthday party, when she wed Jesse James.)
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Scout the location
It’s best to leave the country. Did you see those pictures of Scarlett Johansson’s wedding last year to Ryan Reynolds? No. Because they were at an island nature preserve off the Canadian coast with only 40 friends and relatives. Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck invited no one to their 2005 nuptials in Turks and Caicos. Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger wed in a secret 2005 wedding in the Virgin Islands, though the marriage ended four months later. Seal and Heidi Klum made it official on a Tuesday in Mexico.
But when a high-profile pair wants to wed in the U.S., seclusion is key.
Any open space must be tented to thwart helicopters. An indoor affair at a private residence is optimal. Beyonce reportedly evaded onlookers by traveling in the cargo area of a flower delivery truck to Jay-Z’s apartment building for their 2008 wedding.
Wedding planner Oren thought Kevin Costner and bride Christine Baumgartner would be protected by the expansiveness of their 160-acre ranch in Colorado. But paparazzi climbed a nearby mountain and caught images of the 2004 soiree with high-powered lenses.
Have a wedding anywhere outside, Vorce says, and “you’re a sitting duck.”
Secure the premises
Planners work with specialized security companies to thwart paparazzi and onlookers. Blueprints are drawn up to cover any outside space, no-fly zones are requested when possible, and guards are stationed around the perimeter of the property and in nearby boats at waterfront weddings.
Still, no plan is so airtight it can’t be breached. Guards were on location throughout Avril Lavigne’s 2006 wedding to Deryck Whibley at a private estate in Montecito, Calif., recalls her wedding planner, Mindy Weiss. Halfway through the reception, however, came a rumbling from the bushes. An animal? No. Just an enterprising paparazzi who’d buried himself beneath a hedge the day before the wedding.
“They’ll go to bizarre, great lengths,” Weiss sighs.
But the truth is, we’re all paparazzi now, with our iPhones and BlackBerrys and digital cameras. Celebrities are one bratty nephew’s text message away from being swarmed with media. Enter the metal detectors and mandatory gadget check, with all electronic devices collected at the door.
Create a diversion
Weiss had her first brush with celebrity wedding mania in 1997. Photographers used cherry pickers to get shots of the wedding she’d planned for Brooke Shields and Andre Agassi.
“Besides being wedding planners, we become escape artists,” Weiss says. “We sit here in my office and strategize on how to do this.”
Often a limo with a piece of tulle hanging from the rear door is sent out as a decoy.
“It’s a little bit of a game that we play with the paparazzi,” Vorce admits. “Because we can leak certain things to send them in the wrong direction.”
So this chatter about Chelsea and Marc on Martha’s Vineyard?
It might be all part of a master plan. Or not.