Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries are getting married Saturday in front of friends, family—and a camera crew. From reality-TV stars to the royals, see more famous couples who broadcast their weddings.
As of Saturday, Kim Kardashian and NBA star Kris Humphries will be together forever (fingers crossed). Anyone who watches Keeping Up With the Kardashians knows Kim’s been in search of “the one” for quite some time. She’s had a few bad apples, but finally landed a winner when she met Kris. “When you know, you know,” she told Ryan Seacrest. “It’s such a normal, healthy, trusting, easy relationship.” The fact that he spells his name with a K has likely earned him a few bonus points with the Kardashian family. The cameras will be rolling during the ceremony and reception in Santa Barbara, Calif., and Kim’s Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event will air on E! in a two-part special on Oct. 8 and 9.
Having married in October 2002, 98 Degrees singer Nick Lachey and pop star Jessica Simpson televised their wedding on VH1’s All Access Celebrity Weddings special in 2003. It was the beginning of a very public marriage, which was documented on MTV’s reality show Newlyweds. The show premiered in time for the release of Jessica’s third album, In This Skin, which featured songs about her romance with Nick such as “With You” and “Sweetest Sin,” an obvious reference to losing her virginity on her wedding night. The album was re-released in 2004 with a special DVD segment featuring footage from their wedding. As portrayed on Newlyweds, Nick and Jess’s marriage was a far cry from their televised fairy-tale wedding, and Nick would eventually tell David Letterman that the show contributed to their breakup in 2005. “It was just so invasive that it became a problem,” he said, adding, “I certainly think it was a factor.” Lachey married longtime girlfriend Vanessa Minnillo in July, and the couple recently sat down together to relive the moment when TLC aired the Nick & Vanessa’s Dream Wedding special. “Obviously it’s the best wedding video you can ever hope to have, something we can show the kids one day,” he told Access Hollywood. He also talked about the “take your breath away” moment when he saw Minnillo walk down the aisle. Though his first marriage didn’t last, Nick had a similar reaction when he first laid eyes on Jessica in her wedding dress. The video of their nuptials shows Nick gasping as Jessica enters the church.
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The happy couple who emerged from the first season of The Bachelorette had their nearly $4 million wedding televised on ABC, and the network also footed the bill for everything from Trista’s $50,000 Badgley Mischka wedding gown to $500,000 worth of pink and ivory roses. Some 17 million viewers tuned in to see Trista and Ryan exchange vows in an outdoor ceremony at the Lodge Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs, Calif. Guests indulged in 180 bottles of champagne, 600 bottles of wine, 1,500 pounds of chocolate, and 200 pounds of shrimp, lobster, and crab. Seven years and two kids later, Trista and Ryan are still going strong. After their very lavish and public wedding, the couple opted for a quiet, simple life in Colorado, where Ryan is a firefighter. “I think it’s definitely helped to keep us grounded and together,” Trista said in an interview with Parade magazine.
The first Bachelor success story after eight years and 14 seasons of the show, prompted ABC to pounce on the opportunity to televise a two-hour special of The Bachelor: Jason and Molly’s Wedding. There were a few glitches in what Bachelor host Chris Harrison called “one of the most anticipated weddings of all time.” For starters, the couple had planned an outdoor ceremony and didn’t have a backup plan in the event of bad weather. Rain complicated matters, but the clouds broke just as Molly walked down the aisle to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Unfortunately, that was just the eye of the storm, and it started pouring when she was in the midst of saying her vows. All 300 guests had umbrellas, but no one thought to pass one to the bride and groom. But as superstitions go, a rainy wedding day is thought to bring good luck to a marriage. In Molly and Jason’s case, the first year and a half of marriage has been smooth sailing.
Actress Carmen Electra and her musician boyfriend, Dave Navarro, might have jinxed their relationship when they signed up to do an MTV reality show, ‘Til Death Do Us Part. The show debuted in January 2004, and followed Carmen and Dave as they planned a very untraditional wedding. It ran for seven episodes, culminating with the couple’s wedding at Los Angeles’s St. Regis Hotel, which they had transformed into a Garden of Eden with a darkly sexual twist. Guests were greeted by men in red masks à la Eyes Wide Shut before the ceremony, and later escorted into a ballroom where the décor included projected waterfalls, flowered metal vines, and a white python. After three years of marriage, Navarro and Electra announced they were “amicably separating.”
The notoriously dysfunctional couple from MTV’s The Hills certainly knew how to put on a show for the camera. Despite the drama in their relationship and on the set, Heidi and Spencer (a.k.a. “Speidi”) married in 2009, and the wedding aired on The Hills’ season finale that year. MTV reported that they seemed “truly in love with each other and ecstatic to be tying the knot.” But Montag filed for a divorce roughly a year later. As Pratt claimed, “She doesn’t want to be Speidi anymore. She wants to be Heidi Montag: the sex symbol.” The breakup didn’t come as much of a surprise to those who had followed their on-screen relationship over the years. The biggest shock came later when they revealed they were still together—that the divorce and many of their other antics were all publicity stunts. In a recent joint interview with The Daily Beast, the couple confessed they were broke and living with Spencer’s family. Spencer said they had spent all their money on “props” to amplify their celebrity personas. “The second we continued on our quest for fame was a mistake … Reality TV is not a career. Anyone who says, ‘Oh, you can have a career in reality’—that is a lie.”
After Kendra Wilkinson split with boyfriend Hugh Hefner (and fellow girlfriends Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt), she went from starring in The Girls Next Door to her own spinoff reality show, Kendra. She was engaged to Philadelphia Eagles receiver Hank Baskett at the time, and Kendra documented their romance, engagement, wedding plans, and ultimately the big day, which was broadcast in the show’s season finale, “Let Them Eat Wedding Cake.” In June 2009, they were married on the front lawn of the Playboy Mansion in front of 300 guests, including a teary-eyed Hef and Kendra’s Girls Next Door co-stars Bridget and Holly, both bridesmaids. After saying their vows, Kendra and Hank “just kept staring at each other,” a bridesmaid told Us Weekly. “I don’t think they saw anyone else,” including E!’s large camera crew, who filmed the whole thing. The couple are still as happy as ever and devoted to their 2-year-old son, “Little” Hank.
Former 90210 star Shannen Doherty is returning to TV in a new reality show with her fiancé, celebrity photographer Kurt Iswarienko. The currently unnamed series is set to air on WEtv in January 2012, and will focus on Doherty as she plans her wedding and renovates her Malibu home. Doherty isn’t exactly making a comeback in groundbreaking territory, but WEtv executive John Miller insists, “People will see a side of Shannen they never expected to see.” If all goes well, Doherty and Iswarienko will tie the knot in the show’s first-season finale.
Kim isn’t the first Kardashian to televise her wedding on her family’s hit reality series. Her sister Khloe married Lamar Odom of the Los Angeles Lakers in September 2009, having met him just one month earlier. Though the ceremony was intimate, the world watched the whole thing go down on an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Skeptics thought the speedy romance wouldn’t last, but Khloe and Lamar are reportedly planning to have a baby. The Kardashian family just keeps getting bigger!
There’s nothing like stiff competition to heat up a relationship, particularly when you’re competing for $1 million on Survivor. Chemistry sparked between Amber Brkich and Rob Mariano on the set of Survivor: All Stars, and the cozy couple ended up going head to head for the grand prize. Before the final vote was cast, Rob popped the question. Amber ultimately won the majority of votes, but there were no hard feelings, since they had already made a pact to split the cash. CBS aired Rob and Amber Get Married a month after their “secret” wedding in the Bahamas. After Survivor, the couple went on to compete in The Amazing Race. They’ve proved to be a good team over the years, and welcomed their second child in December 2010.
In June 1986, 100,000 people cheered outside Buckingham Palace as newlyweds Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson leaned in for their first public kiss as husband and wife. Another 500 million tuned in to the royal nuptials, but the happiness didn’t last long. The couple divorced after 10 years, but Fergie remains in the spotlight, with a show on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
No matter how big Kim Kardashian wants her wedding, there’s probably no way she can top Prince William and Kate Middleton’s April 29 nuptials. The couple, whose long courtship had led the tabloids to dub Middleton “Waity Katy,” announced their engagement on Nov. 16, 2010, and the media frenzy began. In the months leading up the wedding, Britain went wild with royal-wedding memorabilia, and fans began lining up outside Westminster Abbey days in advance. The result was one of the most-watched weddings in history, with 22.8 million viewers in the U.S. alone and 24.5 million in Britain—not to mention the millions who tuned in worldwide. In the first couple of months of marriage, the newly appointed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge appear to be going strong after the high-profile nuptials, and following a much-publicized North American tour in July.
On July 29, 1981, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a televised wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The nuptials were billed as a “fairy-tale wedding”—and the marketing paid off, with some 750 million people worldwide tuning in to watch. But despite the success of the wedding and the romance of it all, the marriage couldn’t survive. Charles and Diana divorced in 1996, and Diana died tragically one year later in a Paris car crash.
Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, married Anthony Armstrong-Jones after her high-profile broken engagement to Capt. Peter Townsend. Margaret met Armstrong-Jones at a dinner party in Chelsea in 1958, and they got engaged a year later. On May 6, 1960, the pair married in Britain’s first televised royal wedding, watched by more than 20 million. Making the most use of modern technology, a CCTV was set up in parts of Westminster Abbey so all 2,000 guests could see the main ceremony in the sanctuary. But despite all the viewers, the marriage didn’t last: they divorced in 1978. It was the royal family’s first divorce since Henry VIII.
Queen Elizabeth’s daughter, Princess Anne, married Mark Phillips on Nov. 14, 1973—the first of the queen’s children to be married. Following in the tradition her aunt set, Anne became the second member of the royal family in 200 years to marry a commoner, and the wedding was televised. An estimated 500 million people worldwide tuned in to watch the wedding, which also drew large crowds in London. After the ceremony, the newlyweds traveled to Buckingham Palace for a reception in a horse-drawn carriage while the public cheered outside. Although their romance had enthralled Britain, Anne and Mark divorced in 1992.
Queen Elizabeth’s youngest son, Prince Edward, married Sophie Rhys-Jones on June 19, 1999, in what the couple insisted would be a “low-key” wedding. Breaking with the royal weddings of the recent past, only 500 guests were invited, but the ceremony was still televised for 200 million to watch worldwide. After 12 years and two children, the couple are still married.
