Gov. Charlie Crist’s wedding to Carole Rome promises to be as traditional as the floor-length white gown and veil she plans to wear down the aisle on Friday night.
After a church service at St. Petersburg’s First United Methodist, the 200 guests will proceed to a reception at the historic waterfront Vinoy resort. Black tie, according to cursive script on the cream and pink wedding invite, is optional.
Not so long ago this kind of pomp for a second wedding would have been enough to fan all 749 pages of Vogue’s Book of Etiquette into an unholy combustion.
Today, it’s all the fashion.
“This is my one and only wedding in my view,” Rome said in a telephone interview. The 39-year-old New York socialite’s divorce became final earlier this year.
The Crist-Rome wedding will go down as Florida’s highest-profile example of the biggest change in marriage mores since the mother of manners herself, Emily Post, advised second-time brides that gray was an example of appropriate dress.
That was 1922. Remarrying brides, or “encore brides,” as they’re now called, have been able to wear white and receive the blessing of society’s taste makers since the mid 1990s. They may get married in Christian churches if they are Jewish, as Rome is. They may also have big receptions and, even, feature the same attendants from their first weddings.
Rome’s sister will be the matron of honor, and all three of Crist’s sisters will be in the bridal party.
“Customs change, and, as long as they don’t offend people, that’s OK,” said Peggy Post, Emily’s great granddaughter-in-law, who updates the Post wedding etiquette volumes and lives in Southwest Florida.
Crist, 52, has been single decades longer than his future bride. His first marriage was to a fellow student at Florida State University, Amanda Morrow, at age 23. They divorced after seven months.
Rome, president of her father’s costume business, began her own divorce proceedings two years ago after moving to Fisher Island, off the coast of Miami, with her two daughters. She was married to Todd Rome, owner of Blue Star Jets private plane company, for 15 years.
For her wedding to Crist, she purchased a classic silk bridal dress by a Spanish designer at Wedding Atelier. The chic Manhattan boutique outfitted a “Law & Order” television actress and, once, a Bill Clinton staffer.
Gown prices there run from $2,000 upwards of $12,000.
“I saw it, fell in love and tried it on and loved it just as much,” Rome said.
Her veil will be train-length, and she plans to wear 3-inch heels. Rome’s daughters, 10-year-old Skylar and 12-year-old Jessica, will be flower girls and wear creme-colored dresses.
The reason why Rome will be able to carry off a white second-wedding is that manners are defined based on how the majority of people feel about them. They are things that can be lobbied for, and the lobby is growing.
Of the 2.4 million marriages performed annually in the U.S., nearly half are remarriages, according to the census. The National Center for Health Statistics found that 43 percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years.
And so, the white dress first worn by England’s Queen Victoria and interpreted by all as a sign of chastity, is now considered a sign of joy.
“There are still people who come from the old school who will come to the wedding and wonder why she’s still wearing white,” said Julie Dern, founder of the Academy of Etiquette and Protocol in Orlando. “But pretty much the bride gets to choose.”
The last woman to find herself in Rome’s position was Erika Kirk, Florida’s First Lady from 1967 to 1971. Both she and her husband, Claude Kirk, had been married before, so they were not allowed to be married in a church. On the morning of their wedding day they attended a service and sat in the pews as regular congregants. A judge married them later at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach.
Erika Kirk, who had a toddler from her previous marriage, wore a slim, light green suit.
“I just signed a paper and he signed a paper and the deal was done,” said Kirk, 74, in a telephone interview from the couple’s home in West Palm Beach.
On the point of decorum being determined by offensiveness to others, it should be noted that the majority rules.
Kirk, whose blonde beauty was as talked about as Rome’s dark good looks, said she didn’t understand Rome’s choice to go traditional a second time.
“I’m a very liberated woman but certain traditions should stay and certain morals should stay, too,” Kirk said. “If you’re 39 years old and have two children, you’re not 18 or 20 years old anymore in a little white dress.”
Originally from Germany and having lived in Brazil before moving to Florida, Kirk knew sufficient English to exchange vows on her wedding day, but not enough to hold a conversation. She did, however, unknowingly breach one tenet of properness, one that hardly seems fair for a first lady of Florida.
In her hair she wore orange blossoms, the official state flower and, since 12th century Spain, an emblem of virginity.
Brides wore them in wreaths on their heads. Bridesmaids tossed them in her path.
No-orange-blossoms is one of the curious and few remaining etiquette guidelines for second-time brides. Another rule poo-poos wearing a blusher veil, the short veil that hangs over the bride’s face until the groom removes it after the final vows (another sign of purity.)
“Those are the two we keep, because they’re actually symbols of something,” said Beth Reed Ramirez, author of “Bride Again: an A to Z Guide.”
Rome’s veil was designed to be worn either over or off her face, said Carrie Hung, who owns the Fifth Avenue shop where Rome bought her dress. The dress is from a private line, so there are few like it. It has a rouched bodice with “a little bit of sparkle.”
“She’s got a beautiful body and we felt we should show off her silhouette,” Hung said. “At the same time, because this wedding was going to be a big one, we thought we should dress her up for dramatic effect.”
Hung called the old rules for second weddings “ancient” and said she recently sold a 63-year-old encore bride an ivory lace gown, veil and rhinestone-studded tiara.
“It’s very common for second wedding brides to do traditional gowns,” Hung said. “But we are in the metro New York area.”
It should be the love between the couple that matters, Hung said.
She sounded like Carole Rome.
Asked how much attention she paid to the fact that this is her second wedding, and not her first, Rome replied, simply, “None.”
Joe Follick contributed to this story.
