Reality TV is joined with wedding-day jitters today in a live Learning Channel broadcast of a wedding at the Don CeSar Beach Resort & Spa.
By AMY WIMMER
Published June 27, 2003
[Times photo: Bill Serne]
A Learning Channel camera crew films as Vince Parrulli, best man and brother of the groom, walks with Emily Jerez, a stand-in for the bride's mom, at a wedding rehersal at the Don CeSar Beach Resort & Spa.
ST. PETE BEACH - Larry Kamm assembled his cast at the Don CeSar Beach Resort & Spa and began firing off instructions:
Act naturally. Pay no attention to that man behind the video camera. Crying is allowed. Fainting is allowed.
"The biggest thing we want to do is stay out of the way of the most important day in your lives," said Kamm, director of A Wedding Story, the runaway daytime hit on the Learning Channel. "That's easier said than done because there are five cameras out there, one of them on top of a 27-foot crane."
Four times daily on the cable network, reality television meets wedding-day jitters. A Wedding Story parachutes in for the final days of a couple's courtship, documenting the planning and execution of a wedding for its target demographic: women ages 18 to 34.
This week, the staff and crew have landed in St. Pete Beach for a first-ever live broadcast of A Wedding Story. The show and its sister programs - A Baby Story, A Makeover Story and A Dating Story - rule daytime Learning Channel programming with a six-hour time block that has developed a cult following.
College students have been known to plan their class schedules around one or more of the shows. Each week, 2,000 couples apply to be featured on A Wedding Story.
"It's your dream," said Courtney Knisley, 17, a hotel guest from Athens, Ga., who lounged by the Don CeSar pool as the crew set up cameras and cables on Thursday. Last summer, she became a Learning Channel addict. "I'd love for my wedding to be like that because it's so perfect."
But even in TV, perfection is hard to come by.
On Thursday, with 24 hours until show time, the bride was feeling queasy. The director was trying to figure out commercial breaks and cues for the string quartet.
"Is your bagpiper here?" Kamm asked the couple.
"The bagpiper," replied Mary Donahue, an executive producer for Banyan Productions, which produces the 30-minute shows, "was last seen at the bar."
Anthony Parrulli, 27, is a musician. Katie Greiten, 21, is a student at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, studying philosophy.
They met when Greiten went to one of Parrulli's shows two years ago. She walked in, their eyes locked, and he played every song to her, instead of the crowd.
"She balances me," said Parrulli, a 1993 Countryside High graduate who is a cast member of the Blue Man Group, a multimedia performance group that combines theater, percussion and other art forms. The group will perform in August at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. "She's everything I've always been looking for in a woman, and I finally found it - and better. There's parts of her I love that I didn't even dream about."
Parrulli's description is the stuff A Wedding Story is made of, said Julie Rose McCully, executive producer.
"What woman doesn't love to sit and listen to a guy who is sensitive and sentimental?" she asked.
Applying to get married on TV was Parrulli's idea. Greiten likes the show, too.
"You dress up as a little girl and pretend to be a bride. It's a milestone," she said. "The shows are comforting and get you excited about where you are in life."
Their original plan was to marry in Scotland. But when they discovered that the live wedding would be broadcast from St. Pete Beach, near Parrulli's hometown of Oldsmar, they jumped at the chance.
Just before rehearsal began Thursday, the afternoon heat formed sweat beads on the foreheads of wedding party and crew. The officiant's wife slathered her husband's face with sunscreen.
Altogether, the live portion of today's broadcast will total seven superbly choreographed minutes. Greiten and Parrulli remain certain they're doing the right thing.
"He's the biggest, cushiest, mushiest, gushiest, romantic man I have ever met," said the bride.
"Do we have the bride's father?" the director's disembodied voice asked from a speaker in the Don CeSar's wedding courtyard. "Could someone get me the bride's father?"
Three hours into the rehearsal, as the crew perfected the logistics of today's live broadcast, the wedding party still hadn't practiced the processional. Some family members sought refuge from the heat at the Don CeSar's ice cream shop.
Meanwhile, the bride's stuffy head worsened. She relaxed in her room and skipped rehearsal, willing herself to be better in time for today's 6:10 a.m. bridal hair appointment.
With the wedding party in place and the maid of honor trying to finish her waffle cone, rehearsal resumed.
"Hold on just a moment, folks," Kamm said through the speaker. "We're trying to figure out when to cue the bridesmaids to walk."
The stage manager cued the string quartet, cued the bridesmaids, cued the officiant.
"All right!" Kamm shouted. "Stand by!"
If you watch
A Wedding Story . . . LIVE will air at 2 p.m. today on the Learning Channel. The show will feature the wedding of 2002 Miss America Katie Harmon, followed by the live wedding of Anthony Parrulli and Katie Greiten at the Don CeSar Beach Resort & Spa.
