To the great surprise of her friends, Stacey Bendet, the beautiful and very social designer of alice + olivia, tied the knot with her boyfriend Eric Eisner this past weekend. Film producer Eric, the son of former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner, proposed to Stacey on Valentine’s Day of this very year at the Hotel Bel-Air in a room filled to the brim with roses. Stacey and Eric are also expecting their first child and she is said to be fourth months pregnant now.

After a dinner with their families, the pair boarded a private Bombardier plane to the Caribbean island of Anguilla for their own private weekend, without their family or friends. The couple were married in an intimate ceremony on the beach by a local rabbi. Eric had on an untucked, white cotton shirt over his cargo shorts. Stacey, with her hair down, wore a two-piece dress made of cascading white satin ruffles; her floor-length skirt had over ten layers.

Congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs. Eisner!

Photograph © PatrickMcMullan.com.

The social event of the season is Gillian Hearst-Shaw’s wedding to Christian Simonds tomorrow at The Pierre.

They both attended the Lawrenceville School but were years apart from each other there. A mutual friend later brought the two together at a New York Rangers hockey game. Christian proposed to Gillian in February after a romantic sleigh ride in the Berkshires.

Gillian’s maid of honor will be her sister Lydia Hearst-Shaw and the bridesmaids will be her cousins Amanda Hearst and Angelina Carmignani. The bridal party will be dressed by Badgley Mischka. Christian’s groomsmen will be his brothers Chandler, Bob, and Reed Simonds.

Gillian is a granddaughter of Randolph Apperson Hearst, the former chairman of The Hearst Corporation, the media conglomerate which was founded by the bride’s great-grandfather William Randolph Hearst.

Christian is an associate at the law firm Lowenstein Sandler. He graduated from Dickinson and received his law degree from Yeshiva. Gillian is an editorial assistant at Town & Country Travel and Town & Country Weddings. She graduated from Georgetown.

They have both spent the past week greeting and hosting private dinners for family and friends flying in from all over the country for the event. Gillian and Christian have been maintaining separate suites at The Pierre in the meantime. The reception will follow the Episcopalian ceremony at the hotel, and the couple will leave for their honeymoon tour after the wedding celebration.

All photographs © PatrickMcMullan.com.

High society in England took in the wedding of the year in 2002 at Christ Church, Chelsea in London. In Vera Wang (her sister Alice wore Chanel, her twin sister Plum wore Alexander McQueen) Lucy Sykes wed Euan Rellie.

It was attended by the couple’s friends- including the children and grandchildren of such peers as the Duke of Marlborough, the Marquess of Londonderry, and the Baron Acton. Lucy herself is the great-granddaughter of Sir Tatton Sykes, 6th Bt., which makes her a direct descendant of Charles II. Needless to say, like her cousin several times removed, Diana, Princess of Wales, the Independent called Lucy “the most beautiful bride in Britain.”

These nobles sat alongside heiresses like Emily Oppenheimer, Amanda Ross, and Clementine Hambro, and even Euan’s one-time roommate Sophie Dahl. Zani Gugelmann, Bettina Zilkha, and Amy Sacco all crossed the pond to watch Lucy and Euan marry.

After the ceremony, guests were driven to Brooks’s, the private London club that the Rellies are members of. They then moved onto the Stork Club, where Euan’s best friend the Hon. Toby Young, described, in the Evening Standard, that the environment was so wild that “fashionable young people in New York and London will boast that they were conceived at [this] wedding — and it’ll probably be true.”

This is the first in a series on society weddings.

Marion Fountain Mortimer, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Jay Mortimer of New York, is to be married tomorrow afternoon to Stephen Wharton Gaghan, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hague of Louisville, Ky. Cantor William Humphries will participate in the Episcopalian ceremony at St. Thomas Church in New York.

The bride, 25, is known as Minnie. She received a certificate in visual studies at the International Center of Photography. Her mother, Senga M. Mortimer, is the senior editor at House Beautiful magazine in New York.

The bride is a great-granddaughter of Henry Morgan Tilford, a president of Standard Oil of California from 1893 to1907; she is also a descendant of John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States.

The bridegroom, 42, is the screenwriter and film director. He won an Emmy Award in 1997 for co-writing an episode of “N.Y.P.D. Blue.” In 2000 he wrote “Traffic,” for which he won an Academy Award. He also wrote and directed “Abandon” in 2002 and “Syriana” in 2005.

~

The wedding is set for 1:30 PM on Saturday at St. Thomas Church at “Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street” according to the invitation, making a nod at WASP gentry history as the preferred time (and location) for unions. The ceremony is traditional, Episcopalian. There are no bridesmaids; all eyes will be on Minnie, who is being dressed by Oscar de la Renta. The lunch reception will follow at 583 Park Avenue. Afterwards, the couple will honeymoon in St. Barth’s before coming to Los Angeles, where they will primarily reside, and where they also first met- at the annual Oscars picnic of Diane von Fürstenberg.

Some guests at the wedding include Minnie’s best friends Devon Schuster, Lilly Bunn, Kathryn Bohannon, and Dabney Mercer, some of whom are flying in from across Europe today, and also those from her prep school days at St. Mark’s. Others attendees are social relatives like her brother Peter Davis, sister-in-law Tinsley Mortimer, cousin Amanda Burden, and her cousin Averell’s wife Gigi Mortimer. Stephen is bringing in the Hollywood set; Steven Soderbergh, Benjamin Bratt, Michael Douglas, and Catherine Zeta-Jones are all expected to sit on the other side of the aisle.

There hasn’t been this kind of meeting between the Bathing Corporation of Southampton and Hollywood since the days of William and Babe Paley; ironically, Babe was the first wife of Minnie’s uncle Stanley.

Photograph © Style.com.

Ivanka Trump in 2004 and now Byrdie Bell in 2007; mirrored on the West Coast as Mischa Barton and (sometimes) Paris Hilton (although she has allegedly broken up once again with Stavros Niarchos III, the shipping heir). Bingo Gubelmann and Brandon Davis have respectively grabbed the crown princesses of young society in both New York and Hollywood.

Bingo is from solid Palm Beach social parentage (his grandmother is philanthropist Barton Gubelmann, his sister is publicist Phoebe Gubelmann, his cousin is luxury candle maker Marjorie Gubelmann); Brandon hails from enormous social proportions as the grandson of Beverly Hills society queen Barbara Davis.

The consort choices of both men tells the stories of societies on either seaboard: in New York, a socialite is born from money, manners, and couture by Alexander McQueen; in Hollywood, a “socialite” is born, well, from hit reality television shows, public romances, and pornographic videos.

1. They both have big lips and large noses. They have puffy cheeks and brown eyes. Their trademarks: the hair. Bingo’s is full and sleek while Brandon’s is full, and well, greasy.
2. Bingo is clad in Ralph Lauren and Armani with ties courtesy of Hermès. Brandon is outfitted heavily from Kitson. Perfect representatives of men’s fashions on both coasts.
3. They’re both wealthy. Bingo comes from old money. Brandon’s grandmother Barbara inherited 4 billion dollars from the estate of her husband.
4. With some sessions at Equinox, they both can channel Brandon Routh with much better reception.
5. They love their women thin, rich, camera-attracting, and glamorous.
6. Bingo is polite and well-mannered. Brandon is not. “Fire crotch.” We won’t say anymore.