Heartbreak auction: Items from Kim Kardashian's wedding to Kris Humphries, other ill-fated events go up for sale
Most remnants of the lavish, ill-fated 2011 wedding of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries — save for its infamous place in pop-culture history — are long gone. Photos have been moved to the back of the drawer or, more likely in this case, tossed out. After all, in 2014 Kardashian married Kanye West in an even more extravagant ceremony.
But a few items from the Kardashian-Humphries wedding still remain. The same goes for Kaley Cuoco’s 2013 nuptials to Ryan Sweeting, which ended in divorce a year-and-a-half later, and Mariah Carey’s 2008 wedding to Nick Cannon, a marriage that lasted six years.
Now, items that remain from all those events and many others, not all of which turned out badly, are going up for auction through Premiere Props. Longtime celebrity event designer Rrivre Davies, who crafted pieces for all these occasions, is retiring and selling more than 50,000 items used at star-studded, private events for boldface names.
Among the pieces on the auction block is an oversize Armenian cross covered in Swarovski crystals, which was used as a centerpiece as Kardashian married Humphries. Davies recalls the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and her wedding planner asked for crystal crosses. He made it more personal by researching Armenian crosses, because Kardashian is Armenian, and making sure that his designs sparkled enough for his noteworthy client.
“I made giant designs … that we put hanging on the front of the tents and stuff, which was really a very classic kind of whimsical but elegant way of designing the front of the tent, as opposed to just straight… putting hedging or something. But the cross was really… I would say the most important thing to me, only because, you know, I take what I do seriously,” Davies explains to Yahoo Entertainment. “A wedding is a very important thing to people, and it’s not always just a party. It’s a ceremony, you know, representative of who the people are, who the couple is.”
Because Kardashian is, well, who she is, Davies says he really worked on those crystals.
“In order for it to catch the light at all different angles, I didn’t just do a flat cross,” he says. “I made it dimensional, so the surface of it has several different planes that are at several different angles, so no matter what way you turn, you get all that beautiful sparkle from the cross. So that was a lot of fun. It was a challenge and a lot of fun.”
Bidders can snap up other props used at the Kardashian-Humphries wedding too. Monogrammed pillows, chairs, tables, and ottomans from the day are up for grabs.
Davies recalls Cuoco’s 2013 wedding for another reason — her demeanor.
“I’ll tell you, Kaley Cuoco‘s wedding,” Davies says, “I was there keeping a secret eye on everything, and it was one of the most endearing, charming, heartfelt, just touching ceremonies that I have seen in my entire life. And that did bum me out [that they split], because she was so sweet, and her family was there supporting her in such a beautiful way that that did touch me, when I found out that they got divorced.”
(Cuoco has since moved on and married Karl Cook in a beautiful ceremony on June 30.)
The designer acknowledges that finding out any couple whose wedding he worked on called it quits is “part of the job.”
“I mean, that’s part of the reality of today is that people get divorced,” Davies tells Yahoo Entertainment. “All I know is that I put my 100 percent into it, and I design unique and special things for them, and try and get those moments to be spectacular, so they have the memories, and I feel like I walked away doing my job on all those occasions.”
He adds with a chuckle, “Unfortunately, I guess, in the relationship, somebody didn’t do their job.”
Davies expects collectors of celebrity memorabilia as well as others in the celebrity event industry to purchase his props, all of which are listed on the auction website. The live auction will be held at 11 a.m. PT on July 28-29, with a preview of the items for sale beginning at 9 a.m PT each day, at Rrivre Works Studios in Los Angeles.
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