I am a luxury dog wedding planner and I get inundated with celebrities eager to watch their pets get married at any cost
A LUXURY dog wedding planner has revealed how she's been inundated with requests from celebrities wanting high end weddings for their beloved pets.
Professional hostess Amanda Orzo originally held a wedding for her own dog Eve and a friend's dog Nacho as a "bit of fun" for their eight-year-old daughter.
But after posting pictures of the event, she was soon flooded with inquiries from people wanting her to organize weddings for their pets - including from celebrities and reality stars.
"My eight-year-old daughter had the idea to hold a dog wedding for our dog and to be honest I thought it was totally ridiculous at first but we entertain often, I host events myself and I help with other people's events," Amanda told The U.S. Sun.
"So we started thinking about a typical human wedding and started thinking about taking traditional elements of that and applying them to our furry little dog friends.
"It started silly but it just became really fun, we had a bunch of our friends there, lots of dogs, and everyone treated it like an actual wedding.
"People came dressed in nice summer flower dresses, we had good food and good champagne.
"I held it at my apartment in New York and we had an area for the ceremony and an area for the reception outdoors. There was about 30 human and six dog guests.
"While the humans were drinking actual champagne we found squeaky dog toys in champagne bottle shape that said "Woof Clicquot" for the dogs.
"We had squeaky toy dog cigars. It ended up being the most fun event, so carefree and a fun excuse to get people together to celebrate.
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"We had an aisle set up and a human flower girl. The dogs dressed up, the bride wore a long dress, the groom had a tuxedo. The bride had a long train for the ceremony but then she changed into a smaller dress for the after party.
"We had a minister with a bow tie and a photographer and videographer there.
"After the dogs were pronounced man and wife we blew peanut butter and bacon flavor dog bubbles at the new couple - instead of people throwing rice or petals."
CRAZY IN LOVE
And Amanda, who posts tips on hosting events on her , said the canine newlyweds had a great time.
"The dogs were going crazy - you could tell they enjoyed it, they even gave each other a kiss," she said.
'We had all the traditional wedding songs.
"As dogs don't have fingers we opted for diamante studded collars instead of rings. We had a plush toy ring carried very ceremoniously down the aisle by the ring bearer.
"The vows were recited by the minister and the dogs kind of barked their way through.
"My daughter absolutely loved it, she kept saying 'Mom I want this to be a very elevated event'. She wanted to make sure I was taking it seriously."
Amanda thinks the event has caught people's imaginations as they want a way to celebrate the love they have for their dogs and to do something different.
"Since I posted pictured from that event I've never had so many inquiries from people wanting to me to help them set up their own dog wedding," she said.
It's the latest hottest thing, everyone from the Hamptons to Hollywood wants to do it."
"It's made me realise that people love their dogs and love the idea of getting people together in a fun way and outside the box.
"So many people - including celebrities and reality stars as well as regular people have reached out. There are two celebrities who have already booked events. It's the latest hottest thing, everyone from the Hamptons to Hollywood wants to do it.
"I think people want to celebrate their dogs and it's also a way to have an event without stress or expectations because it's so fun.
"There's no real rules or etiquette surrounding it, and it's something new, and celebrities always want to be ahead of the curve.
"People are wanting to do themed ones such as Country and Western ones or a tropical theme."
SPLASHING THE CASH
And she said while some people are happy to spend upwards of $20,000 on the perfect dog wedding, there are lots of options for hosting a fun event at a more affordable cost.
"Some people want weddings with no expense spared, you know you can have high end food and drink, outfits, so it's like an other high end party but with a fun twist," Amanda said.
"You can have a Prada dog collar, designer dog outfits for example or something from the 99 cents store. You can spend anything from $500 to £20,000 it depends what you choose to splurge on - the sky's the limit.
"You could do a wedding like this in an extremely high end way or in more of a relaxed, budget friendly way.
"You can spend as much as any human wedding, it depends on number of guests, types of wine and champagne, floral displays - so for ours we spent a lot on flowers and videographer but then we made our own dog cakes, rather than go to an expensive bakery.
DOG HONEYMOONS
"Our dogs went to the dog park for their honeymoon, but there are so many dog friendly hotels nowadays - you could even splash out on that," she continued.
"We decorated a dog stroller with 'Just Married' and tied plush 'tin cans' to the back.
Amanda said her career as a dog wedding planner is a world away from her previous career in private investigation.
"My career used to be working for a private investigator so my career is very different now. I married into a big Italian family and we entertain a lot," she said.
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"Because I had a serious job, entertaining and throwing our own parties became a release to me and I very much enjoyed the creative aspect, I left that job and then friends were asking me about hosting and it just went from there.
"I really like the idea of mixing high end with budget options. Every Saturday night we host anything from 16 to 32 people so I just kind of leaned into this. Life is short, celebrate everything."
