Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Tori and Dean Out To Usher in Era of Non-'Cookie Cutter' Weddings/Leah Remini Not Worried About Getting Personal on 'The Talk'

Will adventurous, tradition-busting themed weddings bloom into vogue in coming months? They will if Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott's hopes for their forthcoming "Tori & Dean: sTORIbook Weddings" show come to pass.

"I think a lot of weddings that planners throw are very cookie-cutterish," Spelling complains. "They're all the same after awhile."

The weddings she and McDermott help put on in their April 6-debuting Oxygen series are anything but same old, same old.

"My favorite was, we did a Marie Antoinette wedding — a party, a ball. This couple was very into fashion. We did it at the Vibiana downtown, which was great because the architecture there allowed us to do a cool modern take on the theme, which is all about abundance and excess," says Spelling, who certainly is one to know of such things.

McDermott says his favorite was "The steampunk wedding we did at the Edison (lounge, also in Downtown Los Angeles). It's Victorian age-meets-Industrial Revolution. ... We had aerial acrobats as entertainment."

They insist that their weddings were carried out on surprisingly modest budgets, though she declines to give figures.

"I don't know if we're supposed to say. Our wedding budgets vary, but none of them were extravagant. We're not like other wedding shows where they rely on big budgets. Dean and I made everything ourselves, and we have favors we can call in from florists, jewelers and other businesses." Not to mention those no doubt lining up to offer their goods and services for promotional considerations.

Of course, there are those who will assume that once the cameras were turned off, Spelling and McDermott put down their staple guns and headed home while their people got the job done.

"We do all the work," she responds firmly. "For the Indian wedding we did, I think the night before, we were up till 3 a.m., literally dressing the room for a 10 a.m. wedding. I'm such a micromanager and a control freak, I'd never let anyone do it for me. I never believe anyone else would do as good a job."

She admits, "It was hard, doing the eight weddings in the time period we had. That was our lives. The kids came with us and stayed at the hotels where we were working. They got used to it. Now they want to stay at hotels all the time ... They're highly socialized."

The McDermotts' children — Liam, 4; and Stella, 2 — lent their little hands as well.

"Stella loves filling favor bags," says McDermott. Liam suggests Spider-Man red and blue balloons for pretty much every wedding, according to his mom and dad.

Spelling and McDermott renewed their vows last May in Beverly Hills (counteracting rumors of trouble in their marriage). She says the event "was actually one of the reasons we thought of doing this show."

"I want to do it every year," says McDermott.

Spelling says she has mixed feelings about the show focusing on each wedding couple's love stories, family dramas and surprises — when she'd like to have more lingering shots of her own handiwork. But there's a remedy for that.

"I have my first party-planning book coming out Oct. 26: 'CelebraTORI,'" she says. Of course. The best-selling memoirist also has another autobiographical tome on the way for 2012.

AN OPEN BOOK: Leah Remini says she has no regrets about comments she's made about her family life, her husband or other personal matters on her "The Talk" show with Julie Chen, Holly Robinson Peete, Sharon Osbourne and Sara Gilbert. "I'm not worried about it. If we're not going to reveal ourselves, we're not going to be different from anyone else," she says. The former "King of Queens" leading lady does admit it's been a challenge getting used to working live. "On a sitcom, if you make a mistake, they stop tape and go back. With this, you're live and being yourself, and whatever you say is out there. I obsess about saying the wrong things. And I'm the kind of person who, if 100 people give me compliments and one says something negative, oh, my God, I'm crushed." She does not, however, give credence to haters on the Internet. That kind of rampaging negativity "is an act of cowardice. It's a cowardly world we're living in, where people talk a lot of crap on the Internet — anonymously — and say things they'd never have the nerve to say to someone's face."

THE HORSEY SET: Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa were on hand to cheer daughter Jessica during the $230,000 Grand Prix at Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Fla., where the Step By Step Foundation hosted the second annual "All in for Charity" benefit poker tournament. Equestrian Hillary Dobbs, wearing a gorgeous floor-length dress that covered her knee brace, was one of the five females to make up charity founder Liliane Stransky's poker team, but her dad, Lou Dobbs, was stuck back East getting ready for the debut of his show on Fox Business News.

Hillary, who celebrated her 23 birthday at the Winter Equestrian Festival, had suffered an injury when her horse slipped in an Open Jumper competition and fell to the ground. (The horse rolled on top of her. Both horse and rider got up and walked out the ring, but Hillary's knee needs a bit of time to mend). This week, she had to just watch from the stands along with the Springsteens.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2011 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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