From Fantasy Vows to Real Lives: The Forgotten Newlyweds of 1983's 'Krull' Wedding Contest

A Wedding Day… and a Flop for the Ages

Imagine planning your wedding — the dress, the guest list, the forever memory. Now imagine the landmark moment of your life is permanently entwined with a science-fiction bomb that cost tens of millions of dollars and baffled audiences for decades. For twelve couples from across America in 1983, that isn’t imagination.

That is history.

When Columbia Pictures rolled out Krull, a $40+ million space-fantasy epic meant to ride the Star Wars wave, it fizzled. It opened to over $5 million — not bad for 1983 — but when you’ve spent enough money to build a small moon, $5 million is the sound of gears grinding and executives sweating through their suits.

By the end of its theatrical run, Krull earned only $16 million. Meanwhile, Empire Strikes Back cost $18 million. Let’s just say no one was popping champagne at Columbia, that is aside from 12 pairs of strangers from Across America and a few members of the Columbia marketing team.

Enter: The Krull Wedding Fantasy

Desperate to draw women to a movie made for teenage boys who enjoyed sword-swinging and laser-cycling, Columbia Pictures said: What if… brides??

The scheme came from one Marvin Antonowsky — a marketing executive who deserves a plaque somewhere for “Ideas Too Weird To Ignore.”

He called Modern Bride Magazine.

He called Alfred Angelo, the Florida-based wedding gown powerhouse.

And he perhaps said:

“Let’s sell this sci-fi movie with a wedding dress.”

Ads began appearing in March of 1983 across America.

Actress Lysette Anthony, the film’s princess Lyssa, modeled a brand-new Alfred Angelo Krull Wedding Dress in promotional photos. Bridal shops were asked to feature it. And then came the contest:

Write an essay explaining why your fantasy come true would be a “Krull Wedding in Hollywood.”

This is the most 80s sentence ever written.

Yes, This Was National

Newspaper reports, cultivated from the wonderful online archive, newspapers.com, confirm that Modern Bride was part of the promotion announced by Columbia. A mention of the future Modern Bride cover story is preserved from the Cincinnati Enquirer in June of 1983. A later story in The Indianapolis News goes further in stating that Modern Bride had indeed partnered and was named in the promotion, though again, searches of online sources for Modern Bride Magazine turn up no mention of Krull or the contest.

Anyway, the contest was real. Columbia Pictures and Alfred Angelo were featured in ads for bridal shops nationwide. Ads found on Newspapers dot com show contests from California to Maine being advertised locally by Bridal Shops likely partnered with Alfred Angelo. More than 15,000 people entered according to Columbia sources. Winners were announced in late June or early July to correspond with the mass wedding of 12 couples on Columbia’s Burbank lot on July 21st, 1983, just 8 days or so before the July 29th, 1983 release of Krull, and just as critics were were drawing their knives in scabrous reviews of the movie.

Wedding packages valued at $5081 dollars were handed out to 12 couples from across the country including a pair of couples from Indiana, a military couple from Fort Benning, Georgia, Along with couples from Chicago Baltimore and even a small town in North Carolina where the unique wedding of one couple was big enough news to make the local paper.

The couples were flown to Los Angeles and, by all available accounts, they had a great time. There have been no reported complaints by participants regarding their Krull Wedding. So, what exactly was a Fantasy Krull Wedding? Well, it wasn’t exactly the epic depicted in the movie. Our 12 mystery couples were married by a local Los Angeles bureaucrat in a civil ceremony against a stone backdrop from the set of Krull. On hand were a handful of actors wearing the costumes of Palace guards from the movie.

The Brides each wore personally crafted versions of Lyssa’s Wedding dress from the film, though the grooms were merely dressed in white tuxes, and not the gaudy robes, black leather, sword and scabbard get up worn by actor Ken Marshall in Krull. Nevertheless, the wedding went off without any issues and afterwards, each couple enjoyed a weeklong honeymoon in San Francisco complete with touristy trips like a romantic tour of… Alcatraz. A Columbia marketing exec deserves a rimshot for that one.

So, Who Were the Happy Krull Couples?

So, this brings us round to the mystery, who were these couples? In a blog post that went viral in 2010, writer Tim Kirk tackled the mystery in a snarky, funny post that featured what are apparently actual photos from the Krull Wedding in Burbank, California (See above). Kirk revealed the names of several participants and stated that he planned to see if he could track down the full list of winners as he had some questions for them like ‘What the heck were you thinking?’

Tripping over the Krull wedding story as we were researching a different Movies of the 80s feature, A Night in Heaven, I tripped over the Krull wedding story. I’d not seen Tim Kirk’s viral 2010 story at the time it came out, so this was all new to me and just the kind of bizarre, funny and odd stories about movies from the eighties that we love here at Movies of the 80s. So, I took to Newspapers.com and found a rabbit hole waiting for me.

Along the way, I found local news stories from Indianapolis, Indiana Baltimore Maryland, Fort Benning, Georgia, Charlotte, North Carolina, and several other spots that shared some of the stories about people winning the contest. But, it was only a partial list, similar to Kirk’s reported list from 2010, but with a couple additions. Then, I found the Holy Grail of Krull Wedding stories.

In the August 12th edition of the Johnson City Press in Johnson City, Tennessee, a place with seemingly no connection to the contest or the winners, I found a complete list of the couples who won the Krull Wedding Fantasy. With the list compiled I began a painstaking search of public records, social media, ancestry sites and more to see if I could find out where the couples went after their brush with Hollywood.

The table below is not completely verified, newspaper records are spotty but a few obituaries and local news stories match up with the recorded age and known locations of the couples. Here’s what our Movies of the 80s team uncovered.

For the first time, here's the complete list—a roadmap to twelve orbits that started on one hot stage.

# Couple Hometown / State 2025 Status

1 Patricia Lynn Larson & Bryan Lolkema

Valparaiso, IN

Widowed (Bryan d. 2019); Patty alive

2 Stacey Dewana Craig & Carlos Politano

Richmond, IN

Divorced (~2002); both alive

The Krull Wedding was the second of three wedding ceremonies for Stacy and Carlos who were featured in a story in the Indianapolis News on July 19th, 1983. The couple were married in front of friends in family earlier in July and planned to travel to Carlos' hometown of Salvador, Brazil later in the year.

3 Charlotte A. Blakemore & Richard L. Querze

Matthews, NC

Widowed (Richard d. 2012); Charlotte alive, remarried

"It was a different way to start a life" said Charlotte in an interview with the Charlotte Observer in July 1983. The couple still went ahead with the wedding they planned for October of 1983 though Charlotte chose to get a new wedding dress and not re-use her Krull dress.

4 Dr. Jai Bun Kim & Col. Curtis D. Earp Jr.

Fort Benning, GA

Likely together, alive

The Earp's (Pronounced Arp, FYI) were already married when they had their Krull Wedding, though they did have to get a California marriage license in order to participate. They'd even already been on their honeymoon, making their San Francisco trip a Honeymoon sequel. That's certainly the only Krull related sequel in the word.

5 Jodi Deland & Mark Batten

Unknown

Unknown

6 Donna K. Mottram & William C. Starke

Chicago, IL

Widowed (William d. 2018); Donna alive

7 Deborah Crull & James P. O’Haro

Columbia, MO

Divorced (~1987); both deceased (Deborah 2020, James 2015)

Did Deborah Crull win the Krull wedding contest simply because her name was almost the same as the title of the movie? No one knows, but it's a peculiar and humorous coincidence to be sure.

8 Tracy Cabot & Marshall Whitfield

Van Nuys, CA

Married 36+ years; alive

9 Tracy Lynn Watson & George B. Gibson Jr.

Leonardtown, MD

Widowed (George d. 2018); Tracy alive

10 Louise L. Rempp & Larry A. Trexler

Bethlehem, PA

Widowed (Louise d. ~2010s?); Larry deceased (2022)

Louise was, according to our research, a teacher in Pennsylvania, all around well liked. There is a photo in Pennsylvania news archives showing a Louise and Larry Trexler as moving into a newly formed, cutting edge for 1999, housing community. I didn't include the photo because I can't 100 percent determine if that is our Louise and Larry. Our search also found a Louise Trexler who competed for Mrs. Pennsylvania in 1988 but, again, I could not confirm if it was our Louise,

11 Kathleen Myers & William Frazier

Baltimore, MD

Divorced (~1995); William deceased (2014), Kathleen alive

12 Sharon K. Mros & Jon A. Ayasta Virginia / Minnesota

Divorced (~1988); Jon deceased (2009), Sharon alive

The Legacy of The Krull Wedding

A lot of very normal lives with one particularly notable shared memory, a true oddity that has likely been shared among their families for more than four decades, even as the movie that brought them together became a critically reviled flop. There is nothing to indicate a supposed ‘Krull Curse,’ if you could believe in such nonsense, just a lot of normal folks with normal lives.

And, as I mentioned earlier, all reports from the time indicated that everyone was quite happy with the Krull Fantasy Wedding, Krull went on to flop but there was one particular success story that came from the film. Despite being tied to a major motion picture flop, the Krull Wedding dress became a huge hit for Alfred Angelo.

The Dress that Did Not Flop with the Movie

An August 9th, 1983 article on the bridal industry in the Iowa City Press Citizen reports that the gown, retailed at $400 dollars in 1983 had sold more than 4000 dresses. Doing the math, that’s over $1 million dollars in sales for a wedding dress from the movie Krull. Let that sink in, the wedding dress almost competes with Krull’s opening weekend ticket sales. It’s likely that people buying the dress didn’t even see the movie that inspired it or were even aware of the connection to a Hollywood flop.

A Hollywood Wedding Dress Trend?

The Iowa City Press Citizen story goes on to say that Hollywood wedding dresses were a part of wedding dress lore in the early 1980s. The owner of an Iowa City bridal shop quoted in the article stated that Adrian’s dress from Rocky 2 was a huge seller after that film came out and she expected that little known movies like Robert De Niro’s True Confessions and Dudley Moore’s movie, Romantic Comedy would likely lead to increased sales of dresses modeled on those from the movies.

Has there ever been a more random, strange, ambitious or nutty movie marketing gimmick like the Krull Fantasy Wedding? I truly hope so. We here at Movies of the 80s will be keeping an eye out for future movie-bridal shop tie-ins, that’s for sure. How the makers of Labyrinth didn’t have a field day with Jennifer Connelly’s dress, perhaps bringing in David Bowie, in full Goblin King mode, to conduct civil unions on a forest set filled with puppets is perhaps the greatest marketing missed opportunities of all time, in my opinion anyway.

Oh, if you happen to be able to find the essays these 12 couples wrote to win the Krull wedding contest, get in touch, we’re dying to read what brought these couples to the strangest mass wedding in Hollywood history.

What do you think of The Krull Wedding? Leave your thoughts in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe to Movies of the 80s on Vocal and on our YouTube channel.