There were two swimming pools with floating candles, and Chinese lanterns dangled from the palm trees. But Christina Applegate, about to marry actor Johnathon Schaech, didn't need the extra wattage. "When she put on her dress, her face just automatically lit up," says Reem Acra, who created the actress's hand-beaded silk organza gown. "She was so happy."

So was Schaech, an actor best known for his role in the 1996 movie That Thing You Do! His eyes welled up with tears when Applegate, the former teen siren from Married...with Children, walked down the aisle between her parents, actress Nancy Priddy and former record executive Robert Applegate. "He began to cry and then she began to cry," says Michael Beckwith, a reverend in the United Church of Religious Science who performed the wedding—at a rented, three-acre Palm Springs estate on Oct. 20—with Father Ken Deasy, a Catholic priest.

Applegate, 29, and Schaech, 32, introduced four years ago by a mutual friend, wrote their own vows. Among the 130 guests were Schaech's mother, Joanne, a secretary, and dad, Joe, a retired cop who served as best man; Cameron Diaz and beau Jared Leto; and Applegate's Married... mom, Katey Sagal, and brother David Faustino. The couple then exchanged red roses—an act they plan to repeat on anniversaries to symbolize that difficulties are a "temporary experience," Beckwith says, "and that love is what's real."