AT THE LAST MOMENT, AS THEY were trying to get her into her wedding gown, the bride began acting bitchy. The groom, though, was doggedly determined to go through with things. And so, on a recent Saturday in the sight of dog and man, Bronx wed Bosse.
Bronx is a 9-month-old Rhodesian Ridgeback; Bosse is a 3-year-old Lhasa apso. Their nuptials took place at Hollywood Hounds in Los Angeles, a dog daycare center whose guests can enjoy such top-drawer canine services as $35 Shiatsu massages, $50 "pawdicures" and a line of metal-studded leatherwear. If their owners are willing to pay for it, they can also celebrate life passages such as birthdays, "muttrimonies" and "bark mitzvahs."
All of this, says owner Susan Marfleet, who officiates at all canine ceremonies, started out innocently enough with birthday parties for Boo-Boo, her Yorkshire terrier. "I did it as a joke," she says, "but people would show up with presents and be really into it." Next thing you know she was offering $200 weddings—and people like hairstylist Linda Flowers, 39, who is Bronx's significant human, were going for them.
Marfleet, 40, who loved animals so much as a child in Toronto that she once hid a frozen Thanksgiving turkey in her bed to save it from being cooked, isn't at all surprised. "People love socializing with their dogs," she says. "And dogs have relationships with other dogs."
As for Bronx and Bosse, they met at Hollywood Hounds' daycare, gave each other a few once-over sniffs and, insist their owners, fell in love.
Will their union endure? Well, this is Hollywood. "I just hope," says Marfleet, "that nobody comes back next year and wants a dogvorce."
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