Kiwi designer for Napster founder’s wedding


An Oscar-winning Kiwi costume designer has been asked to weave her magic at an internet billionaire’s fairytale wedding.

Sean Parker, founder of file-sharing site Napster and later president of Facebook, has hired film costume designer Ngila Dickson to create an outfit for each guest at his US$10 million (NZ$11.8m) wedding in California in June.

Dickson won an Oscar for her work on The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King in 2004.

Parker, 34, who was played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network, will tie the knot with his fiancee, singer-songwriter Alexandra Lenas, in a ceremony the New York Post has predicted “could end up looking like an episode of Game of Thrones”.

Parker has denied this in posts on Facebook, saying Dickson has been commissioned to create a series of outfits “based on modern suits and dresses with some elements of Victorian flair and whimsy”.

“Just because we don’t trust our guests to dress themselves properly doesn’t mean we want them to look like #GoT characters,” he wrote.

“Sorry to disappoint those of you who were looking forward to dressing up in medieval garb, but the wardrobe designs we’ve made for our guests are essentially modern … There will be nothing ‘medieval’ about it.”

Save-the-date cards in the style of a scroll were sent out last month.

“As you might imagine, this will not be a run-of-the-mill wedding,” an accompanying email said.

The wedding budget is expected to reach US$10m, with most of that to be spent on an elaborate set – featuring fake ruins, waterfalls, bridges, ponds and a gated cottage – at the luxury Ventana Inn resort in Big Sur.

About US$1m is to be spent on flowers alone, while the newlyweds will take to a dance floor costing US$350,000 for their first dance.

Parker was estimated in March to be worth about US$2 billion. He co-founded Napster in 1999, and later became the first president of Facebook. He is now a backer for music-streaming service Spotify.

He has been engaged to Lenas since February 2011 and the couple have a 2-month-old daughter, Winter Victoria.

He has a reputation for throwing raucous parties at his home in New York, known as “The Bacchus House”.

He recently admitted to the New York Post that he had earned a reputation as a party animal, thanks in part to Timberlake’s performance in The Social Network.

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