What “Cilla” Wore

Despite reports that Priscilla designed her own dress, it was an off-the-rack number of surprising simplicity, though it was acquired under subterfuge. “I went to places like Neiman Marcus in disguise,” Priscilla later said. “I went with a [blonde] wig and everything just to keep it private!” Using the name Mrs. Hodge, Priscilla finally found her dream dress in Westwood. White, with long lace sleeves and pearl embellishments, the woman who wore it would say: “It wasn’t extravagant, it wasn’t extreme—it was simple and to me beautiful.” To another source, she admitted: “I didn’t have time to stay there forever and look at dresses; I had one fitting for this dress and that was it, I was out of there.”

Her three-foot tulle veil was topped by a rhinestone tiara, neither of which could compete with her jet-black hair (dyed to twin with Elvis’s?), which she wore in a huge bouffant, about which one of the best men said, according to Karal Ann Marling, author of Graceland: “She looked like she had about eight people living in her hair.”

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive / Getty Images

The Reception

Before the reception, Parker had arranged for the lovebirds to give a press conference, after which they joined 100 guests seated at 10 round tables for a champagne breakfast, served buffet style at the hotel. There are many photos of the couple with their

five-foot-tall, six-tier cake, which was made of yellow sponge, filled with apricot marmalade and kirsch-flavored Bavarian cream, and iced with kirsch-flavored fondant icing. It was decorated with royal icing and, according to one account, 1,600 marzipan roses. Because many of their friends were excluded from the celebration on May 1, the couple had a second reception at Graceland soon after.

Photo: Charles Trainor / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images

The Reaction

“Who could say who was the luckier, the “Pelvis” or pretty Pricilla?” one news agency reported (see the video here). “The millionaire film star-singer, in bride choosing, as in everything else, a terrific success.” Fans of Elvis were elated or distraught; Lacker reported that “gifts and cards poured into Graceland . . . . Most of the fans were happy for them, but some of the less gracious threatened to kill themselves or, at least, become nuns.”