The Bride Wore Ricci.(Lauren Davis)

Byline: Photographed by Arthur Elgort

In the beautiful port city of Cartagena, with helicopters buzzing overhead and nine designers for as many bridesmaids, Lauren Davis wore mini, maxi, and everything in between for her spectacular wedding. William Norwich follows the jet set to paradise.

The burning sun is setting over Cartagena, the colonial jewel in Colombia's crown. In a scene worthy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the city's favorite son, families have crowded along the narrow Calle de Santa Teresa, leading to the sixteenth-century Iglesia de Santo Domingo, its lime-washed walls pink as a dusky sunset. The vallenato, the musicians who ramble day and night playing seductive paseo and merengue, are respectfully silent--at 7:30 P.M., Lauren Davis and Andres Santo Domingo will be married. The crowd cheers the city's most beloved benefactors, Julio Mario and Beatrice Santo Domingo, the parents of the Brown University--educated groom, as they pass on their way to the church.

Meanwhile, in the entrance hall of the seventeenth-century Casa Conde de Pestagua, Lauren Davis clasps her great-grandmother's rosary--old, borrowed, blue stone--as Olivier Theyskens arranges her wedding dress. Fashioned from 60 meters of silk jacquard woven with peony blooms, its coat embroidered with tinsel paillettes, vintage lace, silver threads, and tufts of clipped white feathers, this is Theyskens's masterpiece. The dress took the workers in Nina Ricci's atelier a mere 1,200 hours to make (with an additional 800 hours from the legendary Lesage embroiderers).

Davis has spent the day sequestered here with her mother, the artist Judy Davis (now in a tulip-stem-green crepe by Carolina Herrera), and her nine bridesmaids. As Theyskens fixes the veil over her chignon--mindful of the pearl-and-diamond Buccellati earrings that belonged to Dona Beatrice (Mrs. Santo Domingo), her wedding gift to the bride--Lauren hears her carriage arrive on the cobblestones. A woman otherwise of many words and enthusiasms, she is now contemplative. With a touch of the rosary and a lift of her train, the heavy wooden doors creak open and the crowd cheers. The bride and her father get into their horse-drawn carriage, she whispers something in his ear, and down the narrow calle they go to arrive at the church on time.

But of course the story doesn't begin here. No wedding begins at the altar; it begins at the first date--or, better yet, the first kiss, and Lauren and Andres's first was in Paris, atop the Eiffel Tower, just shy of ten years ago.

The daughter of Ronald Davis, a philanthropist and entrepreneur perhaps best known for helping to build the Poland Spring brand, the bride was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. Having attended the Kent School in Connecticut and the University of Southern California, Lauren was a recent college graduate starting her career in fashion. (She is now a VOGUE Contributing Editor.) She worked briefly as a model and actress, just long enough to shoot a Japanese jeans commercial that primarily involved kissing Brad Pitt on and off for the better part of three days until the director yelled "Cut!" With the $6,000 she was paid for this star turn, Lauren went to Paris. While she was at dinner one evening with a small group of friends from home, the topic turned to that old conversational chestnut "Who is your ideal man?" When it came time for Lauren to respond, she looked across the room just as Andres was entering. Rich man, poor man, she had no idea who he was. "That man," Lauren said, and gestured toward this perfect stranger.