Why Melissa Rivers Called Stella McCartney To Get Her Wedding Dress Blessing

When Melissa Rivers first got engaged to Steve Mitchel, 63, in 2023, she immediately knew one thing: That she didn’t want to wear white to their wedding.

“I said I’m not wearing white, but I did have to promise Steve that I wouldn’t wear black,” Rivers, 57, told PEOPLE in 2024. “Because I wear so much black. I told him, navy and gray are still in play though!”

In the end, Rivers, who wed the attorney in front of 150 guests at the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on March 15, chose a gunmetal silver lamé gown from Stella McCartney’s 2023 collection — although she knew she wanted to make a few minor adjustments to it.

“I know Stella and I adore her, but I knew I was going to shorten it,” Rivers, says of the maxi gown.

“Because it was a long dress. And so I texted her saying, ‘I don’t want you to see pictures and think, Oh my God, what have you done to my dress?'” So we chatted back and forth and she’s like, just send me pictures of you in the dress. And I kind of drew where I wanted it shorter, and she was good with it.”

After the ceremony Rivers changed into a black dress by Brunello Cucinelli, noting that she didn’t stress about what to wear too much since the overall vibe of the wedding was always supposed to be casual.

“When we were planning it, our goal was simple: throw a party and have a wedding ceremony break out somewhere in the middle,” she says. “And you know what? We nailed it.”

Guests included her college friends (“There were 29 Penn people in total!” she says), plus plenty of L.A.-area friends, her new husband’s family, and Rivers’s son Cooper Endicott, 24.

During his touching speech, Cooper talked about the first time he met Steve, when Cooper was hanging out with his friends at his mom’s house, and one of the friends looked over at Steve, who was just standing there in the kitchen, and said, “Wait, who the f–k is this guy?'”

“Steve replied, ‘I’m your worst nightmare.’ So that was the first green flag!” Cooper said, to an eruption of laughter. He added, “Thank you for taking me and my mom in with wide open arms.”

In 2024, when Rivers was wedding planning, she told PEOPLE joked that her engagement would have shocked her late mom, Joan Rivers, who died in 2014 at the age of 81.

“If she wasn’t already dead, she would die. Finding out that I am getting married again, that news would’ve killed her,” Rivers said. “Just because I was so adamant that I would never do it again. And she understood why I felt that way.”

But once she met Mitchel, she felt differently. “He’s just a solid guy,” she says. She knows her mom would have approved of her new husband.

“She would appreciate [that he is] very much a gentleman,” she said last year. “He’s kind. He’s generous and well-mannered. Even a year and a half, almost two years in, he still opens the car door. He gets me. And not just get me — he enjoys who I am and the real me.”

Now that the wedding is over, Rivers says looking forward to their future together and rebuilding their life after losing their home and everything they owned in the Palisades Fire on Jan. 7. She also says she’s happy the wedding went off without a hitch.

“The amount of genuine happiness in that room was so overwhelming,” she says. “I’m not one to be cliché and say, ‘Oh, you could feel the warmth and love!’ But you know what? I actually felt it! And I’m so grateful.”