Taken from Newsday - 4/24/2002 by Ed Lowe
Two years a go, Susan Fox was a 36-year-old single mother, living with her yung children in an apartment in her mother's house in North Babylon. Her Husband, Steven Fox, had died two years earlier, after a decade-long battle with what started out as a malignant melanoma and got progressively worse, requiring increasingly debilitating chemotherapy and resulting, eventually, in a grim prognosis. With the help of Hospice, Fox cared for Steven at home. Their second child, Monica, was born in April, 1997. Steven Fox died that December.
"About two years and three months later," Susan said, "my friend Lisa Barone insisted that I go out. She's from North Babylon, too. I hadn't gone anywhere at all. We'd had a really rough time of it, really rough, and I was focused on my children, full time. I felt I had been lucky once, having Steven and two beautiful children. Who gets lucky twice? But Lisa dragged me out, and that night I met Mike. He called me two days later."
Michael Bonavito, 34, owns Bonavito Real Estate, in Smithtown, where he grew up. His first marriage (wed at 22l separated at 24) had been annulled. "Susan and I met at the end of February, 2000," he said. "By December, we were planning to fly down to Florida, where her mother has a time-share. I was going to, you know, 'meet the mom.' But I backed out. They went on their own. She was taking the kids to Disney World."
"Then, I called her on a Sunday night and asked her if she and her mom and the kids would be in the Magic Kingdom at 4 p.m. the next day. I wanted to make arrangements for them to have dinner at the restaurant in Cinderella's castle; I would pay for it. Actually, I wanted to propose to her, but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it."
"I flew down Monday morning. At a Christmas store there, I had them paint, 'Will you marry me?' on an ornament showing the Cinderella castle. I told the Disney people what I was doing, and they took me downstairs to wardrobe and dressed me as The Prince. When they were done with dinner, the waitress presented Susan with a bill, which surprised her, and then said, 'I have one more surprise.' They were seated by a window, overlooking Fantasyland. I came out with four girls in princess costumes on either side of me. In my hand was a gold tray covered with roses, and the ornament, and a glass slipper with her engagement ring in it. I knelt down and proposed. Adter the 'Oh my Gods!', she said, 'Yes", and the maitre d' said, 'Lords and ladies of the castle, Lord Michael has just poposed, and she has accepted.' Then the sun went down, and the fireworks started."
The couple planned a wedding for July, though never agreed on a specific date, allowing Michael Bonavito to plan an elaborate - get this - surprise wedding. He booked St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Smithtown for a March 23 wedding and the Sand Castle in Franklin Square for a reception. He booked the Marriott Windwatch, in Hauppauge, for a surprise, pre-wedding shower the night before. He made 80 6-by-9-inch wooden storybooks, requiring 200 hours of work, and 860 tiny screws, as invitations from the Faity Godmother for Susan Fox's wish-come-true, and each admonished its recipient to keep the information secret lest they break the spell.
In January he had one of his sisters take Susan to a bridal salon, where she picked out a gown that Michael would place a deposit on later. Meanwhile, he bought it. When she took her mother to the salon to see the dress, Susan was the only person in the room who didn't know she was being fitted. By similar skullduggery, Bonavito arranged for Susan to select a dress for Monica Foz, and he secretly bought that.
The night before the wedding, he brought her to the Terrace Cafe restaurant at the Windwatch. When they were seated, he asked her bread. She uncovered the breadbasket and found a teacup with a scroll held by two figurines of the mice characters from "Cinderella." the scroll, promising a dream come true, instructed her to tap three times on the two doors behind her and make a wish. When she opened the doors, she saw 45 women, friends and relatives from near and far, including Lucy Fox, Steven's mother, who with her husband, Robert, had traveled from their home in Cape Coral, Florida.
Susan's mother, Irene Cumberland, of North Babylon, handed her a pink and ivory satin box bearing a copy of the wedding invitation, along with a note saying, ". . .all that you need awaits you in a room that can be unlocked with this key." Another of Michael's sisters took her hand and led her upstairs. The roomful of women followed them to a suite festooned with pastel ribbons and bows, with a trail of paper rose petals leading to the wedding dress, a pair of glass slippers, the attendant jewelry and full wedding outfits for Monica and John Fox, 7.
Michael left. He had booked adjacent rooms for other members of Susan's family. The next time Susan saw Michael, her son was escorting her up the aisle. Again Michael dresses as The Prince. When the singer in the choir loft began "Ave Maria," Susan said to Michael, "That sounds like my friend Jeanmarie [Jaycox, of Islip Terrace]." Michael said, "It is." Susan began to weep. A horse-drawn, white Cinderella coach carried them through Main Street, Smithtown, after the ceremony. Later, reception guests found place cards in glass slippers arranged beneath a 7-f--t-tall, Michael Bonavito-made replica of Cinderella's castle. Michael disappeared at 11:30 p.m. and returned at midnight amid a theatrical smoky flourish and an eight-foot clock tower he had built. He had donned a tuxedo and shaved his 7-month-old, princely goatee. Everybody was crying.
The couple honeymooned in Disney World.