Life Mates

A $100,000 wedding budget just doesn’t go as far as it used to. Corey Feldman and Susie Sprague found out the hard way, when The WB offered to pay for their nuptials if they would marry on The Surreal Life, Feldman’s Real World-like reality series. “I wish we could have invited more people, but the show said 75 was it,” says Sprague. “Our cake was kind of boring. I had to give my beautiful wedding dress back because it cost like $10,000.” Adds Feldman: “The best part was our honeymoon in Bora Bora, but I paid for that myself.”

Even with budget snafus, the Oct. 30 wedding of Feldman, 31, and homemaker Sprague, 20 (airing Feb. 20), provided a dramatic finale to The Surreal Life’s run. The backyard ceremony, which featured Life housemate MC Hammer sharing officiating duties with a rabbi, “was perfect, as surreal and bizarre as our whole week had been,” says Life costar (and former Survivor bad girl) Jerri Manthey.

Early in production Surreal Life producers pitched the TV-wedding idea to Feldman, who met his bride at a nightclub in 2000 and proposed in 2001. Sprague says that while the result (which included period garb because the couple’s nuptial plans had involved a Victorian murder-mystery theme) was “better than I had dreamed,” not having her wedding dress as a keepsake has soured her on Surreal weddings. “If I ever get married again,” she says, “I’m not going to do it on TV.”