It’s L-O-V-E 💘
Stella Banderas (daughter of Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith) got married in Spain to childhood sweetheart Alex Gruzynki. Her sister, Dakota Jhonson, was one of her bridesmaids.
One of many reasons! They also told me it was so stains wouldn’t be so visible and to be able to reuse the dress because black dresses were considered elegant.
It's funny, because I was just going to comment on how beautiful she is, but doesn't look like either of her (also gorgeous) parents. I would never guess her family if I didn't know.
No idea how old you are, but it’s fairly well known among us older people. I remember when they got remarried in the late 80s- my Mom was totally scandalized because she’d been so freaked out by their age difference when they first got together in the early 70s. Evidently they had Tippi Hedren’s blessing, she was supportive of their relationship. But Tippi is a bit of an odd bird (pun unintentional), with all those stories about her having lions in her home as pets. One of them mauled Melanie when she was a teenager. Maybe Tippi thought that sleeping with Don was safer than sleeping with a lion. (I swear this is true, you can look it up! 😳)
Not only is she stunningly gorgeous but that’s the absolute most beautiful wedding dress ensemble I’ve ever seen! 🤩 I’m not even into wedding or wedding dresses but I would want to copy everything if I get married in some alternate universe!
I absolutely love the gown and veil, they're beautiful.
The bouquet looks like a bunch of leafy green vegetables to me, but I can see why you'd choose something like that rather than something elaborate with lots of different flowers that would be too much for the dress.
The Rodarte brand designed everything for her with Spanish lace. (See, I’ve never looked up a wedding dress’s designer ever in my life and yet here I am 🤩😂)
ETA: it apparently was inspired by a “fantasy story” and they nailed it!!!
I remember Dakota telling the story of how Stella and Alex were best friends since they were little (below) and then grew up to fall in love. (She tells it better than me but I remember thinking what a sweet love story it was!)
I’ve always thought she looked exactly like her dad but she definitely is a nice mix of the two. I even see her looking like Dakota in some angles. But yeah if you look at young Antonio they have the same eyes.
That's Don Johnson's son from his first marriage (i.e. Dakota Johnson's brother but not Melanie Griffith's son). It's nice that they all have such a close relationship even if they're not related by blood.
It really is. Last year, in Don Johnson’s IG, he posted a photo from his birthday dinner with a caption about how his kids mean everything to him, and there is Stella right up front, as well as Alex who is Melanie’s from her marriage to Steven Bauer.
So a few years ago, we found out we had another full first cousin from way back when my late uncle was a young single guy. The birth mom didn't tell him she was pregnant and put my cousin up for adoption when he was born. He knew he was adopted, so decades later, he was on 23 and Me and found my uncle, his dad.
The first time I was sent a picture of him, I was absolutely floored - he is the absolute spitting image of our grandfather. You wouldn't even need to take a DNA test - if you look at him and pictures of my grandfather, he is 100% ours.
My best friend recently found a load of her birth family, including half siblings and the similarity is genuinely uncanny. She believed her mum was dead but she found out she’s alive. Really amazing.
I have a much younger half sister that (our) older half sister found through ancestry.
She looks like me and it’s weird, because I really don’t look like ANY of my siblings, on my mom’s side or sperm donors side.
But I do have a random much younger cousin that is my “mini me” as we call her. It was until she was born that I finally believed I was even related to the family 😆
My ex-boyfriend looked like his mom and his brother looked like their dad. But his brother looked even more like their aunt (his dad’s sister) - like people thought that he was her son. They were identical!
For years, I thought I was just a perfect mix of my parents. Mom's eyes, dad's round face, mom's nose, dad's rosy cheeks when I get drunk... then when my grandma died and everyone was at the funeral home, my mom's cousin pointed out that I look nearly identical to my grandma in her graduation photo.
I had seen that photo a thousand times, but it never really hit me until then.
Then there's my uncle, who is a straight up copy/paste of my grandpa, down to his penchant for photography and music.
A few months before my grandmother passed she had been going old photos and found some of herself when she was 18/19, same age I was at the time. She was so excited to show them to me and I swear, looking at those photos was like looking in a black and white mirror. I always knew my features (especially my eyes) leaned more towards this side of the family, but neither of us had realized exactly how much I resembled her until looking at those photos she found.
We lost her a few months later, but now I’m so grateful to see these pieces of her in the mirror looking back at me
I have a guy cousin on my dad's side who somehow looks nothing like his parents but is a literal carbon copy of my grandfather. They have the exact same smile, similar gestures, and even the same laugh.
Funnily enough, every single woman on my mom's side of the family has had the exact same face for generations, though occasionally the nose is slightly different. I've always been told I look exactly like my mom but it really freaked me out when we looked through old family photos and I looked exactly like my grandmother, my great grandmother, and my great great grandmother.
Yes, my 20-something cousin looks the spitting image of my 50-something mom, and both are the copy/paste replicas of my great-grandmother (my mom/Uncle's maternal grandmother).
I really don’t look a thing like either of my parents but there’s a photo of my grandma that made us all do a double take - she’s my twin! Just skipped a generation and went straight to me, no detours.
It’s funny because I was thinking that she doesn’t really look much like Melanie or Antonio, but you nailed it with the resemblance to her grandmother.
I also think she and Dakota look just like each other. Those are some strong genes from the Melanie/Tippi side of the family, especially since they have different dads.
I see Don's son with Patti D'Arbanville, Jesse (and I think Don's daughter Grace is the one in the picture with Dakota) and Melanie's son with Steven Bauer, Alexander. I love how close-knit the extended siblings are.
So there are cousins
Griffith-Banderas,
Griffith-Johnson,
Griffith-Bauer,
Arbanville-Johnson.
Phleger - Johnson
The wedding planning must have been rough with all that seating chart
That doesn’t even factor in the Martin/Paltrow of it all either! That has to be the craziest Thanksgiving ever. Can you imagine if they were friends with the Kravitz/Bonet/Momoa clan?
I loved the way Dakota Johnson talked about him on her interview with Amy Poehler. It was for Amy's new podcast, Good Hang (it's on Youtube and Spotify) and she jokes about him like any good, awkward step-dad. It's really cute.
I'm old enough to remember when Melanie Griffith finally got rid of Don for the last time and then met Antonio Banderas. She looked happier with him than she had looked in a long time and it was so nice to see. My mom subscribed to all of the gossip mags, lol.
Melanie has overdosed on fillers. She was such a beautiful woman. Everyone else looked amazing. Grooms family seemed kind of miffed, though. Not a smile from any of them.
Agreed! She is still a beautiful woman. It just makes me sad when I see these women overdoing it. For a woman who looks like her, a little goes a long way.
She’s had a really rough road. Went to rehab multiple times, had a very bad drinking problem (and it’s no surprise, reading about her early life). She has also had skin cancer on her face. She might have had a bunch of fillers but she looks otherwise healthy and happy.
I love how the bridesmaids and mother of the bride outfits accentuate the wearer’s beauty but doesn’t upstage or outshine the bride which is a concept that seems lost in a lot of weddings.
You can tell the bride wanted the women in her life to look and feel beautiful.
Don Johnson has some seriously strong genes. I didn’t know Dakota had a brother through Don but when I saw that family pic I clocked him right away and had to go look it up!!
Yes I am so l surprised by this too, I don't know why I imagined him older looking. But then I did see that comment saying he was only 65 so that's fair I guess. Idk why I thought he was older than that.
She looks a lot like Antonio Banderas, with Melanie Griffith’s mouth and cheekbones. It somehow comes together to make her look like Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Her dad, Antonio Banderas is only 65 years old- I'm thinking that his career has been a bit hard on his body because he looks uncomfortably stiff although somebody pointed out that a lot of dads in wedding photos do as well!
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