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American Morning

Wedding Couple Discusses Upcoming Titanic Nuptials

Aired July 17, 2001 - 10:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: A New York couple is creating their own Titanic love story. David Leibowitz and Kimberly Miller plan to get married 2.5 miles under the surface of the Atlantic Ocean near the wreckage of the Titanic. The couple plans to travel by submarine to the wreck later on this month as part of an exhibition organized by SubSea Explorer.

Joining us now to talk more about the wedding plans is the couple, David Leibowitz and Kimberly Miller. Also joining us is Gary Allsopp. He is CEO of SubSea Explorer. He's on the phone with us this morning.

Welcome to all of you.

DAVID LEIBOWITZ, TITANIC GROOM: Good morning.

GARY ALLSOPP, EXPLORER: Good morning.

KIMBERLY MILLER, TITANIC BRIDE: Thank you. Good morning.

HARRIS: Ladies first.

Kimberly, listen, if my wife had ever suggested that she would get married that far away from the family and not be able to invite mom and dad to the wedding, she'd have been -- well, we'd have been both killed.

How is it that this idea occurred to you?

MILLER: Well, it actually came about when David won the Titanic exploration opportunity given by SubSea Explorer, and it's pretty amazing. I mean, David can tell you the entire story from the beginning, but I am so thrilled to be going down and doing this. My parents are 100 percent supportive, and we're just excited.

HARRIS: All right, David, tell us this story.

LEIBOWITZ: Sure. Well, we're avid scuba drivers, and I'd learned of a scuba diving portal on the Internet several months ago, and they were running a promotion to send 16 individuals around the world to see the Titanic, and I was notified on June 23 that I was one of the lucky winners to go solo in the sub. And in speaking with the operators over at SubSea, you know, I love the woman sitting next to me, and I really wanted her to join me on this expedition. And they'd asked some personal questions, how long we had been together. I explained about four years now. Three years we've been living together, and we'd really hoped to get married early next year. And they offered us the opportunity to get married down in the submarine. We'd be the first couple married on the bough of the Titanic.

HARRIS: Now, listen, Kimberly, once again, how romantic is that to have a guy propose to you by saying, "Let's go down by this underwater wreck, this underwater graveyard, in fact, and let's just get married down there." And that just tickled your toes?

MILLER: Well, I think, you know, it's a little bit different than an underwater graveyard. If you think about it, romanticism can be so much more than just the butterflies, the feeling of love. If you think about those sailors and the heroism that surrounds the Titanic story, that is romanticism, too.

It's a different angle but it is romantic. It's beautiful. And being that we love the sea, we love to scuba dive -- you know, there's a saying that scuba divers have, when they go to wreck, that you take only memories and leave only bubbles, and we definitely anticipate doing just the same here.

We're going down with the utmost reverence, and we are going to take a world full of memories and leave only our bubbles from the sub.

HARRIS: All right. I'm not even a tender guy, but you sold me. That's the best speech I've heard yet.

Let's talk to Gary Allsopp on the phone about this. Gary, this can't be a cheap proposition. How much is your company going to spend on this?

ALLSOPP: Yes, absolutely not. First of all, I'd like to congratulate David and Kimberly on their forthcoming wedding. I think lovely words from you, Kimberly. Well done.

It costs $35,000 per person, per dive. And how it came about is we had a marketing budget of $700,000 basically to spend to launch our Internet portal. And everyone else has done the billboards and they've done the taxis and the radio adverts, etcetera.

And we went outside the loop. We wanted to do something totally different. And we found you can actually go and buy a tourist guide. There's over 84 dives that have taken place to have a look, not touch, just take a look at the Titanic, go 2.5 miles down, have a two-hour tour around, and back up again. And we decided to give 16 prizes out on our web site. And you know, David was one of the winners.

And how it came about, next year we were actually going to go do a Rose and Jack theme from the Titanic. And we heard David and Kimberly were going to get married. And we offered them a chance, and its been unbelievable. We've had press from all over the world. Only this morning, we had Brazil, Portugal, Vietnam, Guatemala, Australia, Spain, we've had everybody. The story has just been incredible. We've had a lot of support for it, and obviously we've had -- it's a little bit knockers as well.

HARRIS: I'll bet. That's putting it mildly. Well, let me ask you something real quick about that. As I understand it, you still can't pin down exactly the date of the wedding, right because you've got so many logistics to have to go through to get to the site, right?

ALLSOPP: It's pending on weather conditions as well. I mean, there are two Mir submarines. There are only five submarines in the world that can dive this. And we're two of the Russian submarines that are valued at $70 million each.

So -- and they were actually used in the film, the "Titanic," these two Mir subs and the Akademik Keldysh, which is the biggest research vessel in the world. So depending on the weather really, you know, we're not going to put David and Kimberly in any way shape or form having a rough old ride down there. So we're hoping to be shooting for next Saturday, a week on Saturday.

HARRIS: OK, well we sure want to find out how that turns out.

Kimberly, one final, I've got to ask you this one, because Daryn has been hitting me under the desk on this one. Every girl wants to know what are you going to wear? Are you going to wear a white diving suit with a veil or what are you going to wear on this one?

MILLER: Well, that's an appropriate question and one that I don't quite have an answer for yet. They typically wear jumpsuits of anti-flammable material. I'm not sure if I will have to do the same and save the wedding garb for our ascent, or if they'll give me a white jumpsuit. Maybe Gary has more details on that, I don't know. I think we'll know soon.

HARRIS: Do you throw a bouquet or a seaweed in this one?

(LAUGHTER)

Listen, David and Kimberly, good luck to both of you. We're going to follow this story, we want to see how things turn out for you. Enjoy the little three-hour honeymoon you're going to have afterwards because you'll get a chance to get out and actually tour around that wreckage site, correct?

MILLER: Absolutely.

HARRIS: Good deal. We want to talk to you as soon as we can after all of that, all right?

MILLER: Terrific.

HARRIS: Good deal, it's a date, good luck to both of you, as well as you, Gary Allsopp. A way to go, this was a heck of a promotion, and it's definitely got everything moving in the right direction for you. So we'll keep an eye on this story.

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