A Las Vegas art student and "Twilight" fan is set to make her dreams -- and artistic visions -- come true by marrying Robert Pattinson.
Well, sort of.
Lauren Adkins, a 24-year-old master's student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), will marry a life-size cardboard cut-out of Pattinson as Edward Cullen, the heartthrob of the "Twilight" series, as part of her thesis project, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
"Edward Cullen is really tied to the idea of Vegas for me," Adkins told the Review-Journal. "The fantasy behind it can never be achieved. It's the ultimate facade." The Adkins-Cullen wedding is set for Jan. 26, 2013. She has selected a dress and cake, and has starting planning other elements of the reception.
To help make it all happen, Adkins set up a campaign on Indiegogo called "Love is Overtaking Me" to collect money for her wedding to cardboard Cullen. She explains why people should donate:
This work focuses on the female escapist fantasy in its most popular forms-- primarily finding "true love"-- and the extent to which it seeps into our real lives. I've looked at this fantasy primarily through a pop cultural lens; that is I've used film & television's representations of the love story and female characters in general in an attempt to understand my own expectations of love. Because of personal attachment to and experience with this fantasy or quest, which took a particularly strong hold of me when I discovered the intensely popular Twilight Saga, my thesis is going to touch on romantic expectation primarily through the main love interest, Edward Cullen.
The campaign has since closed. She raised $1,235.
"The wedding is a performance art piece that is part of my thesis exhibition," Adkins told MSN Movies, revealing that she purchased the cardboard Cullen at a record shop in 2010.
"It's a beautiful, escapist fantasy, and I'm living it," Cullen's bride-to-be told the U.K.'s Metro. "I've also got the invitations sorted, and even have a beach honeymoon planned for me and my vampire hubby. I'm going through all the steps a normal bride does. It's absolutely real."
"A few of my ex-boyfriends found out and they're surprised I'm taking things this far, but they've always known I'm a massive romantic," she told Metro.
But Adkins is not some obsessive "Twilight" fan. In fact, she is using the wedding as a way to challenge that mentality. In a culture where female fandom gets dismissed. "This is a really smart, fascinating project," Lynn Comella, a women's studies professor at UNLV who is on Adkins' thesis committee, told the Review-Journal. "We live in a culture where female fandom in particular gets dismissed," she said, contrasting "Twilight" fans to NASCAR fans. "If they ignore the fact that it's an art project, then you're just another crazy fan and there's already a narrative for that."