The First Lady of the United States has come a long way from being Melania Knauss of Novo Mesto, Slovenia, to becoming a fashion model at 16 years and becoming wife of then businessman, Donald Trump, in 2005.
Melania is presently the third wife of the 45th President of the U.S. She used to be a model until she met then real estate mogul as well as reality television star, Donald Trump.
She was born Melanija Knavs (which was later Germanized to Melania Knauss) on April 26, 1970. She has a younger female sibling and a half-brother on her father's side.
Melania began her modelling career young, at the tender age of 16 years. When she turned 18, an opportunity opened for her at an agency in Milan. She initially studied at University of Ljubljana but later stopped so she could pursue her career as a model more fully.
Working in both Milan and Paris, Melania pursued her early career as a model before finally making her move to the U.S. in 1996, choosing New York as her base. Her career took off as she began to work more and more, being photographed by some of the big names in the industry then, such as, Helmut Newton and Patrick Demarchelier.
She was cover girl for several magazines including Italy's Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated (the swimsuit edition), Bulgaria's Harper's Bazaar, and for her first nude shoot, on GQ (which in later years, would be a thorn on her side).
Melania and Donald met in 1998 at a party for the fashion world's big names in New York. He was with another date, and she refused to give him her number, but later asked for his. She called him up at a later point and began dating. In 2004, the two were engaged, with Donald proposing with a Graff diamond ring which was worth $1.5 million.
Not long after that, in 2005, Melania, then 28 years old, and Donald, 52, had their pricey star-studded Palm Beach, Florida, wedding, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Resort. Their guest list abounded with big names in the fashion, entertainment, and political worlds. The entirety of the wedding celebration was said to have cost $2.5 million, one of the most expensive matrimonies during that time.
Notable ones included the former U.S. President Bill Clinton (four years after his presidency) and his wife, Hillary, who was then a New York Senator considering running for the presidency; other guests were Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Kelly Ripa, Shaquille O'Neal, Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, and Matt Lauer.
Melania's (who is Catholic) and Donald's (Presbyterian) wedding ceremony took place at the Episcopalian Church Bethesda by-the-Sea, a beautiful and historic building with stained glass windows and beautiful works of art. It is said to have been modeled after the Leon Cathedral in Spain.
The bride opted for a family heirloom rosary as her "something old" item and she went down the aisle to Ave Maria sung by a vocalist. But flowers abounded the church and the perfume of roses, gardenias, and orchids filled the place.
Melania's strapless Christian Dior wedding gown, which cost $100,000, sported a 13-foot train and had some 1,500 rhinestones as well as pearls which were hand-stitched on (this was a feat in itself because it is said it took a long time to have it done, 550 hours, it was claimed).
The dress itself was of Duchesse satin, all 300 feet long of the fabric. The veil was 16 feet long. When it was all done, the gown weighed an unbelievable 60 pounds. For jewelry, Melania put on three bracelets and a necklace, all in glittering diamonds.
This custom-made gown landed Melania the front page of Vogue where her becoming First Lady of the United States had not.
Despite costing that much, Melania later took off the gown for the reception and then put on another stunning one, this time a Vera Wang number. It was a Grecian cut, tight, and came with a slit right up to the knee.
The Mar-a-Lago reception was a fancy and extravagant affair. The estate's grand ballroom was said to have been restored just for the occasion, and the groom had paid a handsome price of $35 million so that he and his wife and their guests could dance in it and dine on a five-star menu.
The 350 guests dined on caviar, shrimp salad, and lobster rolls. The main course consisted of beef tenderloin and drank free-flowing Cristal champagne. The Trumps were said to have paid $275 per plate.
The couple had a wedding cake that weighed 200 pounds, all seven tiers of it and 3,000 white sugar roses which had been soaked in buttercream. The Trumps paid $50,000 for it as a showpiece, as none of it was meant for the guests, who were served another cake and given souvenir-size chocolate truffle cakes.
This wedding recently came under some shady accusations which purported that the Trumps' had copied details of Star Jones' 2004 wedding to Al Reynolds.
A year after the wedding, the couple had a son, Barron William Trump, who was Melania's first child and Donald's fifth. That year, 2006, marked the official time Melania was granted citizenship by the U.S.
Ten years into their marriage, Donald announced his bid for the presidency and Melania's GQ cover came back to haunt them. Still, despite this, in November of 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton and became the 45th U.S. President.
Melania became the first foreign-born United States First Lady in almost two hundred years since John Quincy Adams' wife Louisa, who had been born in London, United Kingdom.
