Long Island woman said 'yes' to Spanx founder Sara Blakely's wedding dress

When Claudine Cerasuolo, 54, of Patchogue, married Matt Syrett, also 54 (and of Patchogue), in May at Aloft, a hotel in Delray Beach, Florida, she said “yes” to two dresses. The first was a smooth satin gown with detachable puff sleeves from David’s Bridal that cost under $1,000. She borrowed the second one — a frothy couture number designed by Edgardo Bonilla — from a billionaire.

It's not as if Cerasuolo, (now Syrett) knew the frock’s owner, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, 54, who sold her company in October 2021 to Blackstone for a cool $1.2 billion. And it’s not that Syrett was the first to borrow Blakely’s wedding gown — in fact she was the 10th woman to wear it to her nuptials.

So how did it happen that Syrett ended up with the very wedding gown of the entrepreneur who rocked the world of women’s underpinnings?

According to Syrett, Blakely’s all-call to her 961,000 followers on Instagram caught her eye and interest. It read, “One dress, 9 brides and counting. I’ve loaned out my dress 9 times. First to a stranger, then to my friend and finally to 7 brides during COVID ... What do you think, should we expand the sisterhood this year??”

Syrett, an avid fan and follower immediately “applied” to wear the dress. “It was a month before my wedding, and I already had a dress but was like ‘yes, yes, yes.’ Everybody’s posting sad stories and I’m feeling bad because I don’t want to seem like I’m being greedy, but I respond with a quick little blurb. I told her that I was getting married in Florida and then I get an email asking me for more specific information," Syrett says. "I prefaced my response saying that if someone really needs the dress to give it to them and that I was going to wear my dress for my ceremony, and then change. They wrote back saying, ‘Sara really wants you to have the dress.’”

Syrett explains that she was assured, “that this dress only finds its way to the ones who are truly meant to wear it.” She says, that made “my heart smile.”

A Long Island love story

What particularly appealed to Blakely was that the never-married Syrett had found her special person later in life. “I didn’t get married until I was 37,” Blakely responded to Newsday in an email, “so I know a thing or two about holding out for the one ... and when Claudine commented on my post, I was so inspired by her love story.” Blakely, who founded Spanx in 2000, was a bridesmaid 13 times before marrying her husband, Roslyn-raised entrepreneur Jesse Itzler, in 2008.

Indeed, Syrett’s marriage is the stuff of a Long Island love story. She knew her husband at Patchogue-Medford High School where they were casual acquaintances and after graduating, went their separate ways. Over the years, “We crossed paths and would say, ‘Hey how are you?,’ and went on and lived our lives.” There were the high school reunions, “10, 15, 20, we would check-in.”

In “2009-ish” she saw her husband-to-be, who works as a head custodian at the Bayport-Blue Point School District, at Dublin Deck Tiki Bar and Grill in Patchogue. “We caught up with life and remained friends after seeing each other.” That led to, “Five years ago when we started hanging out. I was looking at him in a different way. Matt’s a DJ (a side gig) and was always personable, funny and outgoing.” The timing, it seems, was perfect. “I don’t think it would’ve worked if we were younger. We’ve gone full circle,” explains Syrett, who is a licensing supervisor for a division of child care services on Long Island.

Three days before her wedding, the fancy dress — with its lace bodice and layered petticoats — arrived. Included in the box, Spanx (of course); a branded sweatsuit; Blakely’s latest invention, Sneex, a luxury hybrid sneaker-stiletto which Syrett dubbed “unbelievably comfortable”; and a handwritten note from Blakely. She wrote of the gown, “It’s filled with a whole lot of love and good energy from ... other amazing women like you.”

Blakely’s team even provided a videographer for the actual event. And though bridal dresses typically require multiple fittings, Syrett made it work. The petite bride is a size 0 while the taller Blakely is “around a size 6,” estimates Syrett. Lucky for her, one of her guests was a former mannequin dresser at Bloomingdale’s. “It was a beautiful tea-length dress with a big bow sash that we tied tightly. We pulled and pinned and grabbed and tucked under the arms,” says Syrett, noting that she didn’t think anyone noticed the makeshift alterations.

1 dress, 10 brides

Beyond the fit, Syrett wondered, “How am I going to explain what I’m wearing to 100 people at my wedding?,” so she placed the printed story headlined, “The sisterhood of the traveling wedding dress,” on each table that included this line: “I feel so honored to wear Sara’s dress for part of my night, and channel the 9 beautiful brides that came before me to carry on this joyful tradition and add to the stories of love to be told through the sharing of this dress.”

Blakely feels the same. In April she told People Magazine, “I love the idea of one dress having different stories to tell of love and shared sisterhood.”

For Syrett the dress just amped up an already wonderful day. “I felt just as good in both dresses. Sara’s was my something old. But even more it was about her generosity and the vibe that came from other people who have worn the dress,” she says. “Everybody made good memories in it. Everybody made their own story in it. It’s really cool that so many people wore it for the happiest day of their lives. And I hope the next person will feel the love I felt when I wore it.”