Dominique Moceanu’s marriage to Dr. Michael Canales was a match made in Cleveland. The Olympic champion gymnast took a job at Gymnastics World in Broadview Heights so she could continue seeing Mike, a former gymnast, while he was attending the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine. And on July 2, 2005, Mike, now a foot-and-ankle surgeon with the Spine and Orthopedic Institute at St. Vincent Charity Hospital, proposed to Dominique at Marbella Restaurant in Pepper Pike.
But when it came to saying “I do,” Dominique insisted on going home to Houston. She explains that her parents donated money for the bricks-and-mortar foundation of St. Mary Magdalene Romanian Orthodox Church.
“It was my mother’s dream that I get married in the church, and I helped make her dream come true,” says Dominique, now 26 and expecting the couple’s first child.
Dominique chose an Oleg Cassini dress, a strapless white-satin ball gown overlaid with tulle and embellished with a concentration of Alencon lace, pearls and crystals on the bodice. She and sister/maid of honor Christina found the dresses for the five bridesmaids, a strapless plum-satin ball gown with a beaded bodice and side ruching.
One thing the bride didn’t have to look for was a videographer. She immediately hired FlipBox Productions, a Monroe, Ohio-based company that was involved in the making of her 2005 DVD, “Dominique Moceanu: Golden Moments.” The twin sisters who run the company also judge and coach gymnastics. Among the most famous athletes in attendance were husband-and-wife Olympic champions Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci, who served as the couple’s honorary godparents during the traditional Romanian ceremony; bridesmaid Kerri Strug, who was on the 1996 gold-medal Olympic team with Dominique and Olympic champion Svetlana Boguinskaia of Belarus; and 2004 Olympic gold and silver medalists Paul and Morgan Hamm who were groomsmen.
After the 4 p.m. ceremony, 175 guests made the 25-minute trip from the church to the Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel & Convention Center in The Woodlands, Texas, where they sat down to a New York strip steak dinner and watched the bride and groom do a first dance to “Unchained Melody” that they choreographed themselves. “We bought a DVD to learn some dance steps, then took it from there,” Dominique says. The couple had another surprise for their guests at the end of the night: a performance by a pair of belly dancers
