‘Breaking Dawn -- Part 1’: A love fest will greet its arrival

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With the premiere of ‘Breaking Dawn -- Part 1’ coming at midnight Thursday, ‘Twilight’ fandom is officially entering its final -- and perhaps its most bizarre -- stages.

To commemorate the series’ penultimate installment, Madame Tussauds in London has invited female ‘Twilight’ fans to come to the wax museum Friday dressed as brides and re-create the wedding of Edward and Bella by ‘marrying’ their statue of Robert Pattinson as vampire Edward Cullen.

PHOTOS: ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1’ premiere in Los Angeles

If the Twi-hard in question is lucky enough to have a real wedding on tap (to a breathing person, waxy or not) they can travel to the site of Edward and Bella’s honeymoon, the Brazilian town of Paraty, which stood in for Brazil’s Isle Esme in the film. There, fans have the option of renting out the location where Edward and Bella finally consummated their on-screen relationship for about $7,000 for a two-night stay. Or they can follow in the footsteps of the real-life couple Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who stayed at the nearby hotel Pousada du Oro during filming. The rates there are a little more reasonable, with a suite going for about $700 per night.

In Flower Mound, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, two Twi-hard moms have laid down their credit cards to rent out an entire auditorium for them and their friends to watch Edward and Bella get married in semi-private. One of the women, Christy Lorbach, told Dallas-Fort Worth station KDAF they did it ‘because it’s our night … once a year, no, once every 18 months. There were 500 some odd days between these two movies. No, that’s our night.’

And back in England, one British fan who spent $6,320 and 46 hours to cover her body in tattoos of Edward, Bella and Jacob managed to take advantage of the next-to-last wave of ‘Twilight’ mania by getting Pattinson to sign her arm at the film’s British premiere.

‘Robert signed my arm and I am going to get my tattooist to trace its outline so I have it on me permanently,’ 50-year-old fan Cathy Ward told the Daily Mail. She’s going to spend another $3,000 to finish the tattoos over her arms and chest. She claims her ‘Twilight’ fandom helped her lose enough weight to go down 14 dress sizes.

With the final film in the series coming next year, it’s still possible for ‘Twilight’ fandom to cure cancer. Or at least generate one last gasp of extravagant spending.

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-- Patrick Kevin Day