I’M A REAL-LIFE BARBIE DOLL!
When Rita finally got the wedding of her dreams, it was lavish enough to make the world’s most glam doll green with envy
When she married her very own Prince Charming 31 years ago, Rita Barbagallo just had surgery for endometriosis. She was so ill, she wasn’t thinking about the gown, the flowers or the bridesmaids’ dresses – just Salvatore, who was waiting for her at the end of the aisle.
“I just focused on the fact
I was marrying someone who wanted to marry me as sick as I was,” she recalls, explaining that she was too unwell to help organise the wedding, which became a labour of love for her family.
“But I promised Salvatore that one day we will get married again, and I told him I’m going to look like a wedding cake topper. It’s going to be over the top. Princess Diana’s dress had a 7.9-metre bridal train, I wanted 8.2 metres... I felt like a princess
when I put the dress on for the first time. It was just magical!”
Rita, 52, got her fairytale ending when she and Salvatore renewed their vows for their 25th wedding anniversary in a beautiful ceremony in
Phuket, Thailand. And she would’ve made Barbie proud in her $35,000 pink and cream gown, which took almost a year to make and included thousands of flowers and layers of tulle.
“I’m always flattered when people compare me to Barbie – she’s a perfect doll, so I take it as a compliment,” she says.
BRINGING JOY
With long blonde hair and a love of fashion, Rita has been drawing comparisons to Barbie for decades. Instead of taking offence, she decided to embrace it and even performs as “Barbee Barb” at kids’ parties and for sick children in hospital.
“For some of these sick kids, I’m the happiest thing they see that week so I make sure to brighten up their day with colour,” she says. “Seeing the kids’ faces light up as they laugh and giggle is amazing.”
Even at her second wedding, Rita wanted to brighten up the lives of others, so she and Salvatore, 62, donated all of the beautiful flowers from their ceremony – there were 100,000! – to a nursing home and an autistic school.
Rita was inspired to devote her life to helping others after she almost died on the operating table when she went to Belgium for experimental surgery. Doctors had told her she had just eight months to live following a diagnosis of endometrial cancer.
“I ended up dying on the operating table for eight minutes, but in the end I pulled through,” she says, adding that the following year she was robbed of the chance of becoming a mum when she had to have a full hysterectomy.
“Lying in the hospital bed, I knew it was my purpose to survive so that I could go and help others.”
Rita, who wrote a book about her incredible life called Be A Peacock In A World Full Of Ducks, also launched a company called The Red Peacock last year to coach and motivate audiences to reach new levels of success, and is in talks to have her life celebrated in a Hollywood movie.
“I got my wish of a big wedding, and I was able to make others happy, too,” she says.
“When you face death in the eyes, you have a fight and a fire in your belly to be successful and it’s the reason I’ve been so successful today.
“You’ve only got one shot at life.”
‘I felt like a princess when I put the dress on’