Brynne Edelsten finds her happily ever after

HER highly publicised first marriage to Geoff Edelsten didn’t last, but the newly engaged reality TV star is hoping her second will give her the fairytale ending she deserves.

Her highly publicised first marriage didn’t last, but Brynne Edelsten is hoping her second (to comedian Brett Hunter) will give her the fairytale ending she deserves. (Pic: David Caird for Stellar)

BRYNNE Edelsten did not know comedian Dave Hughes was at her first wedding until her new fiancé told her recently.

Incredibly, the then 26-year-old was acquainted with just seven people — her husband, then 66-year-old medical entrepreneur Geoffrey Edelsten, and her own family — when the pair tied the knot with an extravagant $3 million reception at Melbourne’s Crown Casino in 2009.

Eight years later, as she nudges in close to Brett Hunter, the Melbourne-based stand-up comic she met last year and will marry after a lightning-quick romance, this one-time bombshell insists this time around it will be different. The rest of Edelsten’s once “bedazzled” life already is.

Home is no longer a palatial penthouse with its own smoke machine, golden walls, and a wardrobe full of plunging $8000 gowns shipped in from Las Vegas.

Now it’s a share house in Melbourne’s middle-ring suburb of Moonee Ponds, where she lives with the owner, Shelby, a bartender she met at her part-time job, two other friends, and her adored Maltese shih tzu cross, Juddy.

When Edelsten got married, she only knew seven people at her wedding — including her husband, Geoff Edelsten. (Pic: Supplied)

Another dramatic difference? This much-gossiped-about 34-year-old says she is finally happy.

“As much as things may have been a lot easier during my marriage, as far as life in general, it was very lonely. I’d rather have to struggle a bit and be happy,” she reveals to Stellar.

“When I met Geoff, I was 25 years old. I was young and just enjoying everything; I still enjoy things, just in a different way now,” says Edelsten, who was born in the small town of Shawnee, Oklahoma in the United States.

“Everything was a lot more convenient, it was a lot easier. I have to work hard to make everything work out for myself now, but, yeah...”

Many of Edelsten’s sentences trail off, especially when it comes to discussing her marriage — and subsequent breakup in 2014 — to the flamboyant former medico.

For the five years they were husband and wife, their life was lavish, but it also appeared empty — at least the parts shown on her reality-TV series Brynne: My Bedazzled Life.

Edelsten says the ability to laugh at herself has also helped her navigate being the butt of jokes and ridicule in recent years, such as when she appeared on Dancing With The Stars. (Pic: Supplied)

Home is no longer a palatial penthouse with its own smoke machine, golden walls, and a wardrobe full of plunging $8000 gowns shipped in from Las Vegas. (Pic: Supplied)

“For the first year I was here, I didn’t have any [friends]. I was so homesick — I wasn’t allowed to work, I wasn’t allowed to go to school, I wasn’t allowed to do a lot of things,” she says.

“Because Geoff was a lot older, it was hard to make friends. My first friends I met about a year later through a friend of Geoff’s, who had a younger wife. I just started building on that.”

In contrast, Edelsten now has 10 girlfriends vying to be bridesmaids at wedding number two.

Her openness is one of the qualities her new fiancé found attractive when the pair met at a charity fundraiser gig he was appearing in.

Although Hunter, 33, who has two children from a previous relationship, admits he also found Edelsten “a bit cute”.

“She’s open to anything... open to meeting my kids, to meeting my friends. You’d find some people wouldn’t be like that — it’d be like, ‘Oh, not tonight, I’ll meet them next time,’ but straight away she’s, ‘OK, let’s do this.’ She’s a person who when she walks in a room, everyone’s drawn to her,” he tells Stellar.

He loves “how funny she is, how witty, how she’s down to earth and how she likes eating Macca’s”.

He recalls the couple being in a McDonald’s restaurant recently and a woman bowling straight up to Edelsten acting like they were old friends who hadn’t caught up in a while: “This girl turns around to her like she had known her for years and goes, ‘Hey, is it you?’”

Hunter likes the anecdote so much he’s now added it to his comedy routine.

Edelsten says she is much smarter than people give her credit for. (Pic: David Caird for Stellar)

Edelsten’s new partner has no qualms about using her in his comedic routine — and she loves it as well. (Pic: David Caird for Stellar)

At the time the two got together, gossip was still swirling around Edelsten’s split with her ex-boyfriend, poet and musician Ian McAllister.

Much to the paparazzi’s delight, she also previously dated bodybuilder Cemre Volkan, aka Big Red Ra, who was charged by police on one occasion for causing a disturbance at Edelsten’s home.

Edelsten describes herself as “a happy person who doesn’t overthink things” and chooses not to dwell on previous life dramas.

“I’ve always thought you take the good with the bad; you know there are things that are bad, but at the same time you take these opportunities. Not everything’s been happy and wonderful, but as long as it’s not actually physically hurting me too much or damaging me in a way that’s just wrong [I can bear it].”

Edelsten says the ability to laugh at herself has also helped her navigate being the butt of jokes and ridicule in recent years.

While she’s navigated vitriol based on her cosmetic surgery, clothing and even weight, her affability has made her well-liked by social reporters who have come to know her.

“I think I have a much better perception of what’s going on than most people realise,” she says.

“I use that to my advantage even when I do interviews; I use it to avoid questions.”

While many have written Edelsten off as a bimbo at some point since she became a public figure almost a decade ago, she is not the caricature some have made her out to be. In fact, she’s often worked hard to keep the less-shiny-happy-bubbly stuff private.

“There were definitely times I fell to pieces, just not in front of people. I’m a happy person, but everyone has their moments of weakness. Everyone has moments where it’s really hard; there were some really dark times, but when things are really difficult for me... I don’t like people seeing that side,” she says.

“I tend to hide away from everything. It’s hard enough to be falling apart, but when everyone knows... at least if they don’t know you’re able to fake it just to get through that day.”

Edelsten struggled to the point of needing psychiatric support and antidepressant treatment for four years before the end of her marriage. She says the medication made her gain a lot of weight, and when she decided to come off it — and lost weight dramatically — she was attacked for it.

“During the time I was married to Geoff, I was on antidepressants, but people around me would say, ‘You don’t talk about that, that’s not what people want to hear.’

“When I decided to stop taking them, I was like, ‘You know what? The reason I’m depressed is that there are things going on in my marriage that are not OK.’ Every time I would talk about this stuff with my psychiatrist, he would up my doses... I said, ‘I have reason to be depressed. It’s not just that I’m sad for no reason. There are things that are not OK being masked by these drugs, and I’m getting off them.’”

Edelsten says she lost 10kg in just one month without altering her exercise and that she’s lost a total of 15 since she stopped her medication.

No matter what her “too skinny” critics claim, Edelsten says she is the same size as when she first came to Australia.

Brynne Edelsten features in Stellar magazine. (Pic: Cameron Grayson for Stellar)

With the financial settlement with her ex-husband still dragging through the courts, a lot remains up in the air for Edelsten. Wedding plans with Hunter are not fixed, and her desired business idea of starting a production company with her eventual payout is on hold.

She is toying with the idea of starting a clothing line for small dogs and says if it goes ahead, there will no half measures.

“I take everything to the extreme, so it’s not going to be just T-shirts, it’s like full-on costumes,” she says.

Even doggie shoes?

“Yes, but my dog doesn’t like shoes; he has shoes, he has runners. It’s so funny when you put them on; he like moonwalks in them to get them off.”

She clearly enjoys the ridiculous sight of her beloved pet chafing against unfamiliar footwear. The fact she is not ashamed to admit she still puts costume shoes on a dog is part of the live-for-now charm of Brynne Edelsten.

“I laugh at myself,” she confesses.

“I mean, that’s what you have to do. You can’t take anything too seriously.”