Best Fêtes

NOVEMBER 12-17 * PERTH, AUSTRALIA

Extravagant nuptials of New York doctor Armand Leone Jr. and Susanne Bond, daughter of America's Cup winners Alan and Eileen Bond. Rolled out: A gold-monogrammed red carpet from the entrance to the portable toilets. To Di for: Bruce Oldfield's white silk-taffeta wedding dress encrusted with pearls, gold, crystal beads, and a heart with an A (for Armand). Susanne's pooch, "54," sported a collar of white roses. His V hers: New York Yacht Club skipper John Kolius, Premier Brian Burke, the Jock Vincents, Dallas Dempster, Sir James Hardy, and the brothers Leone. Mother of the bride: "It's heaven. I wish I could do it every week."

NOVEMBER 22-27 * SAN FRANCISCO-HONOLULU-MIDWAYWAKE-GUAM-MANILA

Pan Am's fiftieth-anniversary re-enactment of its first China Clipper flight. Highfliers: Marylou and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, four Lindbergh grandsons, and Pan Am's C. Edward Acker. Highlight: James Michener's spontaneous duet with Imelda Marcos of "You Are My Sunshine" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me."

DECEMBER 3 * RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

West Wingding at the Museum of Fine Arts, celebrating the donations of Sidney and Frances Lewis and Paul and Bunny Mellon. Fixin's: A tower of seven hundred peach Sonia roses accented the Verona-marble hall and the fossilized-shellstone pillars. Southern charm: Trustee Charles L. Reed Jr. gushed, "This is the biggest thing to hit Richmond since the Civil War, and we won this one!" Belle star: Andy Warhol spritzed the air with "Beautiful' to the delight of Evelyn and Leonard Lauder. Beau jest: Tom Wolfe wore black. Dixie cupbearers: Michael Graves, Julian Schnabel, Richard Estes, George Segal, Philip Pearlstein, Arnold Glimcher, and Leo Castelli. Damn Yankees: Glorious Food and Peter Duchin catered and capered for the Confederates.

DECEMBER 4 * REGIME'S, PARK AVENUE

The Jewel of the Nile premiere for Red Cross homeless funds. Chairman Diandra (Mrs. Michael) Douglas wins best-guests award for attracting: the shah's sis Princess Pahlavi, Christopher Reeve, Lew Rudin, Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon (upset that seven-year-old Cameron Douglas was already in bed), Anthony Quinn, Kathleen Turner, Marvin Hamlisch, and the Ron "Revlon" Perelmans. Derring-do: The Flying Karamazov Brothers' juggling pins whizzed around Michael Douglas's head. Happy ending: The raffle's first-prize trip to Morocco went to Regine's associate Sherwood Weiser (who had bought one hundred tickets).

DECEMBER 7 * PALLADIUM

Hugo Jeressati and Giovanni Agnelli's powwow for Arki Busson (twenty-two, sometime beau of Catherine Oxenberg) and Anthony Delon (twenty-one, son of Alain)—the latter a no-show due to an audition in Rome. Guests: Spyros Niarchos, Nabila Khashoggi, Cornelia Guest, Cecelia Peck, Jenny Lumet, and Richard Gere, humoring Mama Raquel's request to co-star Tahnee Welch in his next flick. Hunk eat junk: Popcorn, ice cream, pushcart hot dogs, David's cookies, and chili served up by dishy go-go dancers.

DECEMBER 11 * THE EAST SIDE

Mark Goodson's dinner for Walter "Old Ironpants" Cronkite. Onscreen: Thirty years of Cronkite-mania. Voyeurs: 60 Minute men Mike Wallace and Morley Safer, Pat Kennedy Lawford, Helen Gurley and David Brown, Jill Krementz and Kurt Vonnegut, and party-makers Norm 'n' Norris. Color: Salmon mousse through brownies. Black and white: Gerald Schoenfeld insisted his invitation read "Black tie," and was a walking etiquette error in a tux. And that's the way it was.

DECEMBER 12 * THE WEST SIDE

Gala reopening of the Lincoln Center Theater. Backdrop: Nineteenthcentury set designs from the Joffrey Ballet's Cakewalk. Scene-stealers: Raul Julia and Lindsay Crouse hammed up the death scene from Othello as sword fighters dueled with frying pans. David Mamet and W. H. Macy read minds, and elephant Anna May lumbered around with her leopardskin-loinclothed trainer. Dramatis personae: Hal Prince, Jason Robards, Prince and Princess Michael of Greece, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Blanchette Rockefeller, and four hundred others dined onstage, prompting director Gregory Mosher to quip, "It works as a dinner theater."

DECEMBER 13 ★ CHICAGO

Bonnie Swearingen's annual Boys and Girls Club benefit. Hostess hilarity: Bonnie took the blame for a brown-suited Bill Kurtis (CBS news anchor) in a tux-filled Hilton—'He could've come in his Jockey shorts"—then read a telegram from Nixon, and staged a silent auction featuring a face-lift. Guests: Mayor Harold Washington and Jet-setter John Johnson.

DECEMBER 18 * THE WALDORF-ASTORIA

Lebanese hostess Alia El-Solh's dinner for the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Jaime de Pinies, and wife Kika. Theme: Lebanon Lives. Tables designated Beirut, Tripoli, Baalbek, and Tyre had centerpieces of Lebanese tourist brochures. Visitors: U.N. ambassadors from Portugal, Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, and Iraq; U.N. Secretary-General Pdrez de Cuellar; Kenny Jay Lane, Marian Javits, Mercedes Kellogg, and Alice Mason in a Galanos Christmas special. Divertissement: As guests gobbled roast mutton Mont Liban, a belly dancer gyrated with a candelabrum on her head.

Angela Janklow