On Sept. 19, Thomas Eric Dolby and Spencer Enright Alcorn pulled up to the dock in a Grand Craft wood speedboat along the west shore of Lake Tahoe in California to the mounting splendor of Handel’s “Zadok the Priest,” which also served as the coronation anthem for King George II in 1727.
Over the top? That was the point. “It was certainly a grand entrance,” said Dolby, as musicians played alongside a recording. “Sometimes the best things can be dramatic and comedic.”
The setting of Dolby and Alcorn’s wedding was the site of the Dolby family vacation home since 1979. And like the family itself — Tom’s father, Ray Dolby, who died in 2013, invented the Dolby sound system, which brought immersive sound to music recordings in the 1960s and movies in the 1970s — the Lake Tahoe property is no stranger to the silver screen: It was the setting of “A Place in the Sun,” the 1951 romantic tragedy, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, and “Last Weekend,” co-directed and written by Dolby in 2014.
When Alcorn came across Dolby on Hinge just before Christmas 2021, he recalled thinking, “What a handsome man holding up a little dog.” Dolby was holding his dog, Harry the Yorkie.
Dolby, 51, who was born in London and raised in San Francisco, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history of art from Yale. He is a novelist, director, stand-up comedian, film producer and principal in Water’s End Productions, a film development and production company. He also directed and co-wrote the 2020 film “The Artist’s Wife,” starring Bruce Dern and Lena Olin, and has penned four novels.
Dolby also got a kick out of Alcorn’s Hinge photo — a giant Diptyque “figuier,” or fig tree scented candle, the size of Alcorn’s head, atop his shoulder, and let him know it.
“Tom’s opening salvo,” Alcorn said, was “‘I didn’t know they made Diptyque candles that big.’”
Alcorn, 41, was born in Berkeley, Calif., and raised in North San Diego County by Suzan and Michael Alcorn. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and is a seventh-generation Californian on his mother’s side. He now works as the communications strategist at Straight Arrow, a media company in Los Angeles, but at the time of the couple’s meeting, he was the director of communications at Sundance Institute, which produces the Sundance Film Festival.
When Alcorn mentioned that his boxer-husky-pit bull mix was named Dagmar, Dolby thought it was “hilarious.” The name Dagmar, inspired by a Swiss radio journalist on a Sundance press list, is also Dolby’s mother’s name. She is a philanthropist.
Dolby, whose previous marriage ended in divorce, had planned to spend Christmas at Lake Tahoe with his twin daughters — Violet and Julia, now 15. Instead, they were stuck in Los Angeles waiting out a blizzard in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but finally got a flight by New Year’s Eve.
A few dozen “voluble and voluminous” texts a day, said Alcorn, flew between them leading up to their first date on Jan. 6, 2022, when a maitre d’ showed him to Dolby’s table at JG’s rooftop at the Waldorf of Beverly Hills.
“His persona over text was similar to his personality,” Dolby said. “Interesting, engaging and entertaining.”
No topic was off the table as both kept up with “topic swaps and gear changes,” Alcorn said. The evening ended with a kiss at valet parking, “a typical Angeleno dating experience.”
“I thought he was very handsome,” said Dolby, and wrote about his “striking impression of the evening and sparkling conversation” in his morning journal pages.
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A week later, their second date at San Vicente Bungalows, a private club in West Hollywood where Dolby is a member, also ended with a parting kiss at valet parking.
“I think it’s one thing to have a famous last name, but who are you?” Alcorn recalled thinking. “I got to know Tom in all of his accomplishments and complexities.”
The following weekend, Alcorn brought his dog, Dagmar, over to Dolby’s place, a Tudor revival house in Bel Air, which had been home to Betty Grable and her husband, the bandleader Harry James, who often rehearsed in the garage in the 1940s. It was later home to Jaclyn Smith of the TV show “Charlie’s Angels” and Stephen Stills of the band Crosby, Stills & Nash.
“I felt I had already known him a long time,” said Dolby, as they spoke for “hours and hours,” over takeout, and Dagmar got along beautifully with Harry, the Yorkie, and Skippy, once his father’s Labradoodle.
In January, Dolby invited him to his birthday gathering featuring sushi in the garden with a dozen guests, including Dolby’s twins. Alcorn loved how he fretted over not having enough chopsticks to go around, and having to rely on forks.
“He cared about doing things the correct way,” said Alcorn, whose late father’s highest praise was to say “something is correct.” (Michael Alcorn died in 2018.)
Alcorn then got swept up in the Sundance Festival as 10 days of remote events rolled out at the end of January. Once things settled down, they began seeing each other regularly, and were outwardly cynical about Valentine’s Day.
“We’re both closet romantics,” said Dolby, and were secretly happy to spend that evening together at San Vicente Bungalows, and exchanged “I love you’s.”
Also, in February, Alcorn enjoyed seeing another side of Dolby — doing stand-up at Flappers Comedy Club and Restaurant in Burbank, and chuckled over the surprise bit about their relationship.
“I’m in a strange relationship, and he has this thing called boundaries,” Dolby said. “So I’m going to set a boundary of my own. I’m going to make him move in with me.” (Alcorn happily did a little over a year later, in June 2023).
“We were both very confident about the relationship,” Alcorn said.
Over the following months, “we watched classics, screwball comedies and Woody Allen movies,” Alcorn said. “I watched Tom’s movies with him, including ‘The Artist’s Wife,’ a high-stakes situation, but it worked out.”
They shared a passion for shopping at flea markets and antique malls for vintage décor and antiques. Their collections now include pagodas, midcentury abstract paintings and old Hollywood objects, especially pieces from the Tony Duquette era. Alcorn has also become the chief archivist of their extensive Betty Grable collection in their library. “He will often find obscure press clippings or black and white photos on eBay,” Dolby said.
They also have a soft spot for old Hollywood restaurants like the Polo Lounge, Musso & Frank Grill and Smoke House across from the Warner Bros. lot.
In 2022, they began hosting Peacocks and Pagodas, a nontraditional holiday open house in early December, with decorations including pagodas and vibrant and rich peacock feathers. “I love Christmas and love decorating,” said Dolby, “and it doesn’t just have to be red and green.”
They also inspire each other’s writing. “I want him to be my first and best reader, and he shows me his first drafts,” said Alcorn, who is now working on his first novel with a big wedding scene, while Dolby’s latest is about a divorced comedian.
In December 2024, they picked out faceted gold bands at Tiffany’s, and two months later, Dolby proposed at his 50th birthday black tie dinner at the very Hollywood Tony Duquette Dawnridge estate in Beverly Hills.
Sitar players performed during cocktails and two opera singers sang works by Puccini and Verdi after dinner, along with cheeky and serious Broadway tunes. Dolby took his cue after they sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from “Carousel.”
“Sometimes you know when someone is your person,” said Dolby, who got down on one knee, followed by “a collective gasp in the room.”
Jennifer Tilly, the actress, Dolby recalled, took pictures with her phone and Molly Shannon, the comedian and actress, waved her arms in the air in celebration. “Something’s Coming” from “West Side Story,” the song Alcorn played on Spotify driving to their first date, followed.
On Sept. 19, Ali Goldstein, a close friend of the couple, and a Universal Life Church minister, officiated before 80 guests, including the couple’s mothers, on the lawn looking out on Lake Tahoe.
The grooms wore navy suits — Dolby’s by John Varvatos and Alcorn’s by Todd Snyder— Liberty of London ties and pocket squares and sneakers — Dolby’s were Gucci’s Tennis 1977 Black Ivory and Alcorn’s were Wales Bonner x Adidas special edition. They also wore watches once belonging to their fathers.
The reception was held inside a Raj Tent with navy and gold and cream-colored valences and a castellated pattern was inspired by Tony Duquette’s “Camelot” aesthetic. Duquette had designed costumes for the 1960s original Broadway show.
“It was magical and special,” said Dolby of the wedding, adding that it felt like the perfect place to tell the next chapter of our own story. “This is a Hollywood ending for me. Or, maybe it’s a Hollywood beginning.”
On This Day
When Sept. 19, 2026
Where Dolby family home, Lake Tahoe in California
A 1940s Supper Club Interior, and Then Some Evoked by red velvet banquettes, a pair of art deco bronze statues of two goddesses and two pairs of Roman-style bronze garden urns with horned satyr masks at the entrance. Flower arrangements in shades of oranges, deep burgundy and dark pinks were accented with gold deer antlers. “I believe flowers should be like fireworks,” Dolby said.
The Menu Guests ate barbecued oysters on the grill, and watermelon with feta and lime during cocktail hour, and for dinner — ginger dumplings in dashi broth and black cod with mushrooms over haiga rice by Paula LeDuc Fine Catering & Events. A three-tier wedding cake covered in an iridescent foil fondant, included Alcorn’s favorite lemon pound cake and Dolby’s favorite coconut cake with passion fruit curd filling by Paper Heart Patisserie in Sacramento.
Poetry, Song and a Parade of Dogs Stella Dolby, 15, Dolby’s niece, kicked off the ceremony singing “I Have Dreamed” from the “King and I”; his daughters, Julia and Violet, read a poem he wrote, “When Your Dad Meets Someone New”; and the couple’s dogs — Harry, Dagmar and two newer black golden doodles named Kona and Kava — made a cameo to Henry Mancini’s “Moon River Cha Cha.”
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