What wasn't there, the two hunted down themselves in New York and Boston in what Travolta calls a “sixty-day marathon.” Camping out in a small farmhouse on the property (heated only by a potbellied stove), they frantically threw together the interiors, garnering ideas through poring over the magazines.

“Kelly and I both had the same thing at stake,” Travolta points out, “twenty-five of her people, and twenty-five of mine, all meeting each other for the first time. It was a very big deal.”

“We did everything, just the two of us,” Preston says. “One time we flew in for a day with thirty fabric swatches that Johnny and I had numbered. There was no electricity, the sun was going down, and there we were, looking at all the furniture we'd bought piled in the living room, saying, 'What do you think about the couch? How about number three? And four, no, maybe sixteen for those two chairs.' Everything had to be decided before it got dark. It was madness – but so much fun.”

Her husband agrees. “We slept three hours a night. I'd be walking around the house at four a.m., saying, 'Wait, sweetie, I've got to hang one more picture before we go to bed.'”

Though they were “delirious” by Christmas week, the “real miracle” was pulled off the night their families arrived. “As we saw the headlights coming down the driveway through the snow, Kelly and I were still running around, getting the fires lit, straightening the last lampshade. But when I opened the door, there we stood with big smiles, looking relaxed saying, 'Hi there. We've been waiting for you.' I almost passed out.”

As the world knows, it takes a lot to ruffle John Travolta. In his nearly twenty-five-year career the forty-five-year-old superstar has gone from red hot in the seventies – Saturday Night Fever and Grease – to medium cool in the eighties – Look Who's Talking – to white hot again in the nineties, when he redefined his career with Get Shorty. And through it all, Travolta retained the sangfroid of a man who not only knows but believes in himself and his talent.