Consider Steven Moore your fairy-tale godfather. For one bright, shining day, he'll turn you into a princess with all the trimmings: chandeliers, cakes and gowns fit for royalty.

And with wedding season hitting its stride, Moore, a Bellingham-based wedding coordinator, has quite a few princesses waiting in the wings.

"I love that they can just show up and enjoy their day and not have to worry about a thing," he says of the brides he works with. "You can never describe fully how it's going to look for them. Seeing their dreams come into reality and the looks on their faces, it's pretty priceless."

Moore, 28, started coordinating weddings when he was 20, doing everything from making the dress, arranging flowers and decorating the cake to spreading rose petals down the aisle on the big day. In 2005, he started his company, Steven Moore Designs, and he estimates he's coordinated about 60 weddings since then, usually for couples who have a wedding budget of $20,000 or more.

"My life passion, I think, is being creative," he says. "Another life passion is serving people and really delighting people. Those are my passions, and I choose to use them in this form."

It's a skill he comes by honestly. Aside from a few costume design classes at Western Washington University, Moore is self-taught. At 15 he made his first dress for his sister, he made his dates' dresses for prom in high school, and his mom was a baker.

"She'd prefer to do a birthday cake or one for a kid," he says. "I would prefer to do a wedding cake any day. I just like that it's an artistic expression and an extension of the rest of the wedding. It's just a fun way to make edible art."

But the cake is just a small piece of what Moore provides for a wedding.

"He could do every aspect of someone's wedding," says Lynne Baron, Bellingham, who had Moore design her daughter's wedding dress. "He's an amazing pianist, he bakes cakes, he does flowers. Just every aspect."

'AMAZING 'DRESSMAKER

Though Baron, who owns her design company Lynne Baron Designs, coordinated most of her daughter Ashley's wedding, they still needed to find the perfect dress.

"Somebody said, 'If you want a beautiful wedding dress, you should talk to this young man,' " Baron recalls of her introduction to Moore. "And I remember walking away from him saying, 'Oh my god, this man is amazing.' "

He created a beautiful dress for Baron's daughter and then some, providing extra help whenever Baron needed it.

"He's so generous," she says. "He was just there early in the morning and I think he ended up staying until 3 in the morning. It was just way beyond the call of duty. And he just did that because he wanted to help. Wonderful man, not only talented but very wonderful."

To have someone like Moore has been great for Baron, who has recommended him to her friends and also worked with him on events since they first met.

"It's exciting because he could be doing incredible work in Seattle or Los Angeles, but he's chosen Bellingham as his home," Baron says. "What he does is pretty high end." What Moore creates for his brides is completely couture, he says. It's an involved process that starts with the bride trying on silhouettes to see what works for her body. From there, he'll make sketches.

"Usually, we take the top of this and the bodice of this and the skirt of this one and we do another sketch," he says.

He then brings the sketches to life, creating a dress out of muslin to make tweaks to the design. He uses that prototype to cut out the actual dress and fit it to the body.

"A lot of what I do is hand-stitched. It's really for the girl that can't find anything else she loves, for the girl whose imagination and creativity want something couture for her body," he says. "There's something about knowing no one else has it and no one else has seen anything like it."

SPINNING A DREAM

If the process for making a dress seems complicated and detail-oriented, that's nothing compared to the process of creating an entire wedding.

"We start from scratch," he says. "We talk about what (the bride's) dreams are and what she likes. I get to know her personality and what inspires her and her fiancé."

And as the couple gets deeper and deeper into the planning and the wedding date looms nearer, Moore's job titles grow.

"You end up becoming their therapist as well as a shoulder to cry on, walking them through a stressful time," he says. "I tend to be pretty laid back and mellow, so it balances out. I can be there to tell them it's going to be fine."

The raw emotions and tight deadlines and flood of details demanding attention can make even the laid-back Moore a bit stressed. But the results are what drive him.

"My focus really is on my client," he says. "That's what really gets me excited. When you've been up all night two nights in a row, I still get excited to see her walk down the aisle."

But what does a man who makes so many perfectly grand weddings want for his big day?

"I would want it to be small," he says. "Doing so many large, extravagant weddings, I see how people don't get to talk to their guests and they get overwhelmed. I would want something intimate."

"But I imagine the girl I would marry would have her own dreams as well, so I'll have to submit to those."