It may be some time before people get married in space (or maybe not, if you can do a condensed ceremony on a suborbital flight), but when it happens, one thing the bride won’t have to worry about is what to wear. The Guardian reports that Japanese fashion designer Eri Matsui has designed a wedding dress “that looks good without the aid of gravity.” Matsui told the British newspaper that she photographed models on parabolic flights sponsored by the Japanese space agency JAXA to help her design. (Sadly, the article doesn’t include any photos, nor is it obvious on Matsui’s web site what the dress looks like.) Matsui is also sponsoring a “Hyper Space Couture Design Contest”; the winner will collaborate withMatsui on designing clothes for the “first generation of fashion-conscious space tourists.” (Rocketplane Ltd. is listed as one of the sponsors of the competition.)

The New Mexico Economic Development Department’s occasionally-updated Pulsar blog reports that “basic infrastructure” is being installed at the Southwest Regional Spaceport site in southern New Mexico. Proposals for the overall architecture of the spaceport design are due next week, with a final design to be announced this summer. The design, the post notes, should be “remarkable and memorable” as well as environmentally sensitive. (Disclosure: my employer has previously done work for this department.)

Greg Olsen is scheduled to be in Los Angeles Thursday for the ORBIT awards dinner at ISDC, but he has something arguably more important to do today. The Newark Star-Ledger reports that Olsen plans to announce a $5 million donation to his alma mater, Fairleigh Dickinson University, today. Normally in response to such a donation, the university names a building or something after the donor. Instead, Olsen asked that the school rename its School of Computer Sciences and Engineering after two former professors, Lee Gildart and Oswald Haase, who taught Olsen when he was a student there. Olsen had kept in touch with both professors over the years, including on his flight to the ISS last year. ” As he became successful, Olsen never forgot his old professors. He e-mailed Gildart from space and sent Haase his astronaut photo with a note reading, ‘Thanks for getting me started.’”