Classy” and “restrained” are not generally words associated with billionaire footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, but sometimes we all play against type. Last week, he married his partner, Georgina Rodriguez. Naturally, many had expected the couple, who met a decade ago in the Gucci store in Madrid, to out-Beckham every footballer’s wedding of the last 30 years. But instead of ice sculptures of Ronaldo’s best goals, rollerblading butlers, solid gold thrones and a flock of highly trained swans delivering caviar on diamond spoons to 3,000 guests from the worlds of film, music, sport and Silicon Valley, the two exchanged vows in their living room.
“We’ve chosen to do it … where we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and where we live the reality of our lives,” Georgina told Vogue. “In 30 years I want the children to think, something wonderful happened at this table – the wedding vows of our parents.”
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open image in galleryThe wedding took place at 1.30pm on 11 August at the couple’s Cascais home, on the outskirts of Lisbon, with their five children present. Only four witnesses attended the ceremony, including Ronaldo’s longtime friend Miguel Paixao, Rodriguez’s sister Ivana Rodriguez, and friends Jose Rodriguez Sangil and Monica Gonzalez Martinez. They went to church afterwards, where the bride cried – with happiness, we assume, rather than regret at the absence of Mark Zuckerberg and Chappell Roan in a bat costume.
And while nobody’s doubting Ronaldo’s love for designer label flash, there’s something unusually sweet about their choice, in a world where weddings have become debauched carnivals of excess. An acknowledgement that money can’t buy the true meaning of a special moment.
Compare this to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s recent takeover of Madison Square Garden, filling it with a forest of fake trees and ersatz grass and enjoying a night of a thousand stars, with guests including Tom Hanks, Jimmy Fallon, Dakota Johnson, Hugh Grant and Graham Norton – a bingo card of random fame.
open image in gallerySee also Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez last year, whose wedding cost an estimated $50m (£36.8m), shut down half of Venice and featured multiple outfit changes from guests including Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Ivanka Trump.
Anyone who has ever had one knows the spectacle and expense of huge weddings is over in a night – or a weekend – and then once the glam and glitter is washed away and you’re left with each other.
It’s hard not to recall the old saying, “the bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage”.
open image in galleryThoughts and prayers go to Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries (a 72-day marriage and $10m televised wedding), Liza Minnelli and David Gest (a $3.5m wedding) Mariah Carey and Tommy Mottola (a wildly over the top fairy-tale wedding) and of course, our own Katie Price and Peter Andre who celebrated their £1m nuptials with a pink pumpkin carriage, the Downton Abbey castle, and a duet of “A Whole New World” from Aladdin, with Katie in a £45,000 dress, watched by guests Kerry Katona, Paul Gascoigne and Vanessa Feltz. The marriage lasted less than four years.
The “big wedding” curse often plays out for “ordinary” couples, too. The most glamorous, expensive big weddings I’ve ever been to – mahogany-panelled Portaloos, champagne and peacocks – have generally ended in either divorce or unhappy marriages. One I attended that featured a string quartet serenading arrivals and a six-course sit-down dinner lasted under a year.
A couple who are truly intimate, who know and love each other, faults and all, don’t need to dazzle everyone they’ve ever met with their love story
It’s not because spending money means you don’t love each other, or that inviting random colleagues is automatically wrong. But what big weddings generally don’t feature is the key ingredient of a happy marriage: Intimacy.
A couple who are truly intimate, who know and love each other, faults and all, don’t need to dazzle everyone they’ve ever met with their love story – they just want to make it official. Some of the loveliest weddings I’ve attended had a small guest list, a low-key reception and an atmosphere of genuine warmth and love – rather than 150 women in agonising heels wondering if the canapé trays will ever reach them, while the couple are photographed on horseback for Instagram.
open image in galleryThe A-listers who understood the real assignment include Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, who married privately with close friends and family in 2012, and Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, who came together in a tiny ceremony at a friend’s house back in 2010. Even if Cristiano and his wife have a bigger bash down the track, the moment they swapped their vows is the one that they will truly remember. The rest is just another fancy party in a slightly bigger frock.
The truth is, when a wedding becomes about the trappings, the guest list and the venue, it’s no longer about the couple. An intimate wedding focuses on their feelings for each other, and the love of close family and friends that surrounds them.
“When I was a little girl I dreamt of the biggest castle, the biggest carriage, the longest dress, a crown full of diamonds,” Georgina Rodriguez said. “And now I’m saying: no. I want something intimate, with my partner and our children, at home.”
Knowing you could have the crown of diamonds, but choosing not to say more about the strength of their relationship than any Disney duet.