ITALY: Actor Tom Cruise and his third wife, Katie Holmes, are on honeymoon in the Maldives after getting married in a lavish ceremony in a castle in Italy at the weekend.
According to guests, the bride and groom and their seven-month baby Suri, wore Armani for the ceremony, which began with the former Top Gun star walking down a stone ramp lined with flag-bearers wearing medieval costume. Holmes, bearing a bouquet of white lilies, was escorted by her father.
The couple exchanged vows in a Scientology rite not legally recognised in Italy but witnessed by 150 friends and family.
At the reception afterwards in the 15th-century Odescalchi castle near Rome, they were serenaded by Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Thousands of rose petals cascaded down as they cut a wedding cake flown in from the US.
Guests included Brooke Shields, Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Jim Carrey and Victoria Beckham and the wedding ended with a fireworks display. The couple's publicist said afterwards that the couple had already "legalised" their marriage in Los Angeles.
Fans and residents of the lakeside town of Bracciano, where the event was held, had waited in vain to see a glimpse of the couple. The town's mayor said she was disappointed that after the inconveniences suffered by townspeople, the couple had not thought to make a personal appearance before well-wishers.
Town hall officials, who had basked in Bracciano's moment of glory and charged photographers and TV crews €1,000 for positions overlooking the castle, were more scathing. "They should have showed more respect for the people of Bracciano who waited to see them for so long," Armando Tondinelli, Bracciano's councillor for public works, said.