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Until this Sunday, it was the most talked-about and, at the same time, most secret wedding anyone could remember. Everyone knew that Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez were going to get married, but no one knew when or where. Those who bet on Funchal lost. And those who imagined a gigantic ceremony with hundreds of guests did too.
The wedding is still one of the most talked about, but it is no longer a secret. When the couple posted, a week ago, the photo of the rings on Instagram, everyone was caught by surprise. It then emerged that the wedding had been an intimate ceremony, held at the couple’s home in Cascais, where they live with their children, at 13:30 on Tuesday 11 August, exactly ten years after their first meeting at the Gucci store in Madrid, where Georgina was a sales assistant.
The guest list was kept to the bare minimum: besides their five children (Cristiano Ronaldo Júnior, the twins Eva and Mateo – Ronaldo’s biological children only – and the couple’s two daughters, Alana Martina and Bella Esmeralda), there were just four witnesses: Miguel Paixão, a friend of the footballer since his youth days at Sporting, Ivana Rodríguez, Georgina’s sister, and their friends Jose Rodríguez Sangil and Monica Gonzalez Martinez, a Spanish jeweller and his wife. It also became known that they married under a separation-of-assets regime.
We already knew these details, but what everyone still wanted were the photos. What were the bride and groom and their guests wearing, how was the house decorated? The suspense is over, as Vogue has just published it all (source in Portuguese). That explains the secrecy and why no picture or information about their outfits had leaked until now: the couple granted an exclusive to the US magazine, which published the photos on its website this Sunday and is expected to run them in the next print edition, due out in September. The couple also appear on the cover of Vogue’s digital summer edition:
The ceremony may have been civil, but Cristiano, Georgina and the children attended a mass to bless the union, according to Vogue’s images. The magazine also shows a photo shoot with Georgina surrounded by the children.
In other photos, the couple are working out at home:
The pictures also show Georgina wearing high-end Chopard jewellery by the pool and while exercising, as well as during the ceremony itself. The outfits could hardly have been more understated: a light-coloured suit and white shirt without buttons or tie for him, and a white skirt-and-jacket ensemble with a matching white shirt for her. All the Vogue photos, shot by Juergen Teller, also showcase part of Georgina’s shoe collection and Ronaldo’s rosary beads. The video below highlights the key moments from the photo shoot:
In the text accompanying the photographs, Georgina tells the magazine how she experienced the day and how it differed from the wedding she had dreamed of as a child:
“When I was little, I dreamed of the biggest castle, the grandest carriage, the longest dress, a crown full of diamonds. Now I say: no. I want something intimate, with my partner and our children, at home. Because castles, houses, islands, horses, cars: we have all that within reach every day. But something intimate, that is much rarer for us”, Georgina confided to Vogue. The journalist Gaby Wood, who wrote the story, adds: “In the economy of fame, privacy is priceless”.