Kidman weds Urban in her own love story

By Paul Tait

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Church bells rang to mark Oscar-winning
actress Nicole Kidman’s own love story when she married country
music singer Keith Urban in a traditional Catholic ceremony at
a cliff-top chapel on Sunday.

Police and security guards held back hundreds of
well-wishers and international media as Kidman arrived at
twilight for the ceremony in a sandstone chapel set on an
estate overlooking Sydney Harbor and the Pacific Ocean.

Kidman smiled and waved as she arrived in a convoy of cream
Rolls Royce wedding cars just before 5:30 p.m. (0730 GMT).

Church bells pealed across the sprawling estate an hour
later, signaling the romantic, candlelit ceremony was over.

“We just want to thank everyone in Australia and around the
world who have sent us their warm wishes,” Kidman and Urban
said in a statement released with an official wedding picture.

Kidman and Urban, both Australians but born overseas, met
in January 2005 at an awards dinner held by the Australian
government in Los Angeles honoring the two of them.

The statuesque Kidman, 39, wore an elegant ivory-colored
dress, reportedly designed by French fashion house Balenciaga,
and sheer veil and carried a simple posy of white roses.

Helicopters buzzed overhead as Kidman drove from her ritzy
Sydney harborside home. Well-wishers and photographers got
within arms-reach of her car as she arrived for the wedding.

Australian television reported that Kidman’s friends, Oscar
winner Russell Crowe and Broadway and film star Hugh Jackman,
led the guest list for the black-tie wedding.

Baz Luhrmann, who directed Kidman in the Oscar-winning
“Moulin Rouge,” was also among the 230 guests. “It’s a very
special love story,” Luhrmann said of the wedding.

KIDMAN’S FATHER GIVES HER AWAY

Kidman was given away by her father Antony, a prominent
Sydney psychologist. Her sister Antonia, 13-year-old daughter
Isabella and niece Lucia were in the bridal party and her
11-year-old son Connor was an usher.

Media reports said Grammy-winner Urban, who arrived more
inconspicuously in a blue four-wheel drive vehicle, serenaded
Kidman with his song “Making Memories of Us” at the reception.

Jackman and songwriter and former Crowded House singer Neil
Finn also sang at the reception, held in a white marquee built
off the Gothic-style central building in the former seminary in
the beachside suburb of Manly.

Manly was the backdrop for one of Kidman’s first movie
roles in 1983, the modest Australian teen film “BMX Bandits” in
which she played a curly-haired supermarket checkout girl.

Kidman’s friend, “King Kong” star Naomi Watts, also
traveled to Sydney for the wedding.

Other guests, sworn to secrecy in the days leading up to
the ceremony, were ferried in a convoy of buses from a luxury
city hotel to the Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel.

Kidman, who won an Academy Award for her role in the 2002
film “The Hours,” had a very public divorce from actor Tom
Cruise in 2001, ending a 10-year marriage. They have remained
friends, sharing custody of their two adopted children.

Father Paul Coleman, a Jesuit priest who performed the
ceremony, has said that Kidman and Urban, 38, share a “mature
love” which has impressed him.

Coleman said he had told them to “make time for each other,
do romantic things together and never part without kissing.”

Their every move has been tracked by the media over the
past week, with paparazzi camped outside Kidman’s home. Local
media reported the couple would honeymoon in the South Pacific,
most likely at an exclusive Fiji resort island.