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Kidman weds Urban in her own love story

Posted on: Sunday, 25 June 2006, 07:13 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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