Last update - 00:00 02/02/2008
French Pres. Sarkozy and model Carla Bruni marry at Elysee Palace
By The Associated Press
French President Nicolas Sarkozy married former model Carla Bruni in a small ceremony Saturday, the couple announced.
Sarkozy, 53, and Bruni, 40, have had a whirlwind courtship, marrying less than three months after they reportedly first met, and less than four months after Sarkozy divorced his second wife, Cecilia.
In a terse statement, the couple said only that they were married this morning in the presence of their families in the strictest privacy. The official statement followed an announcement of the wedding several hours earlier from the mayor who had performed the ceremony at the presidential Elysee Palace.
"The bride wore white; she was ravishing, as usual," Francois Lebel, mayor of Paris' eighth arrondissement, or neighborhood, told Europe-1 radio. "The groom wasn't bad either."
About 20 people attended the ceremony, he said. Lebel called it a moment of "family intimacy for the young newlyweds, of great simplicity and apparently a lot of affection between the spouses."
"I wished them a lot of happiness," he said.
Under French law, couples must marry before a mayor to make their union official. Sarkozy was not the first French president to marry in office: Gaston Doumergue tied the knot at the Elysee Palace in 1931.
Sarkozy could not devote the entire day to celebrations: he was busy with a crisis in Chad, the former French colony in central Africa. As rebels penetrated Chad's capital, Sarkozy called a meeting at the Elysee Palace and spoke by telephone with Chad's president.
Sarkozy's openness about his private life has surprised many French, accustomed to presidents who keep their love lives under wraps.
At a news conference in January, Sarkozy revealed that the relationship was serious and hinted that wedding plans were in the works. But he refused to reveal the date for a wedding, saying just that France might only learn about the nuptials once they had already taken place.
Former first lady Bernadette Chirac offered her congratulations, adding that it was helpful for a president to have a spouse.
"It's better to have a companion to whom you can say what you need to say and can't say to everyone," she told RTL radio. "You need a punching ball."
Sarkozy and Bruni went public with their relationship during a visit to Disneyland Paris, and they carried out their brief but highly publicized courtship in such places as the ruins of Petra, Jordan. The tabloids even showed the couple at an Egyptian beach resort, Bruni clad in a tiny black bikini, Sarkozy in trunks, gold chain and Ray-Bans.
Sarkozy's approval ratings dropped during their courtship - in part, analysts say, because many older, more traditional voters were put off by the time he was spending on his romance, as well as by his glitzy, jet-setting style.
During their courtship, Sarkozy was nicknamed the bling-bling president by the media. He reportedly gave Bruni a pink, heart-shaped diamond Dior engagement ring, while she gave him a Swiss-made Patek Philippe watch.
The wedding was the third for Sarkozy, who has three sons. It was the first for Bruni, an Italian-born heiress who had a major modeling career and a well-publicized love life. Bruni, now a singer, dated rockers Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, tycoon Donald Trump and actor Vincent Perez. She has a young son, Aurelien, from a relationship with philosophy professor Raphael Enthoven.