Goddess: Inside Madonna (49 page)

An actress friend of Madonna’s who lives in New York was also not particularly optimistic: “While she was trying to catch him, she was sweet and endearing, but there are already signs that the sweetness won’t last.” Yet another friend of the singer’s, who was a guest at the wedding, said, “I have no doubt that this marriage won’t last. As a matter of fact, shortly after Rocco was born, Madonna began making noises about getting bored. She jokingly asked me on the phone from Los Angeles, ‘When are we going to raise a little hell?’”

Behind the scenes, in the days leading up to the ceremony, there were signs that the relationship was in trouble, and several observers predicted that if the marriage happened at all, it wouldn’t last two years. London bookmakers gave the marriage a one-in-three chance of lasting five years.

“The atmosphere in their house can be cut with a knife,” a friend said. “For the first time Madonna is impatient with Lourdes and yelling at her, and Guy is just getting out as much as he can, finding every excuse not to be there. They are bickering over the most benign things. It could be the pressure of the relatives arriving for the wedding or simply prenuptial nerves, but let’s face it, these are not two wide-eyed kids.”

Several of Madonna’s friends believe that this turmoil is for the good. “The one thing Madonna never could stand is being bored. Huge rows have been a pattern in her longer relationships, and she really is looking forward to the wedding. It will be her biggest show in years!” Yet another friend said, “One of the major problems that the couple have had throughout their relationship is that Ritchie, unlike Madonna’s other lovers, who have enjoyed basking in her wealth and reflected fame, is uneasy with the prospect of the lavish life that she envisages for them.”

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, there was speculation that the couple would marry in Scotland. The guessing game was ended by the appearance of a simple set of typed paper displayed at the Register Office in Dornoch. Miss Lesley Connor, registrar in Dornoch in Sutherland, revealed that among a list of four forthcoming weddings was that of Guy Stuart Ritchie and Madonna Louise Ciccone, set for Friday, December 22, 2000. Just as Madonna and Sean Penn had chosen to marry on her birthday, the Madonna–Guy Ritchie wedding was to be held on Ritchie’s thirty-second birthday. In another sentimental tribute, the couple chose the castle for their wedding in honor of Ritchie’s grandfather Major Stewart “Jack” Ritchie, who served with the Seaforth Highlanders and was killed near Dunkirk in World War II.

Several weeks before the baby’s baptism and the wedding, Madonna went to Skibo Castle, where the nuptials would take place, to go over details with the Reverend Susan Brown, who would marry them, Stuart Anderson, the cathedral organist, as well as with the staff at Skibo. The Reverend Susan Brown, forty-two, is the United Kingdom’s first female minister in charge of a cathedral and the woman who would guide the couple through the Church of Scotland’s nine-part wedding sequence. With a reputation for being down-to-earth, she explained that she had been chosen to marry the couple because the bride is divorced and has children, and there is no Free Church minister in Scotland who would agree to do it, while the Anglican priest was not full-time. “During the day, he’s a pharmacist here,” Reverend Brown added, “so he’s incredibly busy with a massive area to cover.”

Skibo is a nineteenth-century castle that sits on seventy-five hundred acres in the Scottish Highlands, in the town of Dornoch, an area that is surrounded by grouse moors, deer forests, and lochs. It is forty-five miles north of Inverness with a population of just over twelve hundred people. The main castle, bought by Andrew Carnegie in 1898, has twenty-one bedrooms with an additional twenty-six more bedrooms in eleven lodges that are scattered around the grounds. The name Skibo comes from Schyberbolle, which means “fairyland of peace,” and it is a favorite resort for the rich and famous. Carnegie, who bought the crumbling original Skibo Castle after he returned from America to settle permanently in Scotland, replaced the structure with a completely new castle with towers and turrets, stained-glass windows, an enormous ballroom, a staircase of Sicilian marble, and an indoor swimming pool. After Carnegie’s death in 1919, Skibo stayed with his descendants until it was bought in 1990 for £6.5 million by Peter de Savary, a businessman, who intended to renovate it for commercial use. At the time de Savary bought it, it was in abysmal ill-repair, and he spent approximately £17 million and devoted four years to restoring it to the condition that it is in now. There are oak-paneled walls, marble pillars, chandeliers, and chintz-upholstered chairs and sofas, and the forty-seven bedrooms all have four-poster beds, giving the castle an air of old-world luxury. There is also a championship golf course. While the price of a room starts at $750 per night, the wedding cost Madonna, who paid for everything, approximately $1.7 million. Her wedding gown alone, designed by Stella McCartney, Paul McCartney’s daughter, who is the chief designer for Chloé, cost more than $30,000, and the flowers, red roses and white lilies, cost $75,000.

The wedding ceremony was described by one friend as a “religious potpourri: Catholicism for Madonna, Protestantism for Guy, and Buddhism for God knows what reason.”

Four days before the actual
ceremony, the couple left their Kensington house in a silver Mercedes, accompanied by Lourdes, Rocco, and two nannies. A second car followed filled with luggage and the rest of the entourage, including bodyguards, hairdresser, and an armed guard who carried the borrowed diamonds from Harry Winston. Arriving in a Falcon 2000 jet from RAF Northolt in Middlesex, the wedding party was welcomed by a lone piper, Clum Spud Fraser, who played “Scotland the Brave” plus his own version of “Like a Virgin.” Lourdes tripped delightedly off the aircraft, while Rocco was carried in a carry-cot by one of the nannies. Superintendent Jim Heddle was in charge of the police security operation, although he made it clear that Madonna had her own personal security. “We are only responsible for the safety of the public,” he said. “But since she is a massive star, we have got to cater for anything that might happen.”

Only close friends and family members stayed at the castle. The first guests to arrive were Sting, Trudie Styler, and their children: Mickey, sixteen, Jake, fifteen, Coco, nine, and Giacomo, four. Other celebrities, including Stella McCartney and Gwyneth Paltrow, also stayed there and on the ride from the airport shared a black Range Rover with tinted windows, which was only one of a fleet of cars that was sent by Skibo to pick up the guests at the small airport and bring them to the castle. Donatella Versace and Mathew Vaughn also stayed at Skibo, as did Madonna’s sister Melanie and her husband, Joe Henry, along with Madonna’s brother Christopher and their parents, Tony and Joan. Guy Ritchie’s family was housed at the castle as well.

In the film Evita, Madonna
is at her best when, as Eva Perón, she stands before a crowd of her adoring fans, whether they are weeping women or sexually aroused men who are clearly seduced by the image of Evita as much as they are by the political agenda of her husband. In the crowd below the balcony of the Casa Rosada are also the Evita wanna-bes, who cry out to the Argentine first lady. “Please, Santa Eva, make me your favorite, smile at me and choose me as the one you love the most.”

At the christening, Madonna stood next to Guy Ritchie, who held the baby, Rocco, in his arms, swathed in a $15,000 cream silk christening gown, designed by Donatella Versace. Over the gown, Rocco wore a warm furry suit that covered him and a matching white bunny hat that shielded him from the paparazzi with their telephoto lenses and the damp Scottish wind.

Kay McDonald, a receptionist who works in Dornoch, remarked how startling the resemblance was to Eva Perón. “I remember the film,” McDonald said, “and Madonna was Evita, just as today she is Evita once again.” Wearing a long, loose-fitting, off-white silk coat, with a black veil covering her hair, pulled back in an neat twist, a pair of antique crystal earrings dangling from her ears, Madonna raised her hand in a measured wave, smiling slightly to the crowd of local residents who stood before the Dornoch Cathedral and cheered.

Casa Rosada, the official residence of the Argentine president, is named the Pink House after the pink stones that cover the facade, and the Dornoch Cathedral, where the baby was baptised on December 20, is a thirteenth-century, pink-tinged stone building with a steeple and clock tower that ascends into the swirling mists that float in from the surrounding hillside. “It was a simple ceremony,” said Father Benedict Seed, who attended the service but did not officiate. “The baby was well behaved and didn’t cry. His father, however, overcome with emotion, did.”

Apparently, Tony Ciccone cried as well, although some speculate that they were tears of relief because of the marriage that was to take place two days later, and because the rift between him and Madonna had finally healed. John Ritchie, Guy’s seventy-two-year-old father, wept as he stood between his second wife, Shireen, and her son, Oliver, twenty-one. Gwyneth Paltrow was visibly moved.

“It was very emotional,” said Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Madonna’s friend, the director of so many of her videos, who was to take the wedding pictures.

Trudie Styler, Rocco’s godmother, read the lengthy Lorica hymn. Sting sang “Ave Maria,” and Guy Oseary, Madonna’s Israeli-born partner in Mad Guy Films and Mad Guy Television, her film and television companies, as well as in Maverick Records, took his place as the baby’s godfather. Madonna, Guy Ritchie, Guy Oseary, and Trudie Styler, who carried the baby, stepped up to the font at the appropriate moment to participate in the baptism.

The ceremony lasted thirty minutes and was conducted by the Reverend Susan Brown. Rupert Everett rushed in at the end of the ceremony, wearing jeans and a leather jacket. His plane was late on the way from Inverness due to heavy fog over Dornoch. The next day, he said, “The only sad moment for Madonna, as usual, was when she thought about her mother and wished that she could have lived to see this.”

As she always does during christenings, after the service was over, Reverend Susan Brown carried Rocco John Ritchie in her arms, walking all around the church to welcome him into the house of God.

On December 22, the afternoon of the wedding, Guy Ritchie went duck shooting with his two best men, while Madonna went clay-pigeon shooting and strolled the grounds, did yoga, and watched displays of falconry with Gwyneth Paltrow, Stella McCartney, and Trudie Styler from the castle windows.

The girl from Bay City had come a long way to Dornoch, Scotland.

On December 22, at six-thirty
in the evening, surrounded by hundreds of candles, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone and Guy Ritchie were married in the Great Hall of the castle. Accompanied by one lone bagpiper and the music of French pianist Katia Labèque along with the cathedral organist, Lourdes, four years old, shoeless and draped in a long ivory dress with short sleeves and a high neck, also designed by Stella McCartney, led the procession down the aisle, tossing handfuls of red rose petals from a basket. The groom wore a vibrant teal blazer, a Hunting Mackintosh plaid kilt of navy and green that had been made by Britain’s Scotch House with a sash that incorporated Guy’s family tartan, and antique diamond cuff links, which were a gift from his bride. Rocco John Ritchie, in the arms of his nanny, wore a matching kilt. Ritchie’s two best men were Mathew Vaughn, his partner and the producer of his two films, and Piers Adam, a London nightclub owner. Madonna’s maid of honor was Stella McCartney, who wore a gray-and-beige pants outfit of her own design.

As Madonna walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, and as Lourdes, Gwyneth, and Donatella Versace walked toward her, instead of the wedding march, a Scottish air called “Highland Cathedral,” often played at the Edinburgh Tattoo, swelled around them. During the wedding service, “Nessun Dorma” and Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played.

Madonna and Ritchie had written part of the vows, which included “cherish, honor, and delight in family.” Reverend Susan Brown added that the “challenges of life should be superseded by their love for one another and their children, and that any obstacle is a challenge to be met.” At the end of the ceremony, Brown presented Madonna and Guy Ritchie with a twin pack of Andrex toilet paper, to symbolize a soft, long, and durable marriage.

For her previous wedding to Sean Penn, Madonna had assumed a fifties look. For this wedding, her strapless, ivory silk gown was nineteenth-century and had a fitted corset bodice and long train with an antique veil embroidered with nineteenth-century lace that covered her face and cascaded down to her Jimmy Choo shoes. She wore a diamond tiara loaned by Asprey & Garrard of London, several pearl and diamond bracelets courtesy of Adler of London, and around her neck was a twenty-seven-carat, two-and-a-half-inch diamond cross designed by Ronald Winston of the House of Harry Winston in New York. Madonna’s wedding band was platinum with several small diamonds, while Guy’s was plain platinum, both designed by Stephen Webster.

For her wedding with Sean Penn, Madonna had said that she wanted to wear “Something that had a 1950s feeling and something that Grace Kelly might have worn at her wedding.” For this wedding, she actually wore the diamond tiara, designed by Cartier, that Princess Grace had worn to her daughter Caroline’s first marriage, to Philippe Junot.

Unlike
Apocalypse Now
, the theme of her last wedding, this time Madonna was hermetically sealed off from the press, television cameras, sound trucks, and scores of photographers as well as fans and local residents who waited outside in the freezing temperatures for more than ten hours in an effort to catch a glimpse of the star and of her famous guests. A security force of more than seventy men as well as Madonna’s private force of fifteen wandered the grounds or were positioned in front of the castle.

During the ceremony, Madonna couldn’t stop smiling, and one friend of Ritchie’s thought that he looked “proud.” After the ceremony, Madonna tossed her bouquet of flowers into the crowd. Lourdes caught it.