President Sarkozy of France quietly marries ex-model and singer Carla Bruni in Paris
February 4, 2008
Just three months after their first meeting at a dinner party at the home of a mutual friend, Carla Bruni and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, were married in a small, 20-minute civil ceremony at the Élysée Palace on Saturday.
The twice-divorced Sarkozy, who recently turned 53, is only the second French president to be married while in office. Carla Bruni is 40 years old.
The first official confirmation of the event came not from the Élysée palace, the home base of the President, but from the mayor of the Eighth Arrondissement of Paris, who officiated at the ceremony. The Elysee Palace is located in the 8th.
In France, all weddings must first be performed in a civil ceremony to be legally recognized. Any religious ceremony which may follow is purely symbolic; the couple must already be legally married for such a ceremony to be performed. Many French dispense with a religious ceremony altogether.
“I married two voters of the Eighth Arrondissement district who live at 55 Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré!” Mayor François Lebel announced on French radio. That is the Élysée Palace’s address. About 20 family members and close friends witnessed the ceremony.
Hours went by before the Élysée issued its own terse statement confirming the wedding. “Ms. Carla Bruni Tedeschi and Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy would like to announce that they were married this morning in the presence of their families and in the utmost privacy,” it said.
Nicolas Bazire, an investment tycoon, and Mathilde Agostinelli, communications director of Prada France, stood up with Sarkozy’s as his witnesses at the ceremony. (In a quintessentially French civilized gesture, Agostinelli is a good friend of Sarkoy’s ex-wife.) Actresses Farida Khelfa and Marine Delterme were witnesses for Carla Bruni.
In the last two months, Sarkozy’s popularity has taken a dive, both because of his failure to revive France’s ailing economy and the “Carla effect.” His three-month romance with Carla Bruni, the model-turned-pop-singer, has not impressed the French according to opinion polls, who consider the alliance and its timing to be in poor taste.
Five weeks before Sarkozy’s first electoral contest since taking office in May, a round of local elections - the president’s popularity dipped to a record low.
Polls published last week showed that Sarkozy’s approval rating in France had dropped 8 points in only one month, to 41 percent. That level matched that of his predecessor’s, Jacques Chirac, in a poll taken right after a three-week transportation strike.
French voter discontent with Sarkozy was blamed mainly on economic concerns. The increasing cost of living in France, which was one of Sarkozy’s main talking points during his campaign, is widely viewed as not having been sufficiently addressed. The French also fear the prospect of a looming economic slowdown and the government’s plans for the labor market.
The French did not seem too concerned backing October when Sarkozy’s 11-year marriage ended in divorce. Marriage here has long been seen in practical as well as romantic terms. However, President Sarkozy’s tabloid-worthy relationship with singer Carla Bruni has struck a sour note in France. Rather than a discreet Frenchwoman, Bruni is an Italian-born heiress who has been linked romantically with Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, and even—rumors say—Donald Trump. This impression has not been helped by Sarkozy and Bruni’s jet-setting lovers’ getaways to foreign countries and extravagant exchanges of expensive gifts, all breathlessly recorded by the paparazzi and mainstream media. Revealing and embarrassing photos of Bruni from her more indiscreet youthful days have been wallpapering the Internet.
Former first lady Bernadette Chirac took a more romantic view of the proceedings, however. “I find it very joyful! A marriage at the Élysée is marvelous!”
World events intruded on the day of celebration. As rebels penetrated the capital of Chad, a former French colony, Sarkozy held a crisis meeting at the Élysée and spoke by telephone with Chad’s president.
President Nicolas Sarkozy will not take his new bride on a honeymoon, his office said Sunday. Instead, he will meet with French workers at a factory threatened by closure and then head to Romania on an official visit.The eyes of France will be on Bruni, who has called herself a “man-tamer” and has spoken of monogamy as “boring”, to see how the glamorous former model, singer and jet-setter adapts to workday life as the wife of a public servant in France.
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