New York: The lavish weekend wedding of Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes bore many symbols of the 18-month relationship between the two stars.
The decorous, romantic setting of a 15th-century castle in Bracciano, Italy, was reminiscent of the fairytale quality of the actors' courtship. The much younger Holmes, 27, had once remarked that she grew up wanting to wed the Risky Business star.
"I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise," Holmes told Seventeen magazine before she and Cruise, 44, began dating.
But the young-girl fantasy theme to TomKat has never been the dominant one.
They have instead been renown for always being in the public eye and perceived peculiarity. In short, it is not a relationship that anyone has ever really understood.
After exchanging vows before a Scientology minister on Saturday, Cruise and Holmes engaged in a "never-ending kiss," according to Giorgio Armani, who attended the wedding outside Rome and designed the outfits of the bride, the groom and their baby, Suri.
That kiss could be seen as a sweet gesture or as a reminder of the hyper-love the couple (or at least Cruise) has openly displayed since they first announced their relationship in April 2005 in Rome. Just a month later, Cruise was hopping on Oprah Winfrey's couch.
"I can't be cool. I can't be laid-back," a starry-eyed Cruise said on The Oprah Winfrey Show. "Something happened and I want to celebrate it," Cruise had exclaimed.
Many were skeptical of the over-the-top emotion, suspicious that it was an act to help publicise each star's then-current movies – War of the Worlds and Batman Returns.
But those critics were temporarily silenced when, in June 2005, the couple became engaged at Paris' Eiffel Tower, happily posing for photographers and reporters immediately afterward.
The relationship, People magazine deputy editor Larry Hackett remarked at the time, "was presented fully baked for public consumption".
In stark contrast, the couple did not provide the public a peek of Suri until over four months after her birth on April 18, leading to fevered speculation that she didn't even exist. The couple finally unveiled her, true to megastar form, on the cover of Vanity Fair.
The public, of course, loves a big movie-star marriage. But will the castle ceremony help Cruise and Holmes restore a measure of normalcy to their relationship, or serve as yet another unique spectacle?
With neither star expected back on the big screen soon (Cruise is slated to begin shooting Lions for Lambs with Robert Redford in January; Holmes has nothing planned) it will be a while before the box office provides an answer.
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