Are they registered at Hottery Barn?
Over the weekend, one of the world’s most beautiful couples finally got hitched. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie announced Wednesday that they had tied the knot in France.
The nondenominational ceremony took place at their Château Miraval estate, inside a chapel that holds about 20 — barely enough room to contain them and their gigantic brood of children.
“It was very much a family affair,” the statement read.
Each of the couple’s six children had a job in the nuptials. The bride was walked down the aisle by eldest sons Maddox and Pax, while daughters Zahara and Vivienne tossed flower petals. Shiloh and Knox served as ring bearers.
It’s unclear which of the family members passed around canapés.
The couple managed to pull off an amazing feat in this day and age, keeping the ceremony a secret until after the fact.
Even Jolie’s father, Jon Voight, with whom she’s had a strained relationship, was left in the dark.
“No, I didn’t know it was happening,” the actor told “Inside Edition.” “It was Emmys week, so I wasn’t able to go.” (Psst, also, you weren’t invited.)
The question on everyone’s mind, though, is why now? Pitt, 50, and Jolie, 39, have been an item since 2005 and engaged since 2012.
They even did a 2005 W magazine shoot, playing husband and wife.
But the couple has long danced around the idea of making their relationship permanent.
“We’re not against it,” Jolie told Marie Claire in 2007. “It just doesn’t seem necessary. He and I have never discussed it in detail, but I would assume — because we [both] went down that road before — it’s not that contract or that ceremony that makes you feel solid. It’s the hard work and the exhaustion and the children that really do make you solid.”
In 2011, the actress again suggested that having a family was a bigger deal than a wedding.
“We’ve explained to [our children] that our commitment when we decided to start a family was the greatest commitment you could possibly have,” she told Christiane Amanpour. “Once you have six children, you’re committed.”
Clearly, something changed. A number of factors could have played into their decision to take the plunge, most notably Jolie’s recent health scare.
In 2013, she underwent an elective double mastectomy after learning she had a high probability of developing breast cancer resulting from a defective gene.
“We tend to think of ourselves as immortal, we tend to think of our lives in very superficial terms, but when something like that happens, it really puts things into perspective in terms of what matters most,” says doctor and life coach Susan Biali, author of “Live a Life You Love.”
In an interview after the procedure, Jolie echoed that sentiment: “We’ve been through so much. We’ve gotten a lot closer, which I think naturally happens with raising a family together.”
That family began in 2002 when Jolie adopted Maddox from Cambodia. In 2005, she took in Zahara from Ethiopia. The couple’s first biological child, Shiloh, was born in May 2006. Pax was adopted in 2007, and biological twins Vivienne and Knox followed a year later.
The children have been gunning for a wedding for some time.
In 2011, Jolie said that the couple’s young ones had been watching movies featuring weddings, including “Shrek,” and had been asking a lot of questions. Earlier this year, she joked that the kids would serve as wedding planners, and the nuptials would be Disney-themed or feature paintball.
“It means something to them,” Pitt said of a wedding in 2012. “We will [get married] someday, we will. It’s a great idea. ‘Get mommy a ring.’ ‘OK, I will, I will.’ ”
“Most kids have a wish for their parents to be married, even or especially kids of celebrities,” says Lisa Brateman, a New York-based psychotherapist. “I think marriage offers a perception of emotional security.”
And then there’s the gaymarriage issue. Brangelina have (has?) said over the years that they wouldn’t get married until everyone in America is allowed to.
“When someone asked me why Angie and I don’t get married, I replied, ‘Maybe we’ll get married when it’s legal for everyone else,’ ” Pitt told Parade in 2009. “I believe everyone should have the same rights.”
It’s unclear if the pair intended to hold out until all 50 states legalized gay marriage, but when the Supreme Court last year struck down the Defense of Marriage Act — paving the way for recognition of same-sex marriages — rumors swirled that the ruling was enough for Brangelina to walk down the aisle. A date was supposedly set then, although in May of this year, Jolie claimed, “We don’t have a date, and we’re not hiding anything, but we really don’t know.”
Then there’s the Clooney factor. Pitt and his co-star in the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise are besties, so it must have come as quite a shock when Clooney — arguably Hollywood’s most immovable bachelor — got engaged to girlfriend Amal Alamuddin in April.
You can imagine Brad and Angie in bed that night looking at each other and going, “Well, there goes that.”
The happy ending is an even bigger surprise when you consider their relationship’s controversial origins. They first met in 2004 on the set of the action flick “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” while Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston. Spies on the set at the time were whispering about the couple’s obvious chemistry.
“Because of the film, we ended up being brought together to do all these crazy things, and I think we found this strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened,” Jolie said of the relationship in 2006. “I think a few months in I realized, ‘God, I can’t wait to get to work.’ ”
Both have maintained that they never got together until after Pitt split from Aniston in January 2005.
“To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive,” Jolie said on “Today” in June 2005. “I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn’t be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife.”
However or whenever they got together, the two were clearly involved by April 2005, when paparazzi photos surfaced of them on vacation in Kenya.
The pairing would be confirmed officially in January 2006, when Jolie announced she was pregnant with Pitt’s child. Shortly thereafter, the actress legally changed her adopted children’s name to Jolie-Pitt, and the actor officially became a parent to Maddox and Zahara.
Their engagement was cemented in 2012 when Pitt gave Jolie a $250,000 diamond engagement ring.
The marriage marks the second for Pitt (he was also briefly engaged to Gwyneth Paltrow) and the third for Jolie, who was previously hitched to actors Jonny Lee Miller and Billy Bob Thornton.
As for the future, Pitt is scheduled to begin filming “By the Sea,” which will reportedly feature “crazy sex scenes.” Luckily, those scenes just happen to be with the director — Jolie.
Additional reporting by Sara Stewart and David K. Li