Sofia Coppola to wed in garden of ancestral town

[August 27, 2011]  ROME (AP) -- Filmmaker Sofia Coppola is going back to her roots, getting married in the southern Italian town where her great-grandfather was born.

Coppola later Saturday plans to wed Thomas Mars, lead singer of the French rock band Phoenix and the father of their two young daughters. The ceremony will take place in the garden of a palazzo that her father, Francis Ford Coppola, has renovated in the center of Bernalda.

The town, near the UNESCO-recognized troglodyte settlement of Matera in southern Basilicata, was home to the elder Coppola's grandfather, Agostino.

Bernalda Mayor Leonardo Chiruzzi will perform the civil ceremony and says it will be simple but beautiful.

Chiruzzi said by phone: "If they wanted to do a Hollywood wedding, they wouldn't have done it here."

[Associated Press]

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