Halle Berry ties knot at French chateau

[July 15, 2013]  PARIS (AP) -- Halle Berry married her fiancé, French actor Olivier Martinez, in a weekend ceremony in a village church where princes are buried in France's Burgundy region.

The owner of the Chateau de Vallery, where the couple stayed with their 60 guests, said on Sunday that the betrothal a day earlier ended with a dinner and an unusual fireworks display -- of water, fire and snow -- in the chateau gardens. A wedding cake followed.

Patrice Vansteenberghe said the actress -- 46 and pregnant -- and her 47-year-old husband "were very beautiful and very happy."

Berry's publicist, Meredith O'Sullivan Wasson, confirmed the marriage.

Vansteenberghe would not say who attended the gala wedding. But he said the bride was coy about her long, white dress, wanting to keep it from public view.

"All I can say is that it was a dress with a deeply plunging back," Vansteenberghe said. He added that the event was "confidential" because "she wanted to be left alone on the day of her marriage."

Berry, who has a 5-year-old daughter, is expecting her first child with Martinez. While there was no sign of a baby bump when The Associated Press interviewed the Oscar-winning star in early April, Vansteenberghe said that "she is very pregnant."

The princes and princesses of the Conde line from the 16th to early 18th century were buried in the church facing the chateau and its chapel until the late 19th century, when it was given to the village of Vallery.

The couple apparently spent two days at the Chateau de Vallery -- the standard rental period for weddings and other grand events, the owner said.

Vansteenberghe noted that the chateau's pigeon room, an outbuilding once used to house pigeons, is a preferred room for newly married couples, but he hedged about whether Berry and Martinez stayed there.

The oldest part of the chateau dates to the Middle Ages, but much of it was built during the Renaissance.

[Associated Press; By ELAINE GANLEY]

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