She Loves Him, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
GLASLOUGH, Ireland — All Heather Mills and Sir Paul McCartney need is love — but they have a bit more than that.
The couple were married Tuesday at the posh Irish estate of Castle Leslie, where the ex-Beatle, 59, and the ex-model, 34, exchanged vows before some 300 guests, including family friends and an elite cadre of celebrities including Ringo Starr, former Beatles manager George Martin, Pink Floyd frontman David Gilmour, Sting, Chrissie Hynde, Jules Holland and Twiggy.
Television and newspaper reports said Bill Clinton, Eric Clapton and Sir Elton John were also on the guest list.
The large crowd outside could only guess when the ceremony — scheduled for 4 p.m. (11 a.m. EDT) — began. The ringing of church bells more than an hour later indicated that McCartney and Mills had indeed tied the knot in the Protestant Church of Ireland service.
More than two-and-a-half hours after the ceremony, as the newlyweds and their guests feasted on vegetarian Indian food in large tents on the Castle Leslie estate, McCartney's spokesman, Geoff Baker, emerged to reveal some details.
The bride, wearing a fitted ecru lace dress she designed herself, carried a bouquet of 11 pink McCartney roses — named for her new husband — and two peonies, Baker said.
She was slightly late for the ceremony and was overcome by emotion, faltering slightly as she spoke before family and friends, he said.
Mills entered the 17th century church to the strains of "Heather," a song McCartney wrote for his recent album. As the beaming pair walked back down the aisle, a wedding march McCartney wrote for the 1966 movie The Family Way was played on the organ, Baker said.
McCartney had earlier said that his brother, Mike, would be best man.
AP
Castle Leslie in County Monaghan.
About 90 relatives and friends of the former Beatle arrived at Belfast International Airport on a chartered flight from Liverpool and were met by a fleet of coaches and limousines to carry them to Castle Leslie in County Monaghan.
A brief appearance by the former Beatle and his fiancée outside the heavily guarded gates of the castle briefly sated the appetites of hundreds of fans and a posse of international reporters, but confirmed few details of the secretive ceremony.
"As you know, there is going to be a wedding tomorrow, but it is a secret," McCartney joked Monday. "Ten people at the wedding you have heard of and the rest will be family and friends," he said.
Even dark storm clouds surrounding the remote area didn't dim McCartney's optimism.
"We're not going to worry about the weather — we're just going to have a great time!" he said.
Not long ago, there had been other, more figurative storm clouds on the horizon.
Gossip columns said Mills had become a blonde Yoko Ono, controlling whom McCartney could and couldn't see.
Last month, McCartney reportedly hurled Mills' engagement ring off a hotel balcony in Miami as the two squabbled. He later paid for a hotel worker to find the ring in the bushes and fly it back to England when the couple made up.
And Mills warred with McCartney's daughters after she rejected Stella McCartney as her wedding dress designer, saying her creations were "tarty."
Monday : Paul McCartney and Heather Mills outside Castle Leslie.
But Tuesday, things looked peachy.
Television news showed footage shot from a helicopter of a yacht moored to a specially built pier beside the estate's lake, from which, according to reports, the newlyweds will watch an extravagant firework display.
Baker said that there were no official plans to have the all-star guest list of musicians perform together although, "at parties like this, it's possible they could all get up on stage."
The Daily Mail newspaper reported the couple would spend Tuesday night in the castle's Red Room, said to be haunted by former owner Sir Normal Leslie, who was killed on the battlefields of France in 1914.
Three tents and a dance floor have been built along the side of the lake set in about 1,000 acres of grounds. There is a helicopter pad for guests who don't want to drive to the remote location near the border with Northern Ireland.
McCartney and Mills — who lost a leg in a 1993 motorcycle accident — met at a charity function where she was raising money to oppose land mines.
Before her accident, Mills helped set up a refugee crisis center in the former Yugoslavia. Later, she established the Heather Mills Trust to raise money for young disabled victims of war and provide artificial limbs for land-mine victims.
The recipient of several humanitarian achievement awards, Mills advocates a land-mine ban and counsels amputees.
She was married briefly in 1989.
McCartney, who was knighted in 1997, has three grown children and a stepdaughter from his marriage to Linda, an acclaimed photographer who died from breast cancer in 1998.
The Associated Press and the New York Post contributed to this report.
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