Kidman weds

Church bells rang to mark Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman's own love story when she married country music singer Keith Urban in a traditional Catholic ceremony at a cliff-top chapel yesterday.

Police and security guards held back hundreds of well-wishers and international media as Ms Kidman arrived at twilight for the ceremony in a sandstone chapel set on an estate overlooking Sydney Harbour and the Pacific Ocean.

Ms Kidman smiled and waved as she arrived in a convoy of cream Rolls Royce wedding cars just before 5:30 p.m. (0730 GMT).

Church bells pealed across the sprawling estate an hour later, signalling the romantic, candlelit ceremony was over.

"We just want to thank everyone in Australia and around the world who have sent us their warm wishes," Ms Kidman and Mr Urban said in a statement released with an official wedding picture.

Ms Kidman and Mr Urban, both Australians but born overseas, met in January last year at an awards dinner held by the Australian government in Los Angeles honouring the two of them.

The statuesque Kidman, 39, wore an elegant ivory-coloured dress, reportedly designed by French fashion house Balenciaga, and sheer veil and carried a simple posy of white roses. Helicopters buzzed overhead as Ms Kidman drove from her ritzy Sydney harbourside home. Well-wishers and photographers got within arms-reach of her car as she arrived for the wedding.

Australian television reported that Ms Kidman's friends, Oscar winner Russell Crowe and Broadway and film star Hugh Jackman, led the guest list for the black-tie wedding.

Baz Luhrmann, who directed Kidman in the Oscar-winning Moulin Rouge, was also among the 230 guests. "It's a very special love story,"

Mr Luhrmann said of the wedding.

Ms Kidman was given away by her father Antony, a prominent Sydney psychologist. Her sister Antonia, 13-year-old daughter Isabella and niece Lucia were in the bridal party and her 11-year-old son Connor was an usher.

Media reports said Grammy-winner Urban, who arrived more inconspicuously in a blue four-wheel drive vehicle, serenaded Ms Kidman with his song Making Memories of Us at the reception.

Mr Jackman and songwriter and former Crowded House singer Neil Finn also sang at the reception, held in a white marquee built off the Gothic-style central building in the former seminary in the beachside suburb of Manly.

Manly was the backdrop for one of Ms Kidman's first movie roles in 1983, the modest Australian teen film BMX Bandits in which she played a curly-haired supermarket checkout girl.

Ms Kidman's friend, King Kong star Naomi Watts, also travelled to Sydney for the wedding.