MONACO ROYAL WEDDING PRINCE ALBERT MARRIES PRINCESS CHARLENE WITTSOCK PHOTOS

UPDATE: Charlene Wittsock has addressed the runway bride rumors.

New Monaco royal Princess Charlene has responded to rumours that she was having second thought about marriage to Prince Albert.

She said: “It is a shame that those rumors came at such a bad time, but I think they were timed to sabotage such a happy occasion. They are categorical lies.

“I won’t dignify them with any response other than to say that the photographs of me and Albert in love and getting married will speak louder than any vicious gossip and empty rumors.”[via]

Prince Albert wed Charlene Wittsock in a religious ceremony. The couple married in a civil ceremony prior to their public wedding. Princess Wittsock was called a ‘runway bride’ after she went missing prior to the big wedding day. There has been confirmation that she was prevented from leaving the country to return to her native South Africa.

Doesn’t their awkward kiss reveal some things about their relationship?

Dressed in white cotton trousers and a vivid purple T-shirt, she shared the confident air of many of the well-heeled ladies who populate this spectacularly wealthy corner of France.

Meanwhile, just a mile away, faced with claims that she had attempted to flee to her native South Africa just days before her wedding to Monaco’s ruler, Prince Albert, another willowy beauty, 33-year-old Charlene Wittstock, was staging a determinedly public walkabout with her fiancé.
Little would initially appear to link these two women.
Yet they are inextricably intertwined, for the lady enjoying Monaco’s warm afternoon sunshine only a stone’s throw away from that rather staged royal photocall was Nicole Coste, a former air stewardess who also happens to be the mother of Prince Albert’s illegitimate seven-year-old son, Alexandre.
Ms Coste, 40, does not live in Monaco — her main residential address is a plush apartment in Paris — and her presence in Monte Carlo this week certainly adds another intriguing dimension to a story with a number of tantalising elements.
Just days ago, a Parisian news magazine reported that Ms Wittstock had been stopped at Nice airport last week clutching a one-way ticket to South Africa after learning a ‘distressing’ revelation about her future husband’s private life.

A senior Monaco detective confirmed: ‘Charlene had her passport confiscated so that the Prince’s entourage could persuade her to stay.’
The rumour mill in France has been in overdrive ever since.
Charlene had, it was suggested, heard talk of another illegitimate child, conceived since she started dating Prince Albert in 2005, and who would bring his tally of children born out of wedlock to three — Albert also has a 19-year-old daughter, Jazmin Grace, courtesy of the American Tamara Rotolo.
More lurid gossip centres on the suggestion that Prince Albert has a lover who is pregnant with his child. Even more wildly, some are speculating that this could, once again, be Ms Coste.
One well-placed source told the Mail this week that Nicole and Prince Albert have remained close since the birth of their child, meeting regularly and speaking most days.

The source adds: ‘The truth is that Charlene does not like the thought of Albert remaining so close to Nicole. She knows he’s a sweet, loyal man, but she wants her own husband.’
Those close to the couple are anxious to emphasise that all is well.
Preparations for the wedding — Albert’s first, at the age of 53 — were under way for months and around £50 million was spent to ensure the three-day event was glamorous and memorable.
Alain Ducasse, France’s most celebrated chef, provided the food, while Johnny Hallyday and Andrea Bocelli were to perform (the latter for a rumoured £5 million fee)

Politicians and celebrities — among them President Sarkozy, a pregnant Carla Bruni and Naomi Campbell — jetted in for yesterday’s civil ceremony, which saw Albert and Charlene, who wore a sky blue Chanel suit, pose for an awkward kiss on the balcony of the 13th-century royal palace. There will be a separate religious ceremony later today.

Against this lavish backdrop, rumours of a runaway bride are rather de trop, and the party line is that, while no legal action is to be brought against L’Express, the magazine which first published the allegations, they are the result of some terrible misunderstanding.
By way of underlining this, the bride’s father talked to a radio station in his family’s native South Africa on Thursday.
Speaking from the Presidential Palace in Monaco, he said: ‘The only thing that I can think it was, is that Charlene took her mum to Paris on Monday to get shoes and a hat for the wedding and that’s the only time she was anywhere near an aeroplane and she was there for a day and back.’
However, this doesn’t tally with the fact that the journalist who wrote the story first made his claims on Twitter last Saturday, two days before the Paris trip.[via]