Georgina Rodríguez reveals why she and Cristiano Ronaldo chose to marry in their living room, with their children by their side.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez could have chosen almost anywhere to get married. Instead, when they finally became husband and wife after nearly a decade together, they chose the living room of their home in Cascais, Portugal, with their children around them.Rodríguez has explained that the couple wanted their wedding to feel different from the grand celebration many might have expected from one of the world’s most famous sporting couples. For a family accustomed to luxury, travel and the extraordinary scale of Ronaldo’s career, the most unusual choice was to make the occasion as ordinary and personal as possible.

Why the living room mattered to them

Rodríguez told Vogue that the couple wanted to do something “unusual”, while making clear that the intimate ceremony does not necessarily mean they have abandoned the idea of a larger celebration.“In the future, we will have a big wedding, so we can celebrate with family and friends,” she said.That future celebration would be very different from the ceremony they chose for Aug. 11. Rodríguez recalled how her idea of a wedding had changed since childhood, when she imagined the traditional extravagance of a fairy-tale ceremony.“When I was a little girl, I dreamt of the biggest castle, the biggest carriage, the longest dress [and] a crown full of diamonds. And now I’m saying, ‘No. I want something intimate, with my partner and our children, at home.’”For Rodríguez, the attraction was precisely that their home already contained the luxuries that might otherwise have been used to create an elaborate wedding.“Because castles, houses, islands, horses, cars: We have all of that within reach every day. But something intimate, that’s more unusual for us.”

The table where their family lives

The ceremony took place in the living room of their home in Cascais, where the family normally spends time together. Rodríguez said that familiarity was central to the decision because she wanted the wedding to become part of the family’s own history rather than simply an event surrounded by ceremony.“We’ve chosen to do it in the living room of our house here, where we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and where we live the reality of our lives,” she told Vogue.She also had a particular image in mind for how their children might remember the day decades from now.“In 30 years’ time I want the children to think, ‘Something wonderful happened at this table, the wedding vows of our parents.’”Ronaldo, 41, immediately brought some of his usual humour to the idea, pointing out that the room itself may not remain unchanged for that long.“It probably won’t be the same table. We might change the decor,” he joked.

Their five children were at the centre of it

The ceremony was attended by their five children: Cristiano Ronaldo Jr., 16, twins Eva Maria and Mateo, nine, Alana, eight, and Bella, four. Ronaldo’s son Cristiano Jr. was born before his relationship with Rodríguez, while the couple’s other children form the family they have built together.Their son Ángel, Bella’s twin brother, died at birth in April 2022, a loss Rodríguez has previously discussed in her Netflix series I Am Georgina.Rodríguez said the presence of the family made the private ceremony particularly emotional.“It was exactly as I’d imagined it,” she said. “Intimate, full of love, and with our family in the most important starring role. I couldn’t hold back the tears.”That family-first approach also explains why the couple’s wedding looked so different from the rumours that surrounded it beforehand. Hundreds of people had gathered near Funchal Cathedral in Madeira after reports suggested the ceremony would take place there, only for those expectations to prove wrong. Ronaldo and Rodríguez instead kept the actual ceremony in Cascais and revealed the marriage afterwards through photographs of their wedding rings.Ronaldo captioned the announcement simply: “C❤️G.”

A private wedding, with more to come

The living-room ceremony was not presented by Rodríguez as the final celebration of their marriage. She has said there can still be a larger wedding involving family and friends, but the first ceremony gave the couple something they wanted at this stage of their lives: a moment that belonged primarily to them and their children.That choice also came after years in which their relationship had been lived under intense public attention. Ronaldo and Rodríguez first met while she was working at a Gucci store in Madrid, beginning a relationship that would eventually become a family life shared across Portugal, Spain and Saudi Arabia.Now, after nearly a decade together, they chose not to mark the marriage with a spectacle. They chose the room where their children eat, where they spend ordinary days and where, as Rodríguez put it, they “live the reality of our lives.”