Rod Stewart has married fiance Penny Lancaster in an intimate ceremony on the Italian Riviera.

After a joint pre-wedding party at the luxury Hotel Excelsior in Rapallo on Friday night, the couple married on Saturday morning in a 17th century villa in Portofino.

Local councillor Maria Benazzi carried out the ceremony and told the Mail on Sunday: “It was a very simple and sober ceremony that lasted about 20 to 25 minutes. It’s usually only around 15 minutes but as there was a translator there it lasted a little bit longer.”

“Penny arrived first and had to wait a few minutes for Rod, so the ceremony started just a little after 10am.”

“The villa’s grounds were closed off for the ceremony and the gardens were full of bodyguards. “For the ceremony itself there was only Rod and Penny and her parents.”

“There was the classic simple civil wedding service, with an exchange of rings, and at the end I pronounced them man and wife. They kissed each other and her parents applauded.”

Penny wore a tight, knee-length cream dress and high-heeled cream sandals for the event while Rod wore blue pinstriped trousers with a cream blazer.


After the ceremony, the newlywed couple walked around the small town with their 18 month old son Alastair. They then handed Alastair over to Penny’s mum and spent the afternoon alone together on Rod’s luxury yacht mooored off the coast.

A small scale wedding reception took place at a nearby former monastery in the evening with guests including Desperate Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan and her fiance Michael Bolton, and five of Rod’s children including daughter Kimberley Stewart.

Penny and Rod began dating in 1998 and got engaged in early 2005 but were unable to marry until Rod’s divorce from second wife Rachel Hunter was finalised late last year.