The bride may have worn black, but Avril Lavigne’s fairytale nuptials to Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger were most traditional.
The Canadian rockers married in a top-secret ceremony at Chateau de la Napoule, a medieval castle outside Cannes, France on Monday and have shared their story – and 14 pages of photos – with Hello! magazine (Canada).
Avril, 28, wore a stunning black Monique Lhuillier gown and told Hello! that “I wanted to make sure it’s a crazy vacation and an experience of a lifetime for our guests.”
And, by all accounts, she did.
Surrounded by 110 friends and family, the celebrity couple’s three-day wedding celebrations kicked off with an emotional and intimate candlelit ceremony and ended with fireworks.
“It was very natural. We were friends having a good time and then it just happened,” Avril told Hello! “It felt like fate was intervening and I was just being given this wake-up call: don’t let this one get away,” Chad, 38, adds.
“I’ve been planning this wedding for a really long time,” Avril told Hello! “I showed him everything and he let me take the reins and bounce ideas off of him.”
The couple partied into the wee hours of the night, bopping along to tunes such as Sweet Home Alabama and Bruno Mars’ Marry You.
“When you’ve got that ring on your finger that you get to look at every single day, and you get to call that other person husband or wife, it’s a really special feeling,” Chad told Hello!.
“We hope to be together forever,” added Avril. “One day down the road we’ll have a family. I look forward to growing with Chad.”
This is Chad’s first marriage and Avril’s second. she split from ex-husband Deryck Whibley (of Sum 41) in October 2009.