Former French president Hollande weds actress Julie Gayet

The couple tied the knot on Saturday in a private, low-key ceremony in the town of Tulle, in the central department of Corrèze.

The news was announced to La Montagne newspaper by the mayor of Tulle, Bernard Combes, with a picture of the couple showing the groom in a suit and his bride in a white dress climbing the stairs of the local town hall.

Combes had succeeded Hollande as head of the city hall back in 2008.

Hollande, who has four children with his former partner and fellow Socialist politician Ségolène Royal, had never before been married.

Gayet, a mother of two boys, divorced Argentinian screenwriter Santiago Amigorena in 2006. She celebrated her 50th birthday on the eve of her wedding to Hollande.

Little was revealed about the guest list beyond the presence of French singer Benjamin Biolay who worked with Gayet on a film in 2021.

Scandal

Hollande had an affair with Gayet while president and in a relationship with journalist Valerie Trierweiler, who was France's de facto first lady at the time.

In January 2014, French glossy magazine Closer published bombshell photographs of Hollande arriving for a tryst with Gayet on a scooter at an apartment near his official residence in the heart of Paris.

The images, accompanied by a story replete with salacious details about bodyguards being dispatched to buy croissants for the pair in the morning, dealt a severe blow to Hollande's credibility.

Trierweiler went on to write a best-selling tell-all memoir that recounted how she tried to commit suicide in the presidential bedroom after the media revelations.

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Hollande and Gayet agreed to their first joint photo session only in 2018 once Hollande had left office, having ended his five-year term in power with record low approval ratings.

In a rare interview the same year, she described Hollande's time as leader as a period of "crazy violence" that included a series of jihadist attacks that cost hundreds of lives.

"I tried to give energy to the president, to take care of him, to be there to listen," she told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

"Since I met him, it's given me wings," added the star of Netflix drama "The Perfect Mother" who is an increasingly influential film producer. "I love his way of thinking, of being, his humour."

(with AFP)