- ROME: Filmmaker Sofia Coppola went back to her roots for her wedding, marrying rocker Thomas Mars in the remote, southern Italian town where her great-grandfather was born.
Coppola's famous filmmaker father, Francis Ford Coppola, escorted the 40-year-old Sofia down the aisle Saturday to a waiting Mars, lead singer of the French band Phoenix and the father of their two young daughters.
The early evening ceremony took place in the garden of the palazzo that the elder Coppola renovated in the historic center of Bernalda, a city near the Gulf of Taranto in Italy's Basilicata region, according to Mayor Leonardo Chiruzzi who performed the ceremony.
"Everything went well," Chiruzzi told The Associated Press afterwards. "It was simple, calm, in the garden." The bride wore a sheer, lavender tulle dress and Mars a gray suit with a flower in the lapel. The bride and her father were preceded down the aisle by the couple's older daughter and other children. After Coppola and Mars said their "si" in the civil service, she tossed her bouquet and a friend caught it, Chiruzzi said.
The newlyweds and the father of the bride, wearing a white linen suit and pink shirt, then popped out of the palazzo briefly to greet onlookers. She was holding a glass of bubbly.



