BEIRUT: George Clooney’s Lebanese father-in-law said on Sunday that his daughter Amal Alamuddin’s wedding to the Hollywood heartthrob was “very good news” for the turmoil-ridden Middle East.

“The wedding was more than perfect,” Ramzi Alamuddin told AFP by telephone from Venice.

Clooney and his Lebanese-British lawyer bride married on Saturday at a star-studded private wedding, although they officially tied the knot on Monday.

Ramzi Alamuddin said the wedding was a “grand” but “simple” affair, with close friends and relatives attending an event he described as “good news.”

“It is very good news among the bad news we are living now,” he said.

The celebrity nuptials come as unrest grips much of the Middle East, where a US-led coalition is staging air strikes on the jihadist Islamic State group in Lebanon’s neighbor Syria and in Iraq.

Saturday’s ceremony also coincided with Al-Qaeda’s Syria franchise, Al-Nusra Front, threatening reprisals against the coalition which includes several Arab allies.

Other Lebanese agreed that the wedding was the only good news to have emerged from their problem-riddled Mediterranean nation.

“The roads in the country are blocked, we don’t have a president, parliament is paralyzed, (Prime Minister Tammam) Salam is busy with the issue of the soldiers (kidnapped by jihadists), and the country is on the verge of collapse,” said one Twitter user, using the hashtag #congratulations.

“But thank God, Clooney has become the son of Lebanon,” he added.

Parliament in Beirut has tried but failed several times since June to elect a new president, but a vote has been delayed again and again by political wrangling.

“It was grand simple and perfect. The couple really do match,” said the actor’s new father-in-law.

“The couple was very happy about how they were welcomed in Venice,” he said.

Watching from afar, one Twitter user effusively welcomed Clooney, 53, as Lebanon’s new “son-in-law.”

“God bring you prosperity and children,” she tweeted.

Amal’s father taught tourism at the prestigious American University of Beirut. Her mother, Baria, heads the international section at London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.