As half the world knows—and in a World Cup year possibly more than half—Cristiano Ronaldo’s lucky number is seven.
He and his partner Georgina Rodríguez call me on Zoom from their new summer house in Cascais, Portugal, five days before their wedding. They took possession of the place in July—the seventh month of the year. It took seven years to build. “It’s perfect,” Georgina says. “All number sevens are signs.”
However, their wedding will take place on another symbolic day: August 11, the 10th anniversary of the day they first met at the Gucci store in Madrid. For weeks, the internet has been awash with rumors: They’re getting married this weekend. No, this weekend. The rumoured celebrity guest list stretches from Rio Ferdinand to Rihanna.
“It’s incredible what you hear,” Georgina acknowledges with a smile. But this will be no Dua Lipa–or Taylor Swift–style blowout. Instead, the couple, who have over 750 million Instagram followers between them, will marry in their living room.
“In the future we will have a big wedding, so we can celebrate with family and friends,” Georgina explains. But this has been a “crazy year” of “work commitments, competitions, kids” for Cris y Gio, as they are known to friends and family, and she didn’t want to let their 10-year anniversary slip by unmarked. “When I was a little girl,” she reflects, “I dreamt of the biggest castle, the biggest carriage, the longest dress, a crown full of diamonds. And now I’m saying: no. I want something intimate, with my partner and our children, at home. Because castles, houses, islands, horses, cars: We have all of that within reach every day. But something intimate—that’s more unusual for us.” In the economy of fame, privacy is priceless.
That doesn’t mean she has to skip the diamonds. For the past year, Georgina—model, mother, founder of the activewear line Mimoa—has been wearing an oval-cut diamond engagement ring so vast it may well upstage any human participants in the wedding. To this, she plans to add a Chopard Garden of Kalahari necklace with a D-flawless 50-carat brilliant-cut diamond as its centrepiece.
The Ronaldos-to-be are an entertaining double act. Mutually adoring, Georgina takes the lead and speaks with feeling. Cristiano, whose Spanish has a winning Portuguese lilt, is always ready with a comic interjection.
“We’ve chosen to do it in the living room of our house here,” Georgina explains, “where we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and where we live the reality of our lives. In 30 years’ time I want the children to think, Something wonderful happened at this table—the wedding vows of our parents.”
“It probably won’t be the same table,” says Cristiano. “We might change the decor.”
Georgina shoots him an aggrieved look. Despite the material abundance of their lives, she has kept a 15-year-old treadmill, which now hurts their knees if they run on it, for sentimental reasons: It’s the one Cristiano trained on in Madrid, when they first met.
In August 2016, Cristiano Ronaldo, then 31 and at the height of his footballing powers, walked into the Gucci store on the Calle Serrano in Madrid with his six-year-old son Cristiano Jr. Georgina, then 22, had recently returned to Spain from England, where she’d worked as an au pair. (She’d always wanted to be a mother.) She’d taken a job as a sales assistant at the Gucci store but wasn’t supposed to be on duty that day—she was covering for a friend. “That’s destiny,” she says.
Cristiano picks up the story: “I had my back to her and then I turned around and saw her. Our eyes met, and from that point on it was….”
“It was a dream,” Georgina suggests.
“Yes, a dream,” says Cristiano. “I know she’s the love of my life, and I think I am”—he pauses and grins—“I think she thinks I’m the love of her life.”
The following year, twins Eva and Mateo were born and also Alana, and in 2022 they welcomed another set of twins, Bella and Ángel. Sadly, only Bella survived, and together with Cristiano Jr., they form a large family.
“The children know that our time belongs to them,” Georgina says. Both she and Cristiano, who grew up in Spain and Portugal, respectively, come from what Georgina describes as “less structured families.” It’s important to both of them to show their children “the value of having nothing and of having everything.” At the wedding the children will be, in Georgina’s words, “protagonists, as they are in all our days.”
Given the origins of their romance, they will, of course, be wearing Gucci. When we speak, Georgina has just taken receipt of her white silk faille skirt suit and matching satin shoes with the signature silver horsebit detail. Cristiano’s custom light beige cotton suit and custom loafers and the children’s matching outfits are due to arrive the following day.
“It felt incredibly special to dress Georgina and Cristiano for this moment, knowing their love story began in a Gucci store in Madrid,” Gucci’s artistic director, Demna, tells me. “There is something so romantic about it—a beautiful circle closing, almost like a modern fairy tale.”
Georgina adds that Demna understood right away what they were trying to do. “He’s not going to dress us up,” she explains. “I didn’t want us to go into a day that was so simple for us in costumes.” The wedding photos will be taken by Juergen Teller, the provocateur known for his artfully stark images. They chose him, Georgina says, because “his photographs are art. I didn’t want the typical boring family album. I wanted an artistic one that would last forever.”
After the ceremony, they will drive to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, an hour away, where the priest will close off a small sanctuary and give them a blessing. (“I tend to avoid places where there are crowds,” Cristiano explains—the mobs would otherwise make it impossible.) There won’t be a honeymoon. They have to leave for their home in Riyadh the next day—Cristiano, who now plays for Saudi Arabia, starts the season on August 15. He’s taking it in his stride. “Every day is a honeymoon,” he says.
Will being married change anything? I ask them.
They both think not. But “just the fact of being man and wife—you enter a different league,” Cristiano says.
Often referred to as the greatest soccer player in the world, he says, “this is probably my last year of football, and I want to leave a spectacular legacy.” He’s looking forward to spending more time with the family. “I have my future all mapped out,” he says. “I have so many things to keep me busy that to tell you just one thing is hard. Because football could leave a big hole, you have to fill your time in various ways, not just one. And also have more fun, travel more, watch and play padel, which I really like, and continue to enjoy what I’ve earned—what we’ve earned. Because after all it’s been 25 years with a lot of sacrifice.”
Will they have more children? Perhaps seven? They don’t rule it out. “I never say never,” Cristiano says. Georgina adds: “Another baby now would be overbooking [she uses the English word] at home. But when the youngest are 15 or 16 we’ll still be young, so why not? It’s true that I can’t imagine myself without small children, so we’ll see.”
For now, they’re looking forward to the wedding being, as Cristiano puts it, “a normal day.” Then he pauses to correct himself, looks across at Georgina and says sweetly: “It will be a special day, spent in a normal way.”
The day after the wedding, Georgina sends me a message. “It was exactly as I’d imagined it,” she reports. “Intimate, full of love, and with our family in the most important starring role. I couldn’t hold back the tears.”
There was one development she didn’t expect, though. She had been to Fatima before, but she had never visited the particular chapel where they celebrated Mass after the blessing, the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows. She looked around her in that moment and “felt a peace and an energy that are very hard to describe,” she tells me. “I needed nothing more: my husband, my children, our home, our faith, and our love.”
Make-up: Fernando Martinez
Hair: Fernando Torrent
Special thanks to: Angels Project
This story was originally published on Vogue.com.
