A WEDDING AMONG THE 1%

Now I more fully understand what the Occupy Wall Street protesters mean by saying they represent the 99%.

At current exchange rates, 12 million pounds is equivalent to 19.11 million dollars.

MY WEDDING DAY COST £12M… JUST DON’T TELL DAD! F1 BOSS BERNIE ECCLESTONE REVEALS SURPRISE BILL FOR PETRA’S NUPTIALS

By Allan Hall

Mail Online
November 10, 2011

Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone only found out his daughter’s wedding had cost him more than £12million after the big day – because his ex-wife settled the bill and didn’t tell him.

The extraordinarily high price tag for the ceremony was revealed for the first time yesterday in a German court case. It had previously been thought to have cost around £5million.

Ecclestone’s youngest daughter Petra, 22, married businessman James Stunt in August at a medieval castle in the Italian town of Bracciano.

The lavish celebration included stunning fireworks displays, acrobats performing beneath hot air balloons, £4,000 bottles of Chateau Petrus claret and a private show by chart-topping band The Black Eyed Peas.

Petra’s Vera Wang wedding dress cost £80,000 and the service was accompanied by 18 members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, who had been flown in for the occasion. Accompanying them was the 20-member Tenebrae Choir, described as ‘one of the greatest choirs in the world’.

More than 250 VIPs attended and they were kept cool in air-conditioned flower-filled canopies in the castle grounds.

Giving evidence for a second day at the fraud trial of a German banker, Ecclestone told the court: ‘Let me tell you something. When my youngest daughter said she was getting married I thought as father of the bride I should pay for the wedding.

When it was suggested how much they would be spending on drinks I thought it was absurd. So I managed to upset my daughter and my wife.

‘Only later did I learn that it cost in excess of £12million which I did not find out about until later, paid by my wife, and I did not find out from her.’

In another startling revelation, the Munich court also heard the 81-year-old motor racing tycoon confess to having a ‘girlfriend’ during his 24-year marriage to wife Slavica. In court he constantly referred to Slavica, 53, as his wife, despite their divorce in 2009.