Wedding caps 18-month Holmes-Cruise saga

In this photo released by Rogers and Cowan, actor Tom Cruise and actress Katie Holmes pose in their wedding attire on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2006, at the 15th-century Odescalchi Castle overlooking Lake Bracciano outside of Rome. (AP Photo/Robert Evans)

NEW YORK - The lavish weekend wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes bore many symbols of the singular 18-month relationship between the two stars.

The decorous, romantic setting of a 15th-century castle in Bracciano, Italy, was reminiscent of the fairy-tale quality of the actors' courtship. The much younger Holmes, 27, had once remarked that she grew up wanting to wed the "Risky Business" star.

"I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise," Holmes told Seventeen magazine before she and Cruise, 44, began dating.

But the young-girl fantasy theme to TomKat has never been the dominant one. They have instead been renown for extreme publicness and perceived peculiarity. In short, it is not a relationship that anyone has ever really understood.

After exchanging vows before a Scientology minister Saturday, Cruise and Holmes engaged in a "never-ending kiss," according to Giorgio Armani, who attended the wedding outside Rome and designed the outfits of the bride, the groom and their baby, Suri.

That kiss could be seen a sweet gesture or as a reminder of the hyper-love the couple (or at least Cruise) has openly displayed since they first announced their relationship in April 2005 in Rome. Just a month later, Cruise was hopping on Oprah Winfrey's couch.

"I can't be cool. I can't be laid-back," a starry-eyed Cruise said on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." "Something happened and I want to celebrate it."

Many were skeptical of the over-the-top emotion, suspicious that it was an act to help publicize each star's then-current movies: "War of the Worlds" and "Batman Returns." But those critics were temporarily silenced when, in June 2005, the couple became engaged at Paris' Eiffel Tower - happily posing for photographers and reporters immediately afterward.