SYDNEY, June 25: Church bells rang to mark Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman’s own love story when she married country music singer Keith Urban in a traditional Catholic ceremony at a cliff-top chapel on Sunday.

Police and security guards held back hundreds of well-wishers and international media as Kidman arrived at twilight for the ceremony in a sandstone chapel set on an estate overlooking Sydney Harbour and the Pacific Ocean.

Kidman smiled and waved as she arrived in a convoy of cream Rolls Royce wedding cars just before 5:30pm.

Church bells pealed across the sprawling estate an hour later, signalling the romantic, candlelit ceremony was over.

“We just want to thank everyone in Australia and around the world who have sent us their warm wishes,” Kidman and Urban said in a statement released with an official wedding picture.

Kidman and Urban, both Australians but born overseas, met in January 2005 at an awards dinner held by the Australian government in Los Angeles honouring the two of them.

The statuesque Kidman, 39, wore an elegant ivory-coloured dress, reportedly designed by French fashion house Balenciaga, and sheer veil and carried a simple posy of white roses.

Helicopters buzzed overhead as Kidman drove from her ritzy Sydney harbourside home. Well-wishers and photographers got within arms-reach of her car as she arrived for the wedding.—Reuters