Liberal leader Justin Trudeau waves at supporters with his wife after winning a liberal majority October 19, 2015. (Photograph by Roger Lemoyne)
This story, which follows Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire’s courtship and wedding, was originally published in Maclean's magazine in 2005. It was written by Chatelaine editor-in-chief Lianne George, who was a Maclean’s editor at the time.
As a rule, Canadians aren’t anxious to celebrate our social elite. We don’t cultivate Kennedys or Windsors—and you don’t see us tripping over ourselves every time a prime minister’s offspring passes his bar exam. But if, hypothetically, we were to design a quintessentially Canadian prince, he’d probably look something like Justin Trudeau, the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau, the country’s first and only pop-star prime minister. With his mother’s good looks and joie de vivre and his father’s staunch idealism and Montreal-bred je ne sais quoi, Justin is, for many, as close as it gets to Canadian royalty. Last weekend, in front of some 180 guests, Trudeau, 33, married his girlfriend, Sophie Grégoire, 30, in what was, by Canadian standards, a sweet and appropriately understated fairy-tale wedding. “It’s just so happy,” said Margaret Trudeau, mother of the groom. “The past two times my family has come to Montreal for family occasions it’s been extraordinarily sorrowful. This time it is joyful, so we’re all savouring the fact that we’re here to celebrate such happiness in our family.”
As crowds and camera crews gathered outside the Sainte-Madeleine d’Outremont church, the bride donned her dress in the penthouse suite of Hotel Le St-James, a posh boutique establishment in Old Montreal. She made her entrance to cheers and applause, and some of the bridesmaids started to cry. Later, after posing for photos, she rode to the church in a 2004 Rolls Royce Phantom, which, according to the chauffeur, is the only one of its kind in Canada (starting price: about $400,000). Following the ceremony, an intimate Catholic service in which the newlyweds handed the communion wafers to their respective families, they descended the church steps through a cordon of bagpipers, Mounties and jubilant guests.
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