Olympic rings will trump wedding rings next July when Prince Albert II of Monaco will bring forward his nuptials to accommodate the International Olympic Committee, his palace said Monday.
In June, Prince Albert announced plans to marry South African swimming champ Charlene Wittstock on July 8 next year, a date which, it now turns out, would clash with the IOC's July 5 to 9 meeting in Durban.
Albert, himself a former Olympic bobsleigh racer, has been a member of the world's top sporting federation since 1985 and has decided to get married a week early on July 2, 2011 so as not to miss the meeting.
But his 32-year-old bride need not worry that the playboy prince has his priorities mixed up -- the palace said Albert plans to make the best of the clash of dates by turning the Durban jaunt into an African honeymoon.
"The couple wanted to have the Olympic family around them," a statement from the princely household in Monaco explained. "The prince also wanted the princess' first foreign trip to be to her homeland, South Africa."
Charlene and Albert -- the son of the late Hollywood star Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III -- will therefore wed at a civil ceremony at the palace on July 2 and at a religious ceremony on the next day.
Perhaps the Olympic postponement was to be expected, as Albert and Charlene's relationship has thus far been dominated by the sporting calendar.
The 52-year-old prince met his love when she competed at a swimming meeting he was hosting in Monaco in 2000, and they made their first public appearance together at the Turin Winter Olympics of 2006.
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