Football’s biggest stars have often had weddings that attracted almost as much attention as their performances on the pitch. From David and Victoria Beckham’s celebrity spectacle in an Irish castle to Lionel Messi’s star-studded celebration in Argentina, these five weddings combined sporting fame, celebrity guests, luxury and plenty of memorable details.
David Beckham and Victoria Beckham
David Beckham was already one of football’s biggest names when he married Victoria Adams, then known as Posh Spice from the Spice Girls, on July 4, 1999.
Beckham had just played a major role in Manchester United’s historic 1998-99 Treble, when the club won the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League. He went on to win six Premier League titles with United, a La Liga title with Real Madrid and earned 115 England caps.
The wedding took place at Luttrellstown Castle near Dublin, Ireland, a 560-acre estate that gave the couple the privacy and grandeur they wanted. The ceremony itself was remarkably intimate, with Beckham and Victoria exchanging vows in front of just 29 family members and close friends. A reception later brought the total number of guests to about 230.
The guest list included Manchester United teammates and Spice Girls stars, while Gary Neville served as Beckham’s best man. Their four-month-old son Brooklyn was the ring bearer. Security was intense, with about 125 security staff reportedly employed to keep photographers away from the ceremony.
The couple famously embraced the extravagance of late-1990s celebrity culture. Victoria wore a champagne-coloured Vera Wang gown and a reported £30,000 tiara, while the newlyweds later changed into matching purple outfits and posed on enormous golden thrones. Elton John performed with an 18-piece orchestra, and the celebration was reportedly tied to a £1mn deal with OK! magazine.
Beckham and Victoria have four children: Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper. Their wedding remains one of football’s most recognisable celebrity ceremonies and helped to cement the couple’s image as «Posh and Becks.»
Lionel Messi and Antonela Roccuzzo
Lionel Messi married his childhood sweetheart Antonela Roccuzzo on June 30, 2017, in his home city of Rosario, Argentina.
By then Messi was already a global football icon. He had won multiple Champions League titles with Barcelona and numerous Ballon d’Or awards before eventually completing his international legacy by captaining Argentina to the 2022 World Cup. FIFA describes his trophy collection as one of the most extraordinary in football history.
Antonela and Messi had known each other since childhood, making their wedding particularly attractive to fans. The couple chose the Hotel City Center Rosario, where around 260 guests attended what the Argentine media dubbed the «wedding of the century.»
The guest list looked more like a football all-star team than a traditional wedding. Neymar, Luis Suárez, Gerard Piqué, Xavi Hernández, Carles Puyol, Sergio Agüero and Ángel Di María were among the footballing names in attendance, while Piqué arrived with his then-partner Shakira. Messi’s sons Thiago and Mateo also attended the ceremony.
Antonela wore a dramatic mermaid-style gown designed by Spanish designer Rosa Clará. The couple also prepared personalised gifts for their guests, including Malbec wine, an engraved silver bottle opener, dulce de leche and chocolates. Rather than simply asking for presents, they encouraged guests to make donations.
Messi and Antonela now have three sons, Thiago, Mateo and Ciro. Their relationship has remained one of the most closely followed football family stories, with Antonela developing her own public profile as an entrepreneur and social media personality.
Bastian Schweinsteiger and Ana Ivanovic
Bastian Schweinsteiger and Serbian tennis star Ana Ivanovic created one of sport’s most glamorous power couples when they married in Venice in July 2016.
Schweinsteiger’s football CV was formidable. He spent most of his career at Bayern Munich, winning eight Bundesliga titles and the 2013 Champions League among numerous other honours. His greatest international achievement came in 2014, when he helped Germany win the World Cup.
Ivanovic brought an equally impressive sporting reputation to the marriage. The former world No. 1 won the 2008 French Open and became one of the most recognisable players in women’s tennis.
Their wedding unfolded over two days in Venice. The couple first married at Venice City Hall on July 12 before holding a second ceremony at the Misericordia Church the following day.
Rather than staging an enormous celebrity production, the pair kept the event relatively private, inviting family, close friends and a selection of sporting stars. Their arrival and departure nevertheless became a spectacle, with the newlyweds travelling by boat through Venice after the civil ceremony.
Ivanovic wore a simple halter-neck gown for the first ceremony with a bouquet of white flowers, while Schweinsteiger opted for a dark suit without a tie. For the church ceremony, Ivanovic changed into a more traditional strapless gown.
The couple later had three sons, Luca, Leon and Teo. Their marriage eventually ended, with their separation confirmed in 2025, making their glamorous Venice wedding a memorable chapter in the story of one of football and tennis’ best-known sporting couples.
Pelé and Marcia Cibele Aoki
Pelé’s third wedding was a completely unique affair from the extravagant celebrity ceremonies associated with some modern football stars. The Brazilian football legend married businesswoman Marcia Cibele Aoki on July 9, 2016, when he was 75 and she was 50.
By then, Pelé had already firmly established himself as one of football’s greatest-ever players. He remains the only footballer to have won three World Cups, lifting the trophy with Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970. He spent most of his club career with Santos, winning numerous domestic and international honours and becoming one of the sport’s first truly global superstars.
Aoki was a successful businesswoman of Japanese-Brazilian heritage who worked in the medical equipment sector. The couple had a particularly unusual love story. They first met at a party in New York in the 1980s but did not begin a relationship at the time. They crossed paths again decades later after unexpectedly meeting in the lift of a building in São Paulo. They began dating in 2010 and made their relationship public in 2012.
The couple had reportedly planned to marry earlier, but Pelé’s health problems forced them to postpone the ceremony. They eventually tied the knot at the Espaço Atmosphera event venue in Guarujá, a coastal resort city in São Paulo state, in a private religious ceremony.
The luxurious private ceremony
Around 100 guests attended the wedding, with the guest list largely made up of family members and close friends. The arrangements were carefully designed to keep the ceremony away from the media, even though Pelé was one of the most recognisable people in the world. Ten couples from the Baixada Santista region were invited, along with 80 guests travelling from elsewhere.
The celebration was intimate but far from ordinary. The venue was described as a luxurious event hall and the reception had an elegant, almost royal feel. Renowned Santos chef Odilinha Hoehne was responsible for the wedding dinner, while decorator Pupy Zogaib handled the flowers and overall setting. Tatiana Aguena took the official wedding photographs.
Pelé also took significant steps to protect his guests from the press. He reserved a hotel for those attending and arranged for a beauty salon service from Jacques Janine to be available there, allowing female guests to prepare for the wedding without having to deal with photographers outside.
The bride was 25 years younger than Pelé, a detail that attracted plenty of attention at the time, but the football icon seemed keen to emphasise the seriousness of their relationship. After the ceremony, he shared a photograph of the newlyweds cutting their wedding cake and called Aoki his «definitive love.»
Unlike Pelé’s first two marriages, his relationship with Aoki did not produce children. Pelé already had several children from previous relationships, including three children with his first wife Rosemeri Cholbi and twins with his second wife Assíria Nascimento. Aoki remained his wife until Pelé’s death in December 2022.
The wedding is particularly memorable because it combined the privacy Pelé wanted in his later years with the luxury befitting a sporting icon. Rather than a huge celebrity spectacle, his third wedding was a carefully controlled celebration of about 100 people, held in an upscale venue on the Brazilian coast and centred on family, close friends and the woman Pelé called his «definitive love».
Luka Modrić and Vanja Bosnić
Luka Modrić has built one of the most decorated careers of his generation, yet his wedding to Vanja Bosnić was deliberately kept away from the spotlight.
The Croatian midfielder married Bosnić in Zagreb in May 2010 after several years together. Their civil ceremony was private, with Modrić’s former Tottenham and Croatia teammate Vedran Ćorluka serving as his best man. The couple later held a Catholic church ceremony the following year.
Modrić’s career exploded after the wedding. He joined Real Madrid in 2012 and became the club’s most decorated player, winning six European Cups, four La Liga titles and a host of other trophies during his 13 seasons in Madrid. In 2018 he won the Ballon d’Or after leading Croatia to the World Cup final and becoming the first player apart from Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo to win the award in more than a decade.
His wife Vanja has also played an important role behind the scenes. She studied economics and worked in sports representation before becoming involved in Modrić’s career. She was reportedly instrumental in helping facilitate his move from Tottenham to Real Madrid in 2012. Unlike many footballers’ partners, however, she has largely avoided social media and public attention.
The couple’s first child, son Ivano, was born only weeks after their wedding. They later had two daughters, Ema and Sofia, giving the family three children in total.
Modrić and Bosnić’s wedding stands out precisely because it lacked the huge guest lists and media circus associated with Beckham and Messi. While the footballer would later become a Ballon d’Or winner and Real Madrid legend, his wedding was a quiet family affair in Zagreb.
From celebrity spectacles to private ceremonies
These five weddings show just how differently football’s biggest stars have approached their personal lives. Beckham and Victoria turned their marriage into a defining piece of 1990s celebrity culture, while Messi brought together a remarkable collection of football and entertainment royalty.
Schweinsteiger and Ivanovic chose the romantic backdrop of Venice, Modrić deliberately kept his ceremony away from the public eye.
The common thread is that each wedding became memorable for a different reason: enormous celebrity appeal, a childhood love story, sporting glamour, historic simplicity or complete privacy.
