A wedding celebration in Madeira was disrupted by a crowd of over 2,000 people who mistakenly believed they were witnessing the nuptials of football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and his fiancée, Georgina Rodríguez.
The gathering, which included fans wearing Cristiano Ronaldo jerseys, mobbed the square outside the Roman Catholic cathedral in Funchal, where the couple had been heavily rumored to be getting married. Social media reports fueled the speculation.
However, the ceremony was for an unrelated Portuguese couple, Fabio Ramos and Fatima Nicole Cunha Teixeira, who reside in France and had returned to the island for their wedding. The bride, Fatima, arrived in a vintage grey Rolls Royce, drawing a large throng of onlookers eager to catch a glimpse of who they thought was Rodríguez.
Members of the wedding party had to push through the crowd to reach the cathedral. "Fabio is not Cristiano Ronaldo. This is all crazy. We did not expect anything like this," one individual stated. The bride's bridesmaids, in purple dresses, also faced difficulty clearing a path for her.
Father Marcos Gonçalves, the parish priest, confirmed that the couple had no connection to Cristiano Ronaldo and that he did not believe the footballer had booked the cathedral for any future date.
Rumors surrounding Ronaldo and Rodríguez's potential wedding have been circulating for some time. Previous claims about a ceremony at the Quinta da Regaleira palace in Sintra, Portugal, were debunked. More recently, speculation shifted to Madeira, with suggestions of a reception at the Savoy Palace hotel.
Ronaldo and Rodríguez met in 2016 when she worked as a sales assistant at a Gucci store in Madrid. They have two biological children together, and she helps raise all five of his children. The couple became engaged in August of the previous year, with Ronaldo proposing with a large diamond ring.