Mando-pop king Jay Chou (周杰倫) and Taiwanese-Australian model/actress Hannah Quinlivan (昆凌) were married in Yorkshire, England, on Saturday afternoon in an extravagant ceremony featuring a string ensemble playing a composition by Chou.
The ceremony at Selby Abbey, in the town of Selby, came the day before Chou’s 36th birthday.
Quinlivan, 21, wore a heavily embroidered ball gown and a NT$33.38 million (US$1.05 million) tiara and necklace worth NT$278.1 million by French jeweler Chaumet.
Photo: Courtesy of JVR Music
Chou said he wrote a song for his marriage “to make the wedding different.”
The Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday said the ceremony was believed to have cost more than NT$20 million, including accommodation for guests, which it said cost about NT$10 million.
Chou did not accept any sponsorship for the wedding.
Photo: CNA
However, it was not clear yesterday whether the Selby Abbey ceremony was actually a wedding or a “blessing” service.
According to the abbey’s Web site, under UK law, to be married in the abbey would require at least one of the couple to have lived in the parish of Selby Abbey, attended services for a set period there, or had a parent or grandparent married at the abbey.
According to JVR Music, the couple registered their marriage last year. It is unclear whether the marriage was registered in Taiwan or another country.
Chou’s record and management company, JVR Music, on Saturday released three engagement photographs of the couple that were taken in France, Germany and the Czech Republic in October last year.
One of the photos shows the couple facing each other with the Prague’s historic Charles Bridge the background.
Another shows Quinlivan in a long white dress embracing Chou, who is wearing a white shirt and dark vest and pants, next to a horse in a pasture, with the iconic Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein in the background.
This story has been amended since it was first published to correct the date of the wedding.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit