Carole Radziwill is sharing rare photographs from the ultra-private wedding of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.
The “Real Housewives of New York City” alum shared exclusive photographs she took during the couple’s intimate 1996 ceremony with CNN in anticipation of the cable network’s three-part series “American Prince: JFK Jr,” which premieres Aug. 9.
“It’s almost like they eloped with 30 of their closest friends. It was very much like that,” Radziwill told CNN about the Kennedys’ ceremony in a one-room church on Cumberland Island in Georgia. “You didn’t get the sense that anything was overly planned. They just let things happen the way they happened. And there was something so beautiful about that.”
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In one photo, the power couple cut their three-tier wedding cake while another features Kennedy Jr. pictured with a faith leader and his uncle Ted Kennedy. Kennedy, the longtime U.S. senator representing Massachusetts, died in 2009. Another snap captured the fashion power couple dancing after the ceremony as Bessette Kennedy wears her husband’s suit jacket.
In one photo, JFK Jr. posed with his cousin – Radziwill’s husband Anthony Radziwill, who died of cancer in 1999 – while donning satin boxers and a tank top. Style icon Bessette Kennedy was snapped in her simple Narciso Rodriguez wedding dress.
The former journalist Radziwill was a close friend of the son of former President John F. Kennedy and his fashion publicist wife until their tragic death in a plane crash in 1999. The “RHONY” star told CNN that, to prevent leaks, the couple did not provide a lot of information to their wedding guests ahead of the ceremony.
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“It became apparent pretty quickly that nobody in the world knew we were there or why we were there,” Radziwill revealed. “That in itself was magical, because we were just like, ‘Oh, my God, they pulled it off.’ Mostly Carolyn pulled it off, because she was determined to be married privately.”
Radziwill said the simple nature of the ceremony added “an elegance to the casualness that I think is hard to replicate – certainly now and even then, it’s just who they were as human beings.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: JFK Jr., Carolyn Bessette seen in intimate wedding photos
