This Saturday, the Odescalchi Castle on Italy's Lake Bracciano will for one magical evening be transformed into the fairy tale palace where Katie Holmes will finally take Tom Cruise's supple hand in marriage (as stipulated in paragraph 68c of her billion-year contractual commitment), with a gathered crowd of Hollywood's greatest luminaries looking on in polite, incredulous bemusement. As the media coverage builds to a cacophonic crescendo, we help you wade through it all with a Countdown To Eternal Servitude round-up:
· The local businesses of Lake Bracciano are milking their moment in the spotlight for all its worth, with one local eatery introducing menu items such as "'Vanilla Sky' spaghetti, 'Last Samurai' filet with mushrooms and, for dessert, the Suri tart with chocolate sauce." The latter was directly responsible for an uncomfortable misunderstanding involving Tom Cruise and his in-laws, when the actor came bounding into the lobby of their hotel, gleefully announcing with a face smeared in a sticky, brown substance, "Hey, guys! Guess what I just ate! Suri!" [USA Today]
· A late night visit to Rome's city hall last night wasn't for a quickie marriage license—it was to meet Rome's Mayor Walter Veltroni, described as "a big movie buff." Tom reportedly was more than happy to oblige Veltroni's request to recreate his favorite sequence, and proceeded to delight the Mayor and his staff by sliding down the grand building's marble halls in nothing but a dress shirt, briefs, and a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses. [AP]

People has posted their $1 million get: the exclusive photos of Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K. Stern's symbolic-union-at-sea. From the looks of it, that fee further prorates to approximately $125k per zonked-out portrait of Smith and her legally unbinding lawyer/lifemate/rock exchanging "vows and temporary rings before a Baptist minister." (We'll assume any glasses being smashed after the "I do's" were purely accidental and probably methadone-related.) And while varying eyewitness reports have placed everything at the scene from Dom Perignon-powered speedboats to pasty-enhanced breast feeding sessions, the reality was that Smith's fake party-boat marriage was the kind of modest and low-key affair that is not at all out of place for someone who just lost their son to a mysterious drug overdose weeks before:

Blushing commitment ceremony participant Anna Nicole Smith and the main mensch in her life, Howard K. Stern, seemed to have taken the day off yesterday from their whirlwind mourning schedule in memory of her son Daniel; perhaps the two were solemnly atoning for a year's worth of opportunistic sins in a Dom Perignon-stocked catamaran off the coast of Nassau. In any case, the Anna Nicole circus is back in full force with its cast of payout-seekers, scoop-hungry editors, litigious ex-boyfriends and bumbling Caribbean law enforcement clowns. A round-up:
· Radar is reporting that People has purchased the photos of the couple's lucrative photo-op legally nonbinding hitching-at-sea for a cool $1 million, an expense the magazine justified by writing it off as another generous charitable donation to the worthy cause of eradicating poverty in Anna Nicole Smith. [Radar]
· Why would anyone in their right mind pay $1 million for a legally nonbinding hitching-at-sea? Because one photo has Anna Nicole holding her newborn wearing nothing but pasties. As if that wasn't enough of a cruel tease for hungry little Dannielynn, sources overhead Smith drunkenly asking her daughter, "Want some milk? Want a Viper? Like my body? TrimSpa, baby!!!" [Gawker]
· Smith, still in the Bahamas, was served with papers yesterday from the other creepy guy in her life, Larry Birkhead, who wants mother and daughter to return to LA immediately for paternity testing. The Royal Bahamas Police Force, meanwhile, is still not completely satisfied with Smith's private autopsy findings that son Daniel died of a methadone-and-antidepressants overdose, and are still pursuing several theories, including the, "Hey—let's drag this out and cash in on some more free publicity!" theory. [AP]

In an update to yesterday's feel-good announcement that Anna Nicole Smith had married her lawyer/babydaddy/ dead-son's-photo-broker Howard K. Stern aboard the S.S. Trainwreck, the AP is now reporting that the marriage off the coast of Nassau wasn't official, but merely a commitment ceremony between two sedated soulmates:

While we're rusty on the various stages of grieving—we know denial and anger are in there somewhere—we're almost certain that "quickie marriage aboard a party boat just a few miles from where your 20-year-old son died weeks before" is not among them. And yet, that appears to be exactly how Anna Nicole Smith is processing yesterday's toxicology report findings that Daniel Smith died of a drug overdose: by marrying Howard K. Stern, the lawyer/daddy figure/creepy lurking presence in her life who just days ago told Larry King he fathered her baby. Star magazine has the exclusive:

Our right-coasted, left-brained sibling Gawker share an intimidating algorithm they found in the NYT that attempts to predict the percentage of likelihood of celebrity marriage success. (It's in their subscription-only TimesSelect section, once again demonstrating how higher learning is really the exclusive realm of those who can afford it.) The Sundem/Tierney Unified Celebrity Theory then spits out some deeply discouraging math, putting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's chances of making a marriage work at a mere 10%. Based on Pitt's recent comments, however, we doubt such formulation will ever apply, at least until a Sundem/Tierney Celebrity Philanthropic Civil Partnership Theory is devised. Even bleaker are Britney Spears and Kevin Federline's prospects—0% chance of lasting to their wood-and-silverware, fifth anniversary—though due to the equations exclusion of procreative data, we can't say that number is completely accurate. Surely success rates are higher when you figure in such matrimonial bond-strengthening data as the B/d* factor.

Pamela Anderson, crusader on behalf of fryer-bound chickens everywhere, posted an entry in her website diary today in which she announced her plans to marry longtime on-again, off-again boyfriend and Scott Stapp sex-tape consort, Kid Rock:

Just a few hours after the last showtune rendition had been expertly high-kicked by Hugh Jackman and the wedding reception cleanup crew had begun packing her father back into his shipping container, radiant bride Nicole Kidman and her new husband Keith Urban boarded a jet headed towards the most remote, private location they could think of for their honeymoon—a resort in sunny, tropical Tahiti. The very same resort, as a matter of fact, where telephoto-lens-seeking-missile Eva Longoria happened to be checking in with boyfriend Tony Parker:

Like a heightened state of regular-people romance, celebrity romance offers its famous participants more of everything—more passion, more love, more cheating—and, should it ever be blessed enough to get to that point, far more artistry when it comes to popping the question. Patricia Arquette recently shared the creative circumstances surrounding Thomas Jane's marriage proposal, and while it was long in coming (the couple has been engaged since 2002 and have a three-year-old daughter), it was certainly worth the wait. From Page Six:

Whether merely by coincidence or some heavenly congruence orchestrated by the Celebrity Love Gods, the nuptials of movie star Nicole Kidman and TV star Marcia Cross gave the past few days the unofficial title of "Icy Redhead Dogged By Lesbian Rumors Marriage Weekend." By all media accounts, both events were well-attended, hugely joyous occasions: The Kidman-Urban reception featured guests Hugh Jackman, Fox potentate Rupert Murdoch, and Nicole's memorable arrival in a Rolls Royce with her proud father, who had been specially taxidermied for the occasion (see photo). Cross's wedding, meanwhile, was in San Gabriel, and was attended by her Desperate Housewives co-star Eva Longoria, who had a delightful evening of celebrating/screaming at caiter waiters to "clear faster." For easy reference, we refer you to USA Today's stat sheets on both affairs, which also act as a telling metric of fame: Kidman's report coming in at 437 words to Cross's 202.

As Nicole Kidman and soon-to-be-husband Keith Urban's secret wedding operations swiftly approach DEFCON 1, details have emerged regarding that most cherished of celebrity marriage traditions, the lowballing prenup. Says Page Six:

Having presumably waited until the last lingering memories of their original "mother" had vaporized from the minds of the offspring she once adopted with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman is now comfortable to begin a life and family anew, this time with her former Playgirl model/Kiwi country singer fiance, Keith Urban. With the big day set for July 25 in Sydney, the couple is taking every precaution to discourage the presence of Australian paparazzi looking for that $1 million "kiss-the-bride" shot:

Tori Spelling and her new, grifted beau Dean McDermott's love unfolded like a classic fairy tale in which an opportunistic prince met a billionaire TV producer king's daughter on the set of a Lifetime movie, promptly ditched his wife and family, then demonstrated the depth of his new commitment by covering himself in bad tattoos. Now, we get our fairy tale ending: A weekend wedding on the sandy beaches of Fiji, and, according to The Scoop, whispers of a tiny, future Spelling Television production star on the way:

The US Weekly blog has the exclusive on the weekend marriage of Entourage's Kevin Dillon to his pregnant fiance Jane Stuart at a Vegas wedding chapel. Dillon sprang for the Elvis Hound Dog Special, a $349 package that included the musical stylings of his very own Elvis impersonator:

Trust us—we care as much about Chad Michael Murray as you do. We'd be perfectly content flying safely out of his "girls, age 9-13" demo radar, but the guy makes it almost impossible to ignore him. First, he weds his One Tree Hill co-star Sophia Bush in a lavish, seaside ceremony, only to divorce four months later, with Bush citing "fraud" in the annulment papers. Now, People reports that he's engaged to yet another Hill "crew member," (according to E! Online, a cheerleader extra), 18-year-old Kenzie Dalton. Of course, Bush is still on the series, which shouldn't be awkward at all for the production. It seems in One Tree Hill Murray has hit the motherlode source for his insatiable starlet-marrying appetite; we only question if he really needs divorce one to move onto another. This seems like the perfect opportunity for a Big Love-type on-set polygamist scenario, with Murray the Bill Paxton Jr., scampering exhaustedly between the adjoining trailers of each of his equally adored actress brides.

Just in case you ever wonder about which stars move tabloid product and which ones paparazzi probably wouldn't cross the street to photograph if they were on fire, today's pair of wedding-related announcements speak volumes: ET Online notes that bonafide (if US Weekly neglected) star Jack Black eloped with girlfriend Tanya Haden, a union that took the celebrity-industrial complex about two weeks (says our source) to notice. Meanwhile, you will probably not be able to go within fifty feet of a supermarket checkout line without knowing every detail about the engagement ring fifth-string Desperate Housewife Nicolette Sheridan's received from Unfrozen Caveman Soft Rock Balladeer Michael Bolton. We're going to guess that the Muzak royalties for "I Want To Know What Love Is" "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You" could provide for a rock big enough to topple Teri Hatcher when she tries it on for size on the DH set.

Us magazine taketh away celebrity love, but it also giveth. Not 24 hours after news that Matt Damon and fianc e Luciana Barroso were with child, comes yet another Us exclusive: the couple was wed in a quickie marriage at New York City Hall.