In the summer of 2026, a story appeared in the Portuguese media that has kept the country hooked for weeks: when and where Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez will get married. Dates are announced, denied and announced again. Photos of invitations are published. Cathedrals, estates and hotels are named. Guest lists are drawn up. Exactly one thing has been confirmed: the engagement happened, and it is still on. And this will definitely be the most talked-about wedding in Portugal in recent years. The editor-in-chief of Xpat.Land reflects on why the country is so excited — and why he really wants the wedding to take place in Madeira.

Wedding fever

Portuguese expats Fábio Ramos and Fátima Nicole Cunha Teixeira decided to come home from France this Saturday specifically to get married in the beautiful Cathedral of Funchal in Madeira. But when they arrived, they were in for a surprise: a huge crowd of football fans was waiting for them. The bewildered bride had to make her way through the crowd while people shouted: “That’s not Georgina.” She was extremely upset, and the wedding almost fell apart.

The reason was that tabloids had promised that Ronaldo’s wedding would take place in the same church at the same time. Even the different names on the couple’s wedding booking did not discourage the fans: everyone decided that the Portuguese forward had deliberately booked the 15th-century cathedral under a fake name.

The country has been in a frenzy for almost a month. All kinds of wedding rumours are constantly being discussed in Portuguese bars, on the streets and around kitchen tables. The reason is not just a fascination with celebrities and the society pages.

Ronaldo occupies a place in the Portuguese consciousness that the crown occupies in monarchies: he represents the country abroad and gives people a reason to talk about themselves.

He has more than 650 million Instagram followers, compared with Portugal’s population of 10.5 million — meaning one person’s audience is sixty times larger than the country’s population. There is also the timing: after the World Cup defeat and his farewell to the national team, the country was getting used to the idea that an era had ended. The wedding puts him back in the spotlight — not as a footballer, but as a person whose biography itself matters to the country.

There is another detail: Ronaldo has repeatedly said that he would get married after the World Cup — and added that he hoped to walk down the aisle with the trophy of a world champion. But he never got that trophy.

How did the relationship begin?

Georgina Rodríguez worked as a sales assistant at a Gucci boutique in Madrid. The 22-year-old had recently moved to the capital and was earning around £250 a week, renting a room in a shared apartment. One hot summer evening in 2016, she was covering for a colleague. One of her customers, an elegant woman, suddenly decided to buy a coat, and Georgina was helping her choose. The woman was already leaving when Ronaldo walked into the store with his son and friends.

The story is not exactly new. Carolyn Bessette, for example, met another media icon, John F. Kennedy Jr., in almost exactly the same way: she worked for Calvin Klein, starting as a sales assistant at a Boston store before moving on to VIP clients at the New York showroom. One day, America’s most eligible bachelor came in looking for suits, and she was the one assigned to help him.

Georgina and Ronaldo barely spoke that day. “He was so handsome that I felt embarrassed even looking at him,” she recalled. They really started talking a few days later, at another brand’s event, outside the working environment. That was when he began courting her. Ronaldo himself admitted that at first he was not expecting a serious relationship: he did not think he would fall in love. But after some time, he realised that she was the woman of his life.

They made their first public appearance together in January 2017, at the FIFA ceremony in Zurich, alongside seven-year-old Cristiano Jr. In May, they confirmed their relationship on social media. In June, Ronaldo’s twins Eva and Mateo were born via surrogate, and in November Georgina gave birth to their daughter Alana Martina.

Then came the moves dictated by his career: Turin, Manchester, Riyadh.

In October 2021, they announced that they were expecting twins. In April 2022, they issued a joint statement: their son had died during childbirth. “This is the greatest pain parents can feel,” they wrote. The second child survived, a girl named Bella Esmeralda. Their son was named Ángel.

Why did they wait so long to get married?

People in Portugal have been asking this question for about eight years, and both of them have answered it publicly more than once.

In the first episode of the Netflix documentary I Am Georgina, Ronaldo put it this way: it would happen when that particular “click” came. Maybe in a year, maybe in six months, maybe in a month. But he was one thousand percent sure it would happen. The wording was immediately turned into memes: ten years have passed, and the click still hasn’t happened.

The subject clearly weighed on him. Back in 2019, in an interview with Piers Morgan, he asked not to put pressure on him when the conversation turned to marriage. But he still answered that Georgina was the love of his life, that it would definitely happen someday, and added that it was his mother’s dream. In 2022, in another conversation with Morgan, he said that he was not thinking about it at the moment, but believed she deserved it.

In the same series, Georgina admitted that her friends and family constantly teased her about the wedding, adding that it was not up to her. Katia Aveiro confirmed in the summer of 2026 that Georgina was the one who wanted the wedding most.

At the same time, Ronaldo has been calling her his wife for years, and he does so publicly. In December 2024, while accepting an award at the Globe Soccer Awards in Dubai, he said from the stage: here are my eldest son and my wife. He repeated the same thing in videos posted on his YouTube channel.

Some took this as a slip of the tongue, while others decided that the couple had secretly married long ago.

According to Ronaldo’s own account, the “click” happened unexpectedly, at home. He did not get down on one knee, gave a short speech and admitted that he did not consider himself a romantic — at least not the kind who brings flowers every week. Ronaldo spoke separately about the engagement ring: what he liked most was that his fiancée was not particularly impressed by it; she only asked whether he was serious. There were no tears, he said, but her eyes were wet.

The public got confirmation on August 11, 2025: a photo of Georgina’s hand resting on Cristiano’s, an oval diamond of more than 40 carats worth at least €6 million, and the caption: “Yes. In this life and all the others.”

Mockery and fame

Like Ronaldo, Georgina comes from a modest family. She was born in Buenos Aires and grew up in Jaca, a small town in the Spanish Pyrenees. Her father, Jorge, is Argentine, while her mother, Ana, is Spanish. Jorge Rodríguez spent ten years in a Spanish prison for drug trafficking, and his relationship with his daughter was difficult — Georgina has acknowledged that her father was essentially absent from her life. At 19, she decided to leave. She worked as a live-in nanny in England for symbolic pay, then as a sales assistant in Madrid, where she met her future husband.

During her first pregnancy, she was not busy preparing a nursery but taking financial accounting courses in Madrid: taxes, legal obligations and capital management. The course cost £780, with classes twice a week for three hours.

“I liked earning my own money,” she said, adding that she never accepted help when it was offered.

The Netflix project I Am Georgina generated a huge number of memes: the series has a 4/10 rating on IMDb. Most of the jokes revolve around the protagonist’s stories about luxury, delivered with an absolutely straight face — for example, how she can tell different brands of mineral water by taste and once correctly identified all five in a home competition.

That does not always put audiences off: the combination of a £250-a-week sales assistant, accounting courses and red carpets continues to work remarkably well.

The expat comes home

The rumour that the wedding will take place in Madeira is perhaps the most touching part of this story. Ronaldo left Funchal at the age of twelve, alone, for the Sporting academy boarding school, where, according to his own accounts, he was mocked for his Madeiran accent. Twenty-three years have passed since then away from home. There was the language you have to keep learning as an adult, an environment where people see you as an outsider, and the need to prove yourself much harder than locals ever have to.

For those of us who live somewhere other than where we were born, we want the Madeira rumour to be true.

Not because of any love for tabloids, but because it would feel right: a man who left home returning there with the woman he met thousands of kilometres away, and with five children born in different countries.

You can earn money anywhere. You can build a comfortable life almost anywhere, too: rent an apartment with a view, find your people, get used to different coffee and different holidays. But home remains home, no matter how many years pass between visits. And when it comes to the important things — the things that may happen only once in a lifetime — you want to invite the people you love there. And perhaps Fábio Ramos and Fátima Teixeira, who returned from France to get married in Madeira, will serve as a good example for the much more famous couple.