Angelina Jolie breaks news of secret marriage before wedding in France

This past August, Angelina Jolieand Brad Pitt married in an intimate ceremony in the south of France, attended by only close family members.

The wedding was, by all accounts, a low-key event at the family’s vineyard property Château Miraval that was planned by the couple’s six children. Pax made the cake. Zahara and Vivienne were flower girls. Shiloh and Knox were ring bearers. Maddox and Pax walked Jolie down the aisle. The kids helped write the marital vows. The children’s drawings even adorned Jolie’s Versace wedding gown. And now, in a new interview, Jolie confesses that she had actually married Pitt before the summer wedding, Vanityfair.com reported.

But they legally had to. “Before the wedding in France with the kids, Brad and I were already married in California,” Jolie told Italian magazine Io Donna. “As Americans, we couldn't marry legally in France.”

Jolie insinuates that the couple’s first wedding was just as relaxed as the Château Miraval follow-up. “One day I said to Brad, ‘Let's meet up at 4:30 P.M.?’ I called a justice of the peace and we signed the documents.” So . . . maybe not the most romantic of wedding descriptions.