Madonna and her Guy go on honeymoon

Ritchie boards the couple's private jet at Inverness Airport, carrying their son Rocco

DORNOCH, Scotland -- Madonna and her new husband have left Skibo castle for a honeymoon in an undisclosed destination

The superstar and the film director Guy Ritchie flew out of Scotland on Saturday afternoon.

Their honeymoon is shrouded in as much mystery as their wedding at the secluded Scottish castle where the world's press had waited outside the gates for hours without hearing any news.

It took Susan Brown, the church of Scotland minister who performed the ceremony, to confirm after a 12-hour wait: "It did happen."

Disgruntled journalists had competed for any scrap of news from the wedding and by the early hours of Saturday had been expressing their disgruntlement at being frozen out of the celebrity-studded event.

REFERENCE The Madonna File  • Fashion Quiz  • Retrospective  • 'Music' review  • 'Music' secrets  • Creative forces  • Video: 'Music'  • Video: Interview    Part one    Part two    Part three  • Audio clips:    'Runaway Lover'    'I Deserve It'    'Gone'

Britain's tabloid newspapers reported scant confirmed details of the star-studded celebration on Saturday, relying instead on rumour and unattributed quotes.

The Sun and The Mirror newspapers declared the ceremony took place with 60 guests present in the castle's chapel. The Mail said "Madonna the Secret Bride" was wed surrounded by red roses.

The Mirror said Madonna wore a £20,000 ($29,600) ivory wedding dress and a green tartan sash that matched Ritchie's family hunting kilt of the Mackintosh clan.

It quoted one unnamed guest as saying: "The service was all the more moving because they had taken time to write the words of their wedding vows themselves."

CNN cameraman Alfredo De Lara said: "I think Madonna should have sent out a bottle of champagne to every reporter -- and a press release."

"I am not bored with Scotland, just Madonna's media machine," Lema Storvand, showbusiness correspondent for the Norwegian newspaper VG, said.

Even the Scottish media was angry.

"I can't understand it. All it takes is one person to tell us what is going on," said David Ross of the Glasgow-based Herald.

After two decades at the summit of pop, Madonna wanted her second marriage to be a truly private moment in a very public career.

She chose as the wedding site Gothic-turreted Skibo Castle in the Scottish Highlands, a rich man's playground where security was as tight as money could buy.

The 42-year-old Madonna confessed that she went "wobbly bonkers" when she met the man 10 years her junior at a dinner party given by pop star Sting and his wife Trudie Styler two years ago.

Ritchie, a British film director best known for the film "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," fondly calls her "The Missus" and "Madge" in the London house they share.

The marriage would be his first.

For the big day, the couple went for opulence and intimacy, taking over the castle for just a small group of showbusiness friends and family that included Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow, dress designer Stella McCartney and actor Rupert Everett.

It was a sharp contrast to her 1985 Malibu wedding to Hollywood wild boy Sean Penn when the roar of paparazzi helicopters drowned out their wedding vows.

This time she pulled up the drawbridge on what she called "the media madness."

On Thursday evening, Madonna and Ritchie attended the Baptism of their son Rocco in the cathedral in nearby Dornoch delighting several hundred local people who joined the media crush outside.

On Friday evening, police released a 51-year-old unemployed man who was discovered in the cathedral and arrested after Rocco's christening.

He is to appear in court next week to be charged. Police said he did not interrupt the service and was detained after the ceremony finished.

A 33-year-old man arrested in Dornoch early Friday was also released, to appear in court next week.

Details of that case were not available but police said the incidents were not connected and, despite speculation, neither man was involved in the news media.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

Madonna goes gothic for wedding dress
December 22, 2000
Mystery surrounds Madonna wedding
December 22, 2000
Two arrested on Madonna's big day
December 22, 2000
'Colditz' security for Madonna wedding
December 20, 2000
Madonna to get toilet roll wedding gift
December 17, 2000

The Madonna Internet Mailing List
Madonna - Music
Madonna - fan club
Guy Ritchie - profile
The Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.