Renée Who? Jack White Weds

White Stripes frontman marries model Karen Elson in Brazil, weeks after Zellweger gets hitched

By Charlie Amter Jun 02, 2005 11:35 PMTags

Wednesday was a nice day for a Jack White wedding.

The White Stripes frontman is apparently wasting no time getting over ex-girlfriend Renée Zellweger's out-of-the-blue wedding to country star Kenny Chesney--he's gone and tied the knot in eyebrow-raising fashion himself.

White married British model Karen Elson in Brazil on Wednesday, less than a month after the Zellweger-Chesney nuptials went down.

The news was first posted on WhiteStripes.com and later confirmed by the band's publicist.

Per the Website account, a traditional shaman priest performed the canoe-based ceremony "on the confluence of three rivers?in the Amazon basin in the city of Manaus."

It was a White Stripe wedding all around, with drummer-vocalist Meg Wife serving as maid of honor and manager Ian Montone acting as best man before a "small party of close friends."

It's the first on-the-record marriage for both White, 29, and Elson, 25. But with Jack White (born John Anthony Gillis) notoriously coy about his relationship to Meg White--upon signing with V2 Records they claimed they were brother/sister, but court records later showed they were married from 1996-2000--and with a White Stripes album due for release next Tuesday, there's been some speculation the wedding is a publicity stunt.

The "Fell in Love with a Girl" singer's wedding is even more startling than the Zellweger-Chesney shocker that went down May 9--news that White was even dating Elson had hardly registered in gossip pages or the music press. (She does, however, appear in the new White Stripes video, "Blue Orchid," in which she's covered with snakes.)

Still, White publicist Chloe Walsh said Thursday it was the real deal.

The lo-fi Detroit blues-rock band's fifth full-length album, Get Behind Me Satan, is the follow-up to the Grammy-winning 2003 smash Elephant. The White Stripes say they recorded the new album in less than two weeks, with Jack White calling it "our most dense-sounding record yet."

Elson is known for her extreme looks (she famously shaved off her eyebrows in the late 1990s) and genre-pushing cover shoots in magazines like Vogue and Paper. She has appeared in campaigns for Gucci, Valentino, Versace, Prada and even Banana Republic. Before hooking up with White, she had been romantically linked to other musicians, including Calla's Aurelio Valle and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, who reportedly helped Elson record a few tracks for a forthcoming music project.

White, meanwhile, is known for his off-kilter brand of garage rock. He met Zellweger while working on Cold Mountain (he had a minor role and also pitched in on the soundtrack) in 2003 and the two dated for nearly two years before splitting in late-2004. He won his third career Grammy in February for producing Loretta Lynn's comeback album, Van Lear Rose.