The wedding took place in the Room of Mirrors at the Royal Palace in Monte Carlo. It was attended by the bride and groom's children from former marriages.

Together at the Monaco International Circus Festival

Rumours of an imminent wedding surfaced after the two appeared last week with the children and the Monaco royal family during the annual International Circus Festival.

The princess had been romantically linked with her new husband, the head of one of Germany's oldest aristocratic families, since he divorced in 1997.

The couple have been making public appearances together for more than a year.

The BBC's reporter in the South of France, Wayne Bodkin, says a second, religious wedding has not been ruled out, but dispensation from the Vatican would be required before the Catholic princess could marry in church.

Closer to Windsors

The princess's third marriage directly links Monaco's Grimaldi family to Queen Elizabeth II, because Prince Ernst August is a close cousin of the British royal family.

Princess Caroline is divorced from her first husband, a Parisian banker, Philippe Junot.

Her second husband and father of her three children, Italian industrialist Stefano Casiraghi, was killed in a power-boat accident during a race at sea in 1990.