Katy Perry and Russell Brand marry in India (for real, this time)

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Just two days before she turned 26, Katy Perry tied the knot Saturday with Russell Brand at the Aman-e-Khas luxury resort in a tiger reserve in northwestern India’s Ranthambhore National Park.

Since the fortune-telling parrot on site predicted a happy marriage, we say not only congrats, but, whew. Finally.

The whirlwind of media speculation about the musician and comic’s union has run from whether Perry was wearing an Indian-style nose ring on the wrong side (nope, those are just fancy glasses) to guesses on whether they had already made it official. Was it a Freudian slip in June when she told BBC’s Graham Norton ‘that’s why I married [Brand]’? It didn’t help that Brand was gallivanting around London before this weekend with what might have been his wedding band. Plus, tension heated when Brand’s bodyguard got into fisticuffs with photographers last week.

As if wedding planning weren’t stressful enough, Brand somehow also managed to release a book (complete with a Shepard Fairey-designed cover) and take on the paparazzi at LAX. Meanwhile, Perry had her own scandal sans-Brand with that whole ‘Sesame Street’ cleavage incident (and also found time to make fun of the debacle on ‘Saturday Night Live.’)

Now that the rings are on for real, we hope Brand and Perry can take it easy and enjoy their new gifts to each other -- a baby elephant for him, a Bengal tiger for her -- before Perry starts her concert tour in New Zealand next year.

-- Whitney Friedlander

Related dispatch from the Ministry of Gossip:

Newlyweds Katy Perry, Russell Brand head to the Maldives for honeymoon