Take my breath away... Castello Odescalchi. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AP
I had to queue up for hours and sign an insurance waiver but I have finally got my invitation to the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes this Saturday.
The yellow laminated pass, issued by the authorities of the Italian lakeside town of Bracciano, allows me to stand in a medieval piazza, along with the rest of the world's press and enthralled locals, and look up at the imposing walls of Castello Odescalchi, where the nuptials will be taking place.
None of us will actually be allowed to witness the romantic moment when TomKat says: "I do", although we may see the odd celebrity glide in and out in their limousines, but it doesn't matter. In the run-up to the Very Big Day, the biggest fun has been seeing how the residents of this pretty lakeside town outside Rome are handling all the attention.
Nothing much normally happens in a town like Bracciano, population: 15,000, and local people are beside themselves with excitement that one of the world's biggest film stars has chosen this as the place to get married. Certainly, a few shrewd residents are trying to take advantage of the television crews and photographers by hiring out their window ledges for a few hundred euros a time, but mostly everybody just wants to join in the party atmosphere.
One local boutique has a Top Gun tribute in one of its windows and has raided somebody's wardrobe for a crumpled wedding dress - complete with a man's top hat and tails - to put in another. Photographs of Tom and Katie are appearing on lampposts everywhere and banners proclaiming "auguri" -the Italian word for congratulations - are being made for the happy couple.
Italians love to talk, of course, and this is the only subject in town and will be for weeks to come. In a cafe, I heard a group of men speculating about how Cruise chose Bracciano. "He looked it up on the internet!" said one; another pooh-poohed that and said someone of Cruise's calibre doesn't arrange his own wedding. He thought that Sting, who owns an estate in Tuscany, or George Clooney, who owns a house on Lake Como, made the recommendation and passed it on to Cruise's PA.
Shortly afterwards, there was another surreal moment when producers from the television programme Access Hollywood sat down with their cappuccinos next to weary farmers who had just finished picking the olive harvest. A wedding can certainly break down social barriers.
An added bonus for the locals is that the local authority has been sprucing up the town. Fresh flowers have been planted in the town square, council workers are trimming hedges and cleaning the streets, a broken fountain has been fixed at last and the road leading up the castle has been resurfaced. Apparently the last time such a thing happened was when the mayor died. "It's taken Tom Cruise to get things done around here," Giancarlo Titti, a long-time resident of Bracciano, said with a satisfied smile before going off to be interviewed by a German TV crew.
