Groom in white tuxedo and bride in strapless white gown holding a bouquet exit a stone church doorway flanked by massive white floral walls.
Donato Fasano / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images / Backgrid / @donnarumma
Gossip

Erling Haaland Just Flew To Italy To Watch His Teammate Marry the Girl He’s Loved Since He Was a Teenager

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This is the wedding Cassie Howard could only DREAM of.

Gianluigi Donnarumma and Alessia Elefante got the church wedding on Friday in Locorotondo, a hilltop town in Puglia, at the Chiesa Madre di San Giorgio Martire. The whole town turned out for it, chanting like they were at a match.

The Manchester City and Italy goalkeeper has been with Elefante for about 10 years. They grew up near each other around Castellammare di Stabia, started dating around 2016, and she’s followed him from Milan to Paris to Manchester. She’s an interior designer with roughly 125,000 Instagram followers, and the couple’s son Leo was born in September 2024.

Smiling bride in a strapless ballgown with a long lace-trimmed veil and sheer dotted gloves holds a white rose bouquet outside a church door.
A beaming Alessia Elefante, veil flowing and white rose bouquet in hand, arrives at the Church of San Giorgio Martire on the arm of an older companion, with lace-trimmed tulle gloves completing her bridal look on July 24, 2026. Photo by Donato Fasano / Getty Images.

This wasn’t the first vow. They married quietly in a civil ceremony back in May, when Donnarumma posted the photos with the football caption “Long-term contract signed.” Elefante wore an all-white look with palazzo trousers and a see-through train.

Woman in a sheer white long-sleeve bridal crop top and wide-leg trousers holds a white peony bouquet next to a bearded man in a tan suit on a staircase.
Alessia Elefante poses in a sheer white crop-top bridal set with a bouquet of white peonies alongside a suited man in a tan double-breasted jacket in what appears to be a pre-wedding photo shared to Donnarumma’s account.

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Erling Haaland showed up with his partner Isabel Haugseng Johansen, arriving straight off a Mediterranean run that included his own 26th birthday in Saint-Tropez two days earlier.

Tall blond man in white t-shirt and shorts wearing sunglasses and a blue watch walks near a marina as a man beside him takes a photo.
Dressed all in white and wearing a blue-dialed watch, Erling Haaland departs Saint-Tropez on July 23, 2026, the day after celebrating his 26th birthday at Pampelonne Beach’s Shellona restaurant. Photo by Backgrid.

A Rai Sport reporter covering it live accidentally announced “the funerals of the national team captain” instead of the wedding.

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About the author

Nadia Santiago

Nadia Santiago is a writer who lives between the clouds and the coastline, and writes about all the things your heart knows but your mouth can never quite say.