Another obscenely over-done wedding extravaganza bites the dust as Petra Ecclestone files for divorce six years after marrying businessman James Stunt at the 15th Century Italian fort where Tom Cruise made his ill-fated match with Katie Holmes. It cost an estimated £12 million, with an £80,000 Vera Wang bride’s dress. The 350 guests were served Cristal champagne and £4000 a bottle Chateau Petrus; Eric Clapton played for free; was followed by The Black Eyed Peas, paid a reported £1.5 million fee, and the DJ was believed to have received £500,000 for a night’s work. A midnight fireworks display cost £100,000. She’s the daughter of F1 Supremo and business magnate Bernie Ecclestone, himself no stranger to financial tangles (see wiki).
The divorce will be messy with billions at stake, high-profile lawyers on both sides and James Stunt obviously intending to fight his corner.
What is astonishing about these marriages is why they ever thought it would work in the first place.
Petra, 19 Dec 1988, is a late Sun Sagittarius with her Sun conjunct Uranus Saturn in Capricorn, which in turn are conjunct Mercury Neptune in Capricorn. Her Jupiter in indulgent Taurus is in a frivolous opposition to Venus in Sagittarius; and she has an upfront Mars in Aries quincunx Pluto. So quite highly strung with a complicated father, which will have coloured her relationship choices.
Stunt, 21 January 1982, was reputedly worth billions though no one seems to know where his money comes from. He’s a Sun Venus in Aquarius square Pluto in late Libra; with Pluto conjunct Saturn and Saturn conjunct Mars in Libra; so controlling and tough.
His Sagittarius Moon will chime with her Sun; but with his Neptune conjunct her Sun she’d find him evasive; and his Uranus is conjunct her Venus so he’d be an unpredictable and erratic romantic partner. Their relationship chart has an argumentative, ego-clashing composite Sun Mars; with a disappointment-when-the-glitter-wears-off composite Venus Neptune. There would be mounting dislike, hostility and volatility when the tr Pluto square tr Uranus was hitting on the Sun Mars two or three years ago.
The wedding chart, 27 Aug 2011, has a sociable Sun Venus in a materialistic Earth Grand Trine to a superpower-couple Jupiter in Taurus trine Pluto. But there’s was also a disruptive Uranus square Pluto in a wide-ish hard aspect to an unkind, irritable Saturn square Mars – so the omens were all there from the start.