Cécilia wedding list proof of secret all France knew

The worst-kept secret in France was finally revealed by the internet site featuring wedding gifts from the poshest department store in Paris.

Mademoiselle Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz will be getting married in New York this Sunday to Monsieur Richard Attias. By clicking on to their wedding list on the internet, friends – or anyone else – can offer them a pair of Ralph Lauren pillow cases for €47 (£36.60) or a Wedgwood sugar bowl for €102.

"Miss" Ciganer-Albeniz is better known to the world as Cécilia Sarkozy, the divorced wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy. She will be getting married in New York on Sunday to the publicist Richard Attias, the man for whom she briefly left the future president in 2005.

Last week, the future Mme Attias fired the fashion house Versace, which had been hired to dress both Monsieur and Madame at the wedding. Versace had overstepped the market by boasting publicly about its coup, revealing not only the date and place of the marriage but the fact that it was taking place. The couple had hoped for secrecy.

What was left of the secret was trampled yesterday by the wedding-gift website of Au Bon Marché, the chic department store on the Paris Left Bank owned by the luxury goods company Louis Vuitton-Moet-Hennessy.

The gifts sought by the couple were openly listed on the site. As these things go, it was a relatively modest list. The most expensive single item is a Lestra slumberdown at €402. The other items include such traditional wedding fare as sheets and towels and a rather large number of spoons.

In an interview for a book published in January, which she later tried to ban, Ms Ciganer-Albeniz said that M. Attias was the only man that she had truly loved. She is quoted as saying that she left M. Sarkozy, and gave up the position of first lady of France, to prove her love to the New York-based businessman.

She also said a number of disagreeable things about her former husband, whom she divorced in October, five months after he became President.