By Mike Collett-White
LONDON | Fri Sep 16, 2011 10:16am EDT
(Reuters) – Former Beatle Paul McCartney posted wedding banns this week at Westminster Register Office in Marylebone, central London, the same venue where he married his first wife Linda over 40 years ago.
The banns allow McCartney to marry New York heiress Nancy Shevell any time 16 days after the September 14 posting at the Register office. It will be McCartney’s third marriage.
Shevell, 51, who is divorced, and McCartney, 69, are believed to have begun dating after the Fab Four singer’s bitter split with second wife, former model Heather Mills.
The banns list the couple as James Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell. He gives his profession as “business executive” and his multi-millionaire future wife is listed simply as an “executive.”
McCartney was happily married for 29 years to American photographer Linda Eastman until her death of breast cancer in 1998. He said at the time that he and Linda had spent just 11 nights apart during their marriage.
The couple tied the knot at the same register office on March 12, 1969, and were greeted by hundreds of fans who had waited outside to catch a glimpse of one of the most famous figures in pop.
McCartney’s marriage to Mills was less happy. The couple wedded in 2002 in a lavish ceremony at Castle Leslie in Ireland estimated by celebrity magazines to have cost around $3.2 million.
But four years later they confirmed they had separated, blaming media intrusion into their private lives, and in 2008 the couple divorced.
A judge had to rule on the size of the divorce settlement after the couple failed to reach an agreement themselves.
Mills was eventually awarded 24.3 million pounds, which at the time equated to $48.7 million, ending one of the most acrimonious breakups in showbusiness history.
Mills had sought five times as much and said McCartney was worth 800 million pounds. The judge ruled his fortune at the time was half that amount.
McCartney’s partnership with John Lennon in The Beatles in 1960s Britain produced some of the most famous and enduring pop songs of the past 50 years.
The “Hey Jude” singer has five children. He has a son, two daughters and a stepdaughter from his marriage to Linda and a daughter from his union with Mills.
McCartney’s spokesman declined to comment on his wedding plans when asked this week about press rumors of an impending ceremony.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)