- A friend said they did it for the children, to kind of seal the deal and show them this was a forever thing
- The beach ceremony marked the culmination of a 14-day trip to Arpaud Busson’s Three Bees Villa on Harbor Island
Sandra Bullock and Bryan Randall never married but exchanged ‘vows’ on the beach in the Bahamas in an intimate ceremony witnessed by friends and family in December 2017, DailyMail can reveal.
Exclusive video obtained by DailyMail.com shows the couple dancing the night away following the ceremony which was not legally binding and involved no officiant but instead saw Bullock, 59, declare herself to the man she called, ‘the love of my life’ and him profess his love in return.
It was just three years before and a world away from when Randall would receive his devastating diagnosis with ALS, the illness to which he succumbed at the weekend.
Dressed in a kaftan, her hair in braids and flip flops on her feet this was the low-key affair that Bullock, who had no desire to remarry following her divorce from Jesse James in 2010, wanted.
For his part Randall, his white shirt open at the neck, also in flip flops, with baseball cap pulled low and in casual black pants appears entirely caught up in his ‘bride’ and the moment.
According to one friend: ‘They really did this for the children, to kind of seal the deal and show them this was a forever thing. After the ceremony Louis (13) and Laila (11) started calling Bryan dad.’
The ceremony marked the culmination of a 14-day trip to Arpaud Busson’s Three Bees Villa on Harbor Island.
The exclusive retreat owned by the French financier, who was once married to Elle Macpherson and later fathered a daughter by Uma Thurman, is a favorite place for Bullock and her family.
One guest who was there explained: ‘It was Bryan’s birthday on December 31 so it’s like they wanted to celebrate everything all at once.’
In recent months rumors had swirled that the couple had broken up or that their relationship was on the rocks, stories to that effect had bubbled up just days before the announcement of Randall’s passing.
Bullock had been secretly overseeing and funding the round the clock care required by her partner of eight years who spent his last months ‘closeted away’ in her Beverly Hills home.
One insider told DailyMail.com: ‘Sandra kept Bryan hidden away in the back of the house. It’s so big that you could conceal what was going on with him but towards the end she really didn’t let people into the home beyond the doctors and nurses who were looking after him.’
The source said: ‘It was quite convenient for them to have these rumors that they’d broken up because it helped conceal what was really going on. It was easier to let people assume they hadn’t seen him because they were no longer together.’
In fact, the couple was struggling with the new and bleak reality of Randall’s illness – a sickness for which there is no cure and a degenerative disease that effects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, sufferers usually die of respiratory failure within two to five years of diagnosis though a small percentage can survive up to ten years.
Randall is understood to have been ill for three years.
The couple met when Randall was hired to take photographs at a birthday party for Bullock’s oldest child, Louis, in 2015.
He was the first serious relationship for the actress since her split from ex-husband James who cheated on her.
Bullock and Randall went public in October 2015 when he was on the actress’s arm at the premier of her movie, ‘Our Brand is Crisis.’
According to those within the couple’s circle, they were all but inseparable from there on in with Randall accompanying Bullock to press junkets, movie premiers and becoming a firm fixture on set when she was on location filming.
