James Middleton marries long-time fiancée in dream wedding

Kate Middleton's brother James has married long-time fiancée Alizée Thevenet at the weekend.

Sharing the news on Instagram, James, 34, shared a photo of the smiling couple along with the caption: "Mr & Mrs Middleton.. Yesterday I married the love of my life surrounded by family, friends and of course a few dogs in the beautiful village of Bormes-les-Mimosas.

"Words cannot describe how happy I am."

It is understood the couple were married in France for the ceremony, surrounded by close family and friends.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were reportedly in attendance as well as the rest of the Middleton clan including Pippa Middleton and her husband James and parents Carole and Michael.

James and Alizée were engaged in October of 2019 but were forced to postpone their nuptials twice due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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A source has told HELLO! magazine: "They're just so happy it's finally going ahead."

James and financial expert Alizée met in 2018 at the restaurant of the South Kensington Club in Chelsea in the UK.

Writing for The Telegraph James explained he and his dog Ella were at the venue with Ella lying at his feet when she got up. James thought she was going to help herself to some water from the bowl set up across the terrace.

Instead, Ella made her way over to Alizée who was seated nearby.

"Rather embarrassed, I went over to apologise and bring Ella back," James writes. "But Alizée thought I was the waiter and ordered her drink while continuing to stroke Ella, who at this point was on her back lapping up the attention.

"Little did I know, but I had just met my future wife, all thanks to Ella. If I hadn't trusted Ella, I wouldn't have brought her to the South Kensington Club and she wouldn't have been able to say hi to the woman who became my fiancée."

It was March this year that James and Alizée moved into their dream home in the English country, having lived in London for some time where they now reside with their six dogs and James is able to keep up with his hobby of bee keeping.

He wrote in The Telegraph: "We are counting down the days until we get the keys to our new home and can be reunited with our belongings, which have been in storage for almost a year now.

"We are country people and love going out for long walks, but one of the key reasons we wanted to live in the countryside was our six dogs."

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James Middleton has spoken openly about his battle with depression, crediting his dogs with helping him through the worst of his mental illness.

In May this year he shared a post on Instagram explaining it had been 1255 days since he was diagnosed with clinical depression.

Sharing his thoughts for Mental Health Awareness Day, James explained following his diagnosis he took himself away with his dogs and spent time in nature.

"I packed my dogs into my car and, telling no one where I was going, drove to a wild and remote part of the Lake District," he wrote in a post marking Mental Health Awareness Week.

"There I swam in an icy lake, took solitary walks on snow-capped mountains and stayed alone in a remote cottage, trying to still the tumult in my mind."

He explained one of his "best coping strategies with my own mental health today is taking my dogs for a walk each time to inhale the powerful benefits nature has to offer".

"Another strategy is beekeeping, when I'm with my bees it's as if someone's pressed the mute button on everything that's worrying him."

James is the youngest of the three Middleton, with Kate the eldest at 39, followed by Pippa Middleton at 38 and James at 34.

During the worst of James' mental health recovery, his parents Carole and Michael and siblings joined him during treatment. James said each of his family members joined him at cognitive behavioural therapy.

He told the Telegraph in the UK his family helped him during his darkest times, although he admitted to having struggled to open up to them.

"My mother will see how much I'm eating and know that there's something wrong," he said during the interview. "She'll see the way that I look at her and know there's something wrong. It's the same with all my family. We are very close. And I think that can be… a challenge. And I do remember feeling that I almost had to say to them, "I'll be back, but this is a process and it's going to take time for me to recover."'

James eventually sought help at a private mental health facility where he says his family members joined him in therapy.

"Not necessarily at the same time, but either individually and [sometimes] together," he said. "And that was so important because that helped them understand me and how my mind was working. And I think the way the therapy helped me was that I didn't need my family to say, 'What can we do?' The only thing they could do was just come to some of the therapy sessions to start to understand."

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have focused much of their work on mental health and in particular youth mental health.

Together they run Heads Together which aims to "change the conversation about mental health" by removing the shame and the stigma, with the hope of encouraging more suffers to reach out for help.