Celebrity Mound

Penelope Cruz is reportedly shopping around for a designer to make her wedding gown.

According to In Touch Weekly, the 35-year-old actress, who is reportedly engaged to actor Javier Bardem, has been meeting with her favorite designers in preparation for the couple’s rumored wedding.

“Since she and Javier are from Spain, she’d love to have a Spanish designer create her dream gown,” a friend told the mag.

Cruz is said to be considering the House of Balenciaga, who designed best friend Salma Hayek’s gown for her wedding with billionaire François-Henri Pinault in February.

“Salma’s dress was specifically designed for her by the company’s creative director, Nicolas Ghesquière, and it was just beautiful,” added the source. “I’m sure they would be more than thrilled to create a gown for Penelope.”

Cruz, 35, and Bardem, 40, have yet to officially announce their engagement, but the actress was spotted wearing a sapphire ring on her engagement finger when she recently appeared on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

So when will the wedding go down?

“They will marry very soon, maybe even over the holidays,” the friend told the mag. “Penelope’s parents are conservative Catholics and are really pushing for her to get married. Javier would like to take things slowly, but Penelope wants to make her parents happy.”

(source)

Congratulations, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

The fiercely private couple is still playing coy about whether or not they’re dating. But, take it from us, they are in fact engaged.

Rumors that they might be betrothed have been floating around since April. Not true then. True now.

“They’re telling friends they will get married,” says a pal, who heard the news directly from one of them.

A wedding is bound to comfort Cruz’s Catholic parents, considering stubborn rumors that she’s pregnant.

But she continues to deny she’s with child – even to friends. Despite a photo showing the smiling pair leaving an OB/GYN clinic in Madrid last month, they’ve been telling friends to hold off on the baby gifts.

“They say the pregnancy stories aren’t true,” says another skeptical friend.

Publicists for the stars declined to comment.

Cruz professed ambivalence about being a wife as recently as August. “I don’t know if I believe in marriage,” the actress, who’d weathered the glare of her romance with Tom Cruise, told the UK’s Psychologies magazine. “I believe in family, love and children.”

She added, “When I [have children], I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.”

While many reports have time-stamped Cruz and Bardem’s romance as starting in 2007, few know they first fell for each other in 1992 while making “Jamon, Jamon,” where their fiery sex scenes were improved by some real-life rehearsals.

Cruz broke it off with Bardem after the film, but they teamed again for 1997′s “Live Flesh.” By the time Woody Allen cast them in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” both were older, wiser and international superstars. They fell in love all over again.

Cruz’s convincing performance as Bardem’s virago ex earned her an Oscar. (He came home with one, too, for “No Country for Old Men.”)

Some reports claimed they’d broken up last year, alleging she was mad at him for breaking a promise to take a year off from work. “Penelope is really angry because she turned down a few really good roles because she was so committed to their sabbatical,” one source was quoted as saying.

Her brother Eduardo contended Cruz was also disappointed that Bardem wouldn’t go along with her plan to adopt a baby from India.

Despite those reports, the two have remained inseparable, doing a very bad job of pretending to be friends. From the sound of things, they’re finally ready to give up their ruse.

(source)

If Penelope Cruz is trying to quash those pesky pregnancy rumors, she’s got a funny way of showing it.

The Oscar-winning actress was positively glowing as she left an ob-gyn clinic with boyfriend Javier Bardem in Madrid on Thursday.

The Spanish stars were snapped outside the private Hospital Ruber Internacional, where David and Victoria Beckham’s son, Cruz, was born in 2005.

The new pictures come just a week after the lusty Spaniard had a hissy fit when a reporter at the Toronto Film Festival asked whether she was pregnant.

She also told USA Today earlier this month that she has turned away baby gifts. “I start getting some presents from friends saying, ‘Congratulations, you’re pregnant.’ And I say, ‘No, I’m not, so I return the presents.’ It’s amazing,” she said.

These pictures are sure to get the rumor mill back in motion. Not only is Cruz swaddled in a loose black blouse and long coat, but Bardem is tightly clutching a large, white envelope.

Could that package contain the test results the world has been awaiting? Reps for Cruz were unavailable for comment.

Cruz, 35, and Bardem, 40, have been dating since 2007. They have appeared together in three films, including Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

(source)