The twice-widowed aristocrat kicked off her shoes and danced on a red carpet at the entrance of her 15th century Palacio de las Duenas in Seville after tying the knot in the chapel of the estate as dozens of well-wishers cheered.
"Long live the Duchess!", the crowd yelled out as her new husband Alfonso Diez, wearing a grey suit and blue tie, smiled and looked on.
Minutes earlier the duchess, who wore a light pink lace dress with a green sash by Andalusian designers Victorio & Lucchino, struggled to toss her bouquet to the crowd.
The bouquet fell short of the well-wishers on her first two attempts and had to be retrieved by a security guard but on her third toss the flowers reached a young woman.
"This is a very beautiful marriage, with lots of love and tenderness," said 40-year-old Enrique Jimenez who wore a T-shirt with an image of the aristocrat before crying out: "I love you so much Duchess!".
Only the noble's six children and their families, and a handful of friends, were invited to the ceremony and wedding meal, which included gazpacho soup and rice with spicy lobster.
It was a dramatic change from Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James-Stuart's first marriage in October 1947, when the 21-year-old bride had 1,000 guests and wore gems reportedly worth 1.5 million dollars even then.
Spanish media devoured every detail of the wedding and several TV stations broadcast live outside of the palace during the ceremony.
But it is the story of the love match and the suspicions of the duchess's children that her beloved may be a gold digger that has really fascinated Spaniards.
The duchess, the head of the house of Alba who is renowned for her frizzy hair and colourful dress sense, has said she had to work hard to overcome her offspring's objections to her plans to marry Diez.
Several months ago she divided up much of her estate among her five sons and one daughter -- palaces, mansions and treasures including masterpieces by artists from Goya to Velazquez, Murillo, Rembrandt and Rubens.
But she has kept control until her death over the assets, reputedly worth between 600 million and 3.5 billion euros ($850 million and $5.0 billion).
As a strict Roman Catholic, the duchess said in an interview on the eve of the wedding that she had no choice but to marry.
"I am anti-divorce, anti-abortion, anti all those atrocities," she said in an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE.
"I am a Catholic and I practise it. That is why I am marrying for a third time," said the duchess.
"Unfortunately my previous two husbands died."
Her six children, all from her first marriage, reportedly balked when the idea of marriage emerged. In July of this year the duchess assigned them and her grandchildren juicy chunks of her vast estate, like mansions and palaces, in an effort to appease them and clear her way to the altar.
"I have been alone in this project, and got nothing but negative opinions until they realized what kind of man he is," the duchess told the Spanish news agency Efe this week in a rare interview.
Estimates of her wealth range from euro600 million ($800 million) to euro3.5 billion ($4.7 billion). Besides fabulous and historic real estate sprinkled around Spain, the family treasure boasts paintings by Goya and Velazquez, a first-edition copy of Cervantes "El Quixote", and letters written by Christopher Columbus.
However, although owned by the 500-year-old House of Alba, the artwork and some other property is classified as part of Spain's national heritage and cannot be sold without government permission.
Diez will be entering a new world, although he has reportedly signed a document renouncing any claim to the House of Alba wealth. As a civil servant in Madrid he earned euro1,500 ($2,000) a month. Now he will live in splendor as a duke, reportedly with plans to take a leave of absence from his day job, although the noble title will pass on to the duchess's eldest son, Carlos, when she dies.
Two of the children did not attend the wedding. Her only daughter, Eugenia, was reported to hospitalized in Madrid with chicken pox, while one of her sons, named Jacobo and reportedly unhappy with his slice of the family fortune — was said to be traveling outside Spain.
The matriarch's supreme title is Duchess of Alba, but she has more than 40 others — in fact, more than anyone else in the world, according to Guinness World Records.
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