Martin Lorentz spent years hewing beams with an ax, using techniques from 800 years ago, to restore Notre Dame’s framework after the fire that destroyed it in 2019.
Nobody gets married there. The cathedral does not authorize private weddings, but the Archdiocese of Paris made an exception for him. On October 25, 2025, Martin married Jade inside the cathedral he had helped rebuild, in a ceremony presided over by the archbishop himself, Monsignor Laurent Ulrich, and blessed by the cathedral’s rector.
Nearly 500 guests attended the wedding, almost all of them fellow workers: the same artisans and technicians who, alongside Martin, were part of the army of 2,000 workers who brought Notre Dame back to Paris. When the newlyweds came out, those colleagues raised their axes to bid them farewell, as if the entire building owed them that applause.
