Christelle Demichel, 34, married a dead man last week.

She carried a bouquet of yellow roses and gleefully ducked rice after the ceremony in the Riviera city of Nice. About 40 people later attended her reception at a local restaurant where the Champagne bottles bore custom labels with the newlyweds' names. The only thing missing, besides a wedding cake, was the groom.

''I had what you can call a perfect wedding,'' Ms. Demichel said the next day, chain-smoking beside her new mother-in-law in a Paris café.

Yes, it is possible to marry the dearly departed in France, thanks to a law that turns the vow ''till death do us part'' on its head.

The law dates to December 1959, when the Malpasset Dam in southern France burst, inundating the town of Fréjus and claiming hundreds of lives. When de Gaulle visited the town a week later, a young woman named Irène Jodard pleaded with him to allow her to follow through on her marriage plans even though her fiancé had drowned.