PRETORIA (Reuters) - Nelson Mandela wed Graca Machel before family and friends on Saturday but the ceremony was accompanied by a constant barrage of well-wished comment, according to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. „It was a very interesting religious service. People kept heckling,“ Mbeki told reporters as he announced the news that Mandela had finally tied the knot on his 80th birthday. Mandela‘s old friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu read part of the service, which was led by Bishop Mvume Dandala, the head of the Methodist church in South Africa — the Christian denomination in which Mandela was brought up as a boy. Representatives from the Jewish, Hindu and Moslem faiths also offered their blessings to the couple at the secretly convened ceremony to which only 20 were invited. Mbeki and his wife Zenani were the couple‘s official witnesses and stood by the President as he spoke the words: „I, Nelson, do take you Graca to be my wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish, till death us part.“ Graca, the elegant 52-year-old widow of former Mozambican president Samora Machel who has been Mandela‘s companion for the last two years, answered: „I, Graca, do take you Nelson to be my husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward,“ according to the couples‘ Order of Service, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters. Tutu admonished the couple as they knelt after their vows had been taken and rings exchanged, with a reading from the bible: „Love is patient, love is not jealous or conceited, or proud, love is not bad-mannered, or selfish, or irritable, love does not keep a record of wrongs, love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth.“