Ahmad Rashad, former husband of Claire Huxtable, I mean Phylicia Rashad, got married to Sale Johnson, the ex-wife of Johnson & Johnson heir and NY Jets owner Woody Johnson, in a glitzy NYC ceremony yesterday.

[The two wed] in front of a crowd of friends including Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, NBA Commissioner David Stern, Donald Trump, Martha and Carl Lindner and Derek Jeter. “It was going to be a birthday party for him,” Sale told us. “Then it turned into a party to celebrate his being inducted into the Football Hall of Fame, and finally he said, ‘Let’s just get married.’

Clearly I’m having trouble separating The Cosby Show from reality, but I doubt this woman holds a candle to Phylicia Rashad. On the other hand, as much money as I’m sure Phylicia has, this woman probably has more.

Or maybe they’re just really in love.[]

Eddie Murphy and Tracey Edmonds will probably tie the knot somewhere overseas, presumably to avoid Johnny Gill crashing through the church doors during the “speak now or forever hold your piece” portion of the ceremony.

Edmonds told Sister 2 Sister about her engagement, which began in front of the television. Romance at its finest.

Murphy proposed to Edmonds in July, while the two were watching TV. She reveals he walked over to her casually, and then surprised her by getting on his knees.

She asked him what he was doing and he replied, “I’m about to ask you to marry me,” before he presented her with a canary yellow square diamond, surrounded by two white diamonds in a platinum setting.

She recalls, “I was speechless for a moment when I first saw it.” Modest Edmonds admits she has no idea how much her engagement ring cost her man.

Modesty? When your man is a multi-millionaire, you don’t really need to know how much your ring costs. How much do her beard girlfriend/wife services cost, though? That’s the question.

[SP]

Okay, okay. It looks like a pretty affair — definitely better than one held in a lawyer’s office, that’s for sure. Although, it probably would have been more desirable if Tameka Raymond’s pregnant tummy wasn’t quite as distended in her white wedding dress. But now I’m just picking.

Best of luck to the most confusing couple of the year!

CONTINUED »

• Ew. Second story of the day — they really are back. Usher and Tameka are planning a wedding “real” wedding this weekend for family and friends, including Jermaine Dupri, Janet Jackson, Ashanti, and Diddy. []

• Every Jehovah’s Witness in the world just clutched their chest in horror. And which one is it, Terrence Howard — do you have premarital sex or not? [SP]

• Jena High School administrators banned the sisters of one of the defendants in the infamous case from wearing “Free the Jena 6″ shirts in school. Because it was “disruptive.” []

• Remy Ma’s alleged victim is just mad at all the female rappers. []

• Venus Williams launches the largest clothing collection of any female athlete. Uh, congrats? [EUR]

Item No. 1 in the list of lessons learned by Britney Spears: Don’t make rash decisions in a post-partum state. It won’t help your child support case.

Mel B was probably busy being all pregnant and angry around the time that Britney Spears lost it, so maybe she can’t be blamed.

It turns out Mel has a major one-up on Eddie Murphy, who’s just now slipping the engagement ring on his girl’s finger. Stephen Belafonte, that boyfriend of hers? Well, he’s really more like her husband and has been since June.

Her Larry King Live appearance was canceled yesterday due to illness. It could be the type of illness that comes about when you want to avoid discussing a bit of secret information that was just revealed.

[People]

Finally — the details of the Usher nuptials you’ve been waiting for! Unfortunately, a ceremony conducted in one’s lawyer’s office is, by its very nature, not very detailed. Here’s what the happy groom had to say:

“It was beautiful and private,” the R&B singer, 28, tells Us Weekly. “We didn’t have a first dance – but we had a lovely, intimate dinner filled with candlelight and flowers.”

The couple’s plans for the future are simple: to have a larger wedding ceremony (“sometime later in the year, or after the baby is born,” Usher says) and to “prepare for the birth of our first child.”

If I were one of the jilted guests (Beyonce, Jay, JD, Janet) from his last “large ceremony,” I wouldn’t be so quick to make room in my busy schedule when I got Usher and Tameka’s invitation.

[]

That Usher! Such a complicated man.

The $10,000 wedding invitations were out, Jean-Georges Vongerichten was booked, L.A. Reid’s mansion was prepared, and, as you know, it was all scrapped at the last minute due to pregancy scares, meddling moms, or cold feet — whatever you’d prefer to believe, really.

Instead, Usher quietly (kudos for that) married Tameka Foster in his lawyer’s office. Not romantic, per se, but apparently good enough for Ushmeka.

Now that the will he/won’t he suspense is over, maybe we can all go on with our lives now. Until the baby’s born, at least.

[People]

The Usher wedding circus continues today with a statement from the not-as-wily-as-she-once-seemed Tameka Foster, who has no doubt found wrapping a R&B star around her little finger to be harder than she initially thought.

“No one knows why we canceled the wedding, but I can tell you that all of the reasons that everyone is speculating and writing about are completely untrue,” Foster told PEOPLE Monday, but she declined to reveal more about why the nuptials were called off.

Well, thanks for nothing, Tameka. I’m going to go ahead and continue believing that Usher called off the wedding because a woman, no matter how much clout she might think she has, can come between the bond between a mother and a mama’s boy.

As for the rumors going around that she had been hospitalized because of pregnancy complications, Tameka says they had a brief “scare” but everything is fine. I was worried for a minute that I would have to learn to say something nice about this woman if she had undergone some personal tragedy.

[People]

In one People article, the cancellation of Usher and Tameka Foster’s Saturday wedding was blamed on Jonetta Patton’s disapproval, the couple’s arguments over wedding details, and Usher’s cold feet. Basically, no one knows why the Hamptons wedding, which many stars were scheduled to attend, was called off. But the dramatic, 11th hour move has Tameka Foster written all over it.

Usher (full name: Usher Raymond) and Foster, a stylist, also “had a lot of differences about the details. For example, the bride wanted barbeque, [and] he wanted to have [renowned chef] Jean Georges cook,” said the source.

As a result of the differences, the wedding “was on again off again for the past few days. [Foster] was calling it off because she wasn’t getting the things that she wanted. The mother was calling it off. … Usher was calling it off.”

There’s no indication of whether or not Foster and Usher will reschedule the wedding or if they are even still together. Regardless of the familial in-fighting, there’s still the matter of a baby that’s going to be born in the fall. Usher’s stuck with Tameka, in one way or another, for life.

[People]

• Depending on who you are, you might find this photo of Serena Williams horrifying, titillating, or somewhere in between. However you feel, it was nice of her to bare all in Jane magazine for charity. [SR]
• Tameka Foster found Chilli at Jonetta Patton’s house recently and screamed, “Doesn’t your boyfriend have a mom you can visit?” I would have yelled back, “Don’t you have kids you can go take care of?” []
• Congrats to Laila Ali and Curtis Conway, who got married this weekend. [People]
• Another congrats to Lisa Bonet and boy toy Jason Momoa on their new baby daughter. []
• I wonder how much promoters have the nerve to charge for Bobby Brown’s Greatest Hits tour. [J-N]