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Surprise Party

Originally posted Thursday July 21, 2005 12:00 PM EDT

Bullock turned to her kid sister Gesine Bullock-Prado, 35, to create the evening's piéce de rèsistance. Gesine didn't disappoint: She made a four-tiered carrot cake with sour-cream frosting. Photo by: Jacqui Wong / AdMedia

Not that the suspense was the evening's only excitement. As guests were boarding buses in Santa Barbara, James was already making his grand entrance at the ranch; he drove up in a red double-cab truck, tires squealing and engine revving. On the narrow roadway outside the ranch, he hit a speed bump that sent his truck flying briefly into the air. And moments later, inside the property, he turned a sharp corner so hard that he skidded out in the dirt road.

But by around 8 p.m. he was back on track, waiting for his bride at the end of a path strewn with rose petals. First came Bullock's mixed-breed dogs, Kernie and Bob, dressed up in collars woven with natural grasses. "They were just so excited to be there, like everybody else was," says a guest.

Then came Gesine, Bullock's maid of honor. Without any formal roles or standing order, says Gesine, the family just "all glommed together" near James.

As Bullock walked down the aisle on the arm of her father, the recorded sounds of an aria from Bellini's Norma, sung by her mother, Helga, a German-born opera singer who died of cancer in 2000, filled the air. "Nobody said it was her, so you kind of had to know," says a guest. "It was really touching, [like] her mom was there."

Moments later the aria ended and Bullock joined James beneath an old tree hung with a cameo that had belonged to her mother. The grove was so silent, says her sister, "we could hear the birds."