A Cambodian actress has broken taboo and set tongues wagging in the showbiz world – by getting married to the father of her children.

Actress Kong Sokpha, 30, a karaoke and film star who played a queen in Jayavarman VII, a documentary about the 12th-century Khmer king, has married her partner after six years of being engaged.

The pair had been living together unmarried and have a four-year-old daughter together – an unconventional arrangement that fuelled gossip and rumour.

They were married last week at Phnom Penh’s Crystal Centre in a ceremony that was attended by about 300 guests.

Sokpha’s four-year-old daughter, as well as her adopted nine-year-old son, were among them.

She said: “The fact that I decided to live together with my fiancé before marriage did not mean that we were breaking the Khmer traditional marriage process. I just wanted to get a new experience and be different to other actresses.

“Like every mother, I want to be around my children so I want to see my child at our wedding.”

The pair met in 2005 when she was asked to star in a karaoke film by Khemarak Production, a company run by her husband’s younger brother.

Before the wedding, friends and neighbours gossipped about their non-traditional arrangement and speculated that the marriage would never happen.

“Maybe they won’t marry. Because they have been engaged for so long, it won’t mean the same for them,” a source said.

But the couple said the reason they had delayed the marriage was because they wanted to wait until their daughter was older.

Sokhpha said that after the wedding she would not move to the US to be with Hour, as she would get too homesick, but would go to visit him.

She added that they wanted to have another child.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sou Vuthy at [email protected]