Unsurprisingly, Barbra planned her wedding with all the meticulous attention to detail that she uses when directing a film. She kept a notebook of ideas, suggestions, and photographs for a year before the event, which was planned for July 1998. But most of the final decisions, Barbra said, were made in the two to three weeks before the wedding. There was never any question of where the wedding and reception would be held—Barbra had turned her home into a showplace with lovely flowered grounds and views of the Pacific Ocean. She decided to erect a twenty-eight-hundred-square-foot tent on the property, swagged with white satin and rose garlands, under which her guests would eat dinner and cake and dance.

Barbra’s Malibu assistant Kim Skalecki managed to invite all one hundred and five guests without news of the wedding leaking out, but little beyond that went smoothly. Workers putting up the tent trampled some of Barbra’s lovingly planned and tended to flower patches, so her gardeners needed to do last minute replantings. Barbra was verklempt the morning of the wedding when she found that the flower arrangements weren’t right, she didn’t have a track to sing along with for a planned serenade to her new husband, and her dress wasn’t finished. But she decided there was no more she could do, that “at your own wedding you can’t make a mistake.” So she took a shower, ramped up the steam, and “all my tensions dissolved…it was as if they flowed down the drain…it was amazing. I decided let go and let God.”

God must have been in a good mood that day, because everything came together at the last minute. The music arrived, the flowers looked beautiful, and Donna Karan finished the a dress just minutes before the ceremony.

At 8 p.m., escorted by Jason and preceded by her mother, sister, and soon-to-be stepson Josh Brolin, Barbra made her entrance. She looked gorgeous in a white tulle gown with white-flowered headband and flowing tulle train, and was accompanied by an atonal version of the wedding march played by Marvin Hamlisch. “I realized later that I looked familiar to myself—like my character in Funny Girl.” (Indeed, Barbra looked much like she did in the “His Love Makes Me Beautiful” number.)

After a fifteen-minute ceremony, the guests repaired to the tent and feasted on soft shell crabs, rotisserie-roasted baby chickens, and porcini ravioli. There were half a dozen toasts. Barbra’s longtime personal assistant Renata Buser emotionally told James, “You have a rarest flower.” Josh Brolin read an original poem: “My father and his bride, look at how they watch each other….” Then Barbra sang two new songs to her husband, “Just One Lifetime,” and “I’ve Dreamed of You.” The latter tune she and James had first heard in a restaurant during a trip to Ireland in late 1997. “I heard this instrumental playing,” Barbra recalled, “and I loved it, so I asked Anne Hampton Calloway to write lyrics to it.” (The music had been written by the Norwegian composer Rolf Lovland of the New Age group Secret Garden.)

Callaway recalled, “When I faxed the lyric to Barbra’s producer, he was very happy with it, and, after a few minor changes, sent it to Barbra. On a Monday I learned that Barbra loved the song and that she wanted me to record a demo and send it immediately. Tuesday, I recorded the demo and overnighted it to Barbra’s assistant. Apparently, three hours before the wedding, she heard the demo and decided to sing the song along with a song she has already planned to perform by Melissa Manchester and Tom Snow. It was my playing and Irwin Fisch’s string arrangement that accompanied Barbra as she sang ‘I’ve Dreamed of You’ to James Brolin. It’s a revelation to me how in love Barbra must be to have the courage to be so spontaneous on such a momentous occasion. A friend of mine who spoke to Marvin Hamlisch was told it was an absolutely stunning moment.”

Standing up after Barbra completed the song, the groom said with a laugh, “You expect me to follow that? I can’t tell you how lucky I am that this should happen to me so late in life. Every night is a new adventure. Sleeping is a waste of time. I can’t wait to see her again in the morning.” The party lasted until one in the morning, and then Mr. and Mrs. James Brolin left for a short honeymoon on the Channel Islands, off the coast of Santa Barbara. Just a week later Jim was due to start shooting new episodes of his television series.

Four months after her wedding, during an online chat at AOL, Barbra told fans “I’m starting an album this month called Barbra...In Love.” It was to contain a number of love songs, old and new, inspired by her new relationship. Nearly a year later, on September 21, 1999, the album was released, retitled A Love Like Ours. As she had with her boyfriend Jon Peters when she made ButterFly, Barbra peppered the album packaging with images of James Brolin and herself, including on the front and back covers. The front cover featured a shot (reminiscent of her People cover), of the two lovebirds from behind, staring out at the ocean.

The twelve tracks included the two songs Barbra sang to Jim at their wedding, “I’ve Dreamed of You” and “Just One Lifetime”; the Gershwins’ “Isn’t It a Pity?,” which the couple considered “our song”; Dave Grusin and the Bergmans’ “Love Like Ours” ; “If I Never Met You;” a duet with Vince Gill, “If You Ever Leave Me”; and a lovely new version of “His Is The Only Music That Makes Me Dance” from the stage version of Funny Girl. This last choice pleased many of Barbra’s fans who loved the song on the original cast album and were sorry it wasn’t included in the film version.

Arif Mardin, the album’s producer, recalled that “We worked very fast, contrary to what people keep asking me. Barbra is such a fabulous talent. We were at Sony Studios with a 60-piece orchestra. She sings live, of course. She belongs to the tradition where, for example, if she feels emotional and wants to slow down a beat, the conductor will watch for her cues and slow down the orchestra. It’s all organic.”

Barbra and Vince Gill, a Grammy-winning country music star, worked on “If I Never Met You”with David Foster at his Malibu studio on Monday, February 22 from 11 a.m. until 2 the next morning. Gill told Country Weekly magazine that he was “knocked out” by the chance to work with Barbra: “Where that phone call came from, I have no idea. I don’t know if Barbra’s ever heard my records, or if David Foster and Richard Marx told her about me or her husband James, I have no clue... But to be in the studio singing with her was incredible. To be in her presence and hear her voice in real time right there in the room is unbelievable.”

Many reviews of A Love Like Ours complained about its “gushiness” and “sentimentality.” Those who are moved enjoyably by romanticism liked it better. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote, “[The] album is a little subdued, which is appropriate for a romantic album. And, judged as a romance album, it works pretty well. Essentially, A Love Like Ours is a simple love album, a soundtrack to Streisand and Brolin’s wedding that will work for other weddings. It’s mood music that doesn’t set the mood, but will compliment the mood quite nicely.”

Barbra was unabashed by the sentimentality complaints. In her liner notes she wrote, “I’ve usually thought of love as a private matter, something experienced in that narrow space between two hearts. Yet once you find love, whenever it arrives, you somehow want to share that joy. You hope everyone in the world can feel the way you do at some point in their lives. Happiness makes you want to sing. You know all those corny things they say in every love song you’ve ever heard? Well, they’re true! Love is what life is all about. Love is the answer. I hope this album inspires your own loving spirit ... and may you be blessed with something as special as a love like ours.”

Barbra publicized the album by participating in various interview segments for television, including Rosie and the Today Show. She also did a round of interviews with various media outlets from a rented home near her own in Malibu. Columbia set up the lights and cameras and filmed a string of reporters interviewing her. The journalists were then sent the tapes. Despite this barrage of publicity, however, A Love Like Ours didn’t match the success of its predecessor. It debuted (and peaked) at Number Six on the Billboard chart, selling 145,000 copies its first week of release. It was, however, a solid success, certified Platinum a month after its release. It was Barbra’s twenty-third Top Ten Album.