Anna Nicole burial to be lavish and 'very pink'

Former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith will be buried beside her 20-year-old son tomorrow in a custom-made gown after an extravagant private and "very pink" ceremony bringing together three factions battling for custody of her infant daughter.

The memorial service at Mount Horeb Baptist Church, next to a shopping mall west of downtown Nassau, will be "over the top", with up to 300 guests, a singer and copious amounts of pink flowers, organiser Patrik Simpson said.

"It will be something very beautiful, very private, very over the top and very pink," said Simpson, of Beverly Hills, California.

The burial at Lakeview Memorial Gardens & Mausoleums will be much more intimate, with about 30 people, he said.

The casket will most likely be closed during the ceremonies, said Simpson and Pedro Ferguson, managing director of the Bahamas funeral home handling the arrangements.

But Simpson said he and other close friends of Smith's would arrange to put their pictures inside her casket before the burial.

Both the funeral and burial will be kept closed to the public with the help of Bahamas police. Today dozens of steel barricades were erected.

"We have the services of the police officers in the Bahamas and they are very competent," said Ferguson.

Simpson's partner, Pol Atteu, has designed more than a dozen gowns for Smith, including the one in which she was to be buried in a "very elegant" casket. Simpson declined to describe the dress, but said the whole ceremony will reflect Smith's buoyant personality.

"It will be a very beautiful Anna Nicole send-off," he said. "Of course it will be over the top because it's Anna Nicole."

Smith's death of unknown causes in Florida last month set off a battle between her partner, Howard K. Stern; her mother, Virgie Arthur; and her ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead over the burial and for custody of her infant daughter Dannielynn, who could potentially inherit millions. A Bahamian court has scheduled a custody hearing for mid-March.

Arthur had wanted to bury Smith in her native Texas. Birkhead lobbied for California.

But Stern insisted the former reality TV star wanted to be buried next to her 20-year-old son, Daniel, who died with drugs in his system while visiting Smith just after she gave birth in September.

A Florida appeals court resolved that dispute on Wednesday, and once Arthur decided not to appeal, Smith's body was free to be flown to the Bahamas by private plane early tomorrow, said attorney Richard Milstein, the court-appointed advocate for Smith's five-month-old daughter.

"Anna is coming home, where she wanted to be," Stern attorney Ron Rale told Associated Press Television News. "Everybody knows that Anna's intent was to be buried in the Bahamas."

Simpson said each "faction" - Stern, Arthur and Birkhead - had to submit a guest list in advance and each would be limited to 100 people at the church service. According to Entertainment Tonight, country music singer Joe Nichols will also perform.

Simpson, 38, a talent scout who was friends with Smith for the past five years, said he and his partner plan to place photos of themselves with their 15-year-old daughter, who sang at Daniel's funeral, inside her casket. Other friends will likely do the same, he said.

Despite the choice of a Baptist church for the service, he said Smith wasn't particularly religious but was "spiritual."

He recalled her as a warm and generous person who always remembered their daughter's birthday and other special events.

"She was just a good friend, a good mother, a great person," Simpson said. "She had a heart of gold and would give you the shirt off her own back."