Zeta-Jones feared big day would be ruined

ONE of the greatest fears of Catherine Zeta Jones and her husband Michael Douglas was that the media could infiltrate their wedding and ruin the big day, a High Court judge was told yesterday.

From the outset of the planning of the €1.8 million ceremony at the Plaza Hotel in New York, an extraordinary security operation was devised to keep out unwanted visitors, Mr Justice Lindsay was told.

The couple wanted a few wedding photographs selected by themselves to appear in OK! magazine who had signed a €1.5 million deal for exclusive rights.

But a paparazzo gatecrashed the event in November 2000 and his pictures were published in rival magazine Hello!.

Simone Martel, who planned the wedding day, told the judge via a video link from New York that one of the most complicated and most expensive aspects of the big day were the security arrangements.

It involved three security companies, the New York Police Department and the city’s fire department.

“We worked on the basis that paranoia is the mother of survival and tried to plan for as many contingencies as possible,” Ms Martel told the court yesterday.

Hello! magazine was only turning the tables on its rival OK! when it published a spoiler edition of the Catherine Zeta Jones’s wedding, the High Court was told.

Martin Townsend, the former editor of OK! which is claiming €2.6 million from Hello!, said that in September 1998 he had published a feature on the wedding of Gloria Hunniford and Stephen Way of which Hello! had exclusive coverage.

James Price QC, who is defending Hello! against the damages claim from OK! and a €700,000 claim from Miss Zeta Jones and husband Michael Douglas, asked him: “Did you think you did anything unlawful?”

Mr Townsend replied: “If you hand out disposable cameras at a wedding and invite the guests to use them to take pictures of each other, it is only to be expected that they will find their way into the press.”