Love, Lipstick and Lies (29 page)

On Wednesday, the morning of our wedding, Kieran had to go into town with Derek to get him an outfit. That’s my friend Derek: lastminute.com all over. Kieran and I had broken with tradition and spent the night before together … Meanwhile the girls and I had some serious preparations to take care of and were getting our hair and make up done. It was completely relaxed and we were all having a laugh. My mum and Kieran’s mum, Wendy, had immediately hit it off. They had only met the day before at Heathrow. Apparently my mum had suggested they should meet up outside W. H. Smith, a bit like a blind date! But from the moment they met they got on. In fact, they ended up being more or less joined at the hip throughout their stay. I was so relieved! This was the
first time my mum has
ever
got on with a partner’s mother. But Wendy is exactly like us, and she’s young, trendy and normal.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ my mum told me, and handed me a pretty blue Swarovski crystal bracelet. Perfect for my something blue. Earlier, when Tanya walked into my suite, she had been wearing a pair of fantastic earrings, huge diamante numbers.

‘I love them!’ I’d exclaimed.

‘Wear them,’ she told me, taking them off and handing them to me. ‘They can be your something borrowed.’

And so for the first time I felt as if I was doing everything right, with my something old (my diamond bracelet), something new (the dress), something borrowed (the earrings) and something blue (bracelet). And it was good to have both our mums here with us. I would have hated it if mine hadn’t been able to come, and I know Kieran would have felt exactly the same if Wendy hadn’t been able to.

My dress fitted perfectly as I knew it would – a big thanks to Adrian! I wore my hair down, with the pretty diamante tiara he’d found and a crystal-studded veil. I kept my make up quite simple, but of course I had my fake lashes on and went for my sultry-eyed look, which I love. I think I probably looked like a girl from
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
, but without the big dress, and of course I was barefoot.

‘Come on, Kate, we have to go, we’re late,’ my friend Jane said, looking at her watch.

‘It’s only half-past two, isn’t it?’ I replied, having no idea what the time was.

‘It’s four o’clock!’ Jane replied.

Shit! I was supposed to have been married an hour ago! And for once I had planned to be on time. Too late for that now. Poor Kieran had been waiting for me …

When we arrived at the beach, he was standing in the gazebo. Wow! He looked so handsome, wearing his ivory-coloured shirt and trousers, a single white rose pinned to his shirt to match my bouquet of white hydrangeas. He made my heart flip with happiness.

But as I got ready to walk up the aisle, with Derek holding my arm, I couldn’t help noticing there seemed to be a lot of people watching. I didn’t like that one bit. Had someone said something to tip them off? Would they take pictures? This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I could feel stress building up inside me.

Just enjoy it, I tried to tell myself. It’s your wedding day, ignore everything else.

The keyboard player struck up ‘Here Comes the Bride’ (we had wanted something traditional) and I began walking up the scallop-lined aisle and Kieran came to meet me so we could walk together. The registrar was about to start the ceremony when suddenly I noticed a woman on a nearby sunbed, holding up a phone.

‘Sorry!’ I exclaimed. ‘We have to stop. That woman over there is filming.’

The wedding planner rushed over to the woman, who claimed that she hadn’t been but left anyway. So
we started again. But then we noticed there was a man with a camera, pointed right at us, on the balcony of the building that overlooked the beach. And so we had to halt the ceremony again as I asked the wedding planner to go up there and delete his pictures.

In total we had to stop the ceremony three times. The registrar had married over ten thousand couples and said he had never experienced anything like this before. It was so frustrating! We weren’t saying, ‘Oh, look at us, aren’t we special?’ We had just wanted to be treated like any other couple. But there were far more people watching our wedding than had watched any of the others, which made us wonder how exactly they had all known to come at that time. There were even people watching from their balconies. Part of me did want to shout out: ‘Fuck off! What are you looking at!’ But I kept calm and carried on, determined not to let anyone spoil our special day.

We had kept our vows very traditional. When the wedding planner asked us if we wanted to add our own personal words, we’d both said that we wanted the usual vows: to have and to hold, for richer for poorer, till death us do part. Getting married was all that mattered to us. We didn’t need to say anything fancy, we loved each other, that was enough.

After the ceremony we had our photographs taken on the beach, by the photographer from the hotel. He had also been filming and photographing the run up to the wedding and the ceremony itself as part of the
package. Our mums and Tanya snapped away at us as well.

Over dinner we told everyone the brilliant news about me being pregnant. Everyone was thrilled for us, though I noticed our mums exchanging looks, probably because it had happened so quickly. We went through the pictures and thought they were lovely. We both looked so happy and relaxed. All in all, in spite of the hiccups with other people photographing us, it had been a brilliant day. And now I was Mrs Hayler! This time I really was going to change my name outside work. I had always said I would with Pete and Alex, but I never had. This time it was going to be different.

* * *

The following morning my manager Andrew called me with some very unwelcome news.

‘Th
e Sun
have got pictures of your wedding. And apparently all the photos are really clear.’

How the hell had that happened? I was livid. This was exactly what I didn’t want. I discussed it with Kieran and we decided that we would send some of our own pictures, taken by the hotel photographer, to Andrew to see if he could do a deal with the
Sun.
That should really piss off the people who were trying to make money out of selling pictures of us. We selected fifteen shots and asked the wedding photographer to email them to Andrew. Then we tried to forget all about it and not get stressed, and that wasn’t difficult as Tanya
had chartered a massive yacht and treated us all to an amazing trip round the island. We went snorkelling, sunbathed, had lunch, relaxed in the onboard Jacuzzi. Just a perfect day.

Back at the hotel we checked the
Sun’s
website. We couldn’t believe it when we saw the pictures. They were definitely not our official wedding photographs. There were close-up shots of Kieran and me gazing straight at the camera, other shots of us posing by the sea, and him picking me up in his arms. Straightaway we knew these had to have been taken from inside the hotel grounds. There were also some pictures that had clearly been taken by a long-distance lens, which meant by a pap. We were absolutely furious. And because they showed us posing and looking at the camera, everyone was going to think that we had sold them! I know some celebs set up pictures when they go on holiday, but we genuinely didn’t. We wanted our wedding to be private. We hadn’t even told all our family and friends yet, so the pictures in the
Sun
caused real problems for us as we had many texts from friends sounding hurt as they wrote, ‘Thanks a lot for inviting us!’

Even worse was to come when the following day the
Sun
had pictures of Kieran and me sunbathing, including ones of me topless, claiming that these were our honeymoon photos. We had been well and truly stitched up. Those pictures had been taken on our very first day sunbathing at the resort. There had to have been a tip off from someone at or in the hotel, as how else
would a photographer have known to book into a room in just the right position to photograph us from? We had deliberately chosen the most private part of the beach, which wasn’t the closest to the hotel building, and the photographer had to have been told that. It was too much of a coincidence for him to have found us by chance.

I felt I had to do something. I wasn’t going to sit back and take this. So once our friends and mums had left, I asked to see the manager. I started off by showing her the pictures from Michelle Heaton’s wedding and pointed out that Sandals had given her a free wedding because she had promoted the resort. And I said that her recommendation about how private the ceremony had been had inspired us to come here.

‘We paid to come here and get married,’ I said, ‘and you’ve had publicity from that! If I’d wanted a free wedding, I would have sold the pictures myself. But I didn’t. Someone here went and did exactly that behind our backs.’ I had started out quite calmly but I was getting more and more angry as I spoke.

‘We’ve been stitched up,’ I burst out. ‘This hotel did nothing to stop our wedding being ruined!’

‘I’ll look into it,’ the manager promised. She was taking notes and I think she could see that we had valid reason to complain.

‘Oh, and that’s not all!’ I continued. ‘I’ve just got the bills for our hair and make up and I’m not paying all that! Just because you know I’ve got money, you’re not taking the piss out of me!’

The morning of my wedding day I’d had my hair washed and blow-dried and they had charged me $150 just for that. Plus $50 for conditioning treatments that I didn’t even ask for! I did most of my make up myself, and the make-up artist we had booked just applied my eye shadow and lashes … and then they had charged me $40 extra for sticking on the lashes. I’ve been in the modelling industry for years and no one has ever charged me separately for putting on lashes. It’s part of make up, surely. I really felt as if we were being ripped off. I was paying for everyone else and they had all been charged exactly the same.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow and I want everything sorted before then!’ I finished up by saying.

After the woman had left, Kieran looked at me and said, ‘That told her then!’ I don’t think he had seen me go into attack mode before … but I hate feeling that people are trying to take advantage of me. Kieran is a very calm, laidback man – just as well really. We couldn’t have both of us getting into a state.

I trusted the manager to deal with my complaints but the following day, which was the day we were leaving, when I went down to Reception to see her, I was told she wasn’t in. What kind of place was this? I took a deep breath. ‘Right, let’s get some things straight,’ I started. ‘We came here to get married, thinking it was going to be perfect. Instead, someone at this hotel has stitched us up and sold our pictures to a national newspaper. Unless you get the management to come to my hotel
suite before we leave and explain how they are going to sort this out …’ There were other guests in Reception, and they were all staring at me, but I didn’t care. I was absolutely furious that we had been treated like this.

‘I’m going to the hairdressers now, so you’ve got an hour to get your act together.’

I was seething as I had my hair done, but I made myself write down notes about all I intended to say. I wanted to get my facts straight. When I returned to our suite I told Kieran what was happening.

‘Oh, shit! Do I have to sit in?’ he asked. ‘I never know what you’re going to come out with!’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it all under control.’

The bell rang and I opened the door to find five managers. In they walked, suited and booted, and sat down on the sofas. I had my notes ready in front of me as I got straight down to my description of our stay, from the moment the butler had asked me if I was a porn star. I showed them all the pictures of us that had appeared in the press, pointing out the ones where we had been papped as we sunbathed and the shots of our ‘private’ wedding ceremony which could only have been taken from somewhere in the hotel. Whoever had done this had been very sneaky as the pap shots only appeared after our official wedding photos, and the photographer had obviously been staking us out all week, knowing that if he sold his pictures any earlier, every other pap in the area would have known where we were and come and got a slice of the action.

‘Sandals is a private resort, so surely you should be interested in the fact that a person is taking pictures of your guests, without your permission or theirs?’ I said at one point. They had no answer to that.

Finally, I summed it up for them with the killer comment: ‘I write a column for the
Sun
newspaper and the editor will definitely want me to talk about my wedding. You’re not going to want me to tell the biggest-selling paper in the UK that my week here at Sandals was shit, are you? We have been set up and you need to get to the bottom of what happened because you’ve upset all of us. And I am not letting this matter drop.’ Phew! I was on a roll. Katie Price, kickass!

They seemed genuinely shocked and were very apologetic. We also went through the receipts for the wedding make up and hair and they agreed to remove the charges for the hair conditioners and lashes. But they didn’t discount the rest of the holiday. They gave me the name and number of their PR representative in Europe and told me to contact her when I returned to the UK and said she would be able to sort it out.

However, when my PA Catherine called her to arrange a time to meet up, she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in such a meeting. And so, when it was time to write my column for th
e Sun
, I didn’t sugar-coat our wedding experience, I told it straight. ‘The butler asked me if I was a porn star.’ Our wedding tent ‘looked like it came out of B&Q’, and the atmosphere was ‘more 18–30
than royal. Sandals, my a*** – it was more like a smelly old flip-flop.’

And in reply Sandals were quoted as saying that they were ‘Disappointed Ms Price was not happy with her stay’ and that the butler denied making any ‘derogatory remarks’, adding, ‘As a gesture of goodwill we are willing to offer her a refund on condition she does not choose our resorts for any future weddings or stays.’

Unbelievable! I’d never go near there again, never in a million years. And as for the so-called refund, was that going to include our flights as well as the money that someone had made out of selling our pictures!