Kate and Pete marry, but will he be entitled to a share of her £25 million fortune?
EXCLUSIVE by CLEMMIE MOODIE
Last updated at 00:01am on 2nd January 2007
Kate Moss has married her drug addict fiancé Pete Doherty in a private New Year's Day ceremony on the Thai island of Phuket.
The couple exchanged vows before a select few friends and family members in a forty minute ceremony held at their six star hotel villa overlooking the sea.
News of the wedding has sent shock waves through Miss Moss's circle of friends concerned that a legally binding union may give the poverty-stricken heroin and crack cocaine addict the right to half the estimated £25 million fortune Miss Moss has amassed during her extraordinarily successful 16-year modelling career.
It is yet to be confirmed whether the wedding was a Thai Buddist-style 'marriage blessing' or a formal legal wedding, the latter of which is often tied up in weeks of beaurocratic red tape. Thai Buddhist-style blessings conducted by monks are usually taken in conjunction with formal weddings in a couple's home country.
The presence of Miss Moss's personal assistant perhaps to help plough through beaurocratic red tape - and Kate's mother Linda and brother Nick being at the ceremony in Phuket - are being seen as an indication that a formal legally-binding ceremony took place.
After seeing in the New Year under a £100,000 fire works display alongside other hotel guests including the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, and her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, the 32-year-old supermodel and Doherty, 27, retired to bed shortly before 1am, ahead of their big day.
Miss Moss is understood to have warned Doherty against late nights of drugs consumption in Thailand, where such behaviour can carry the death penalty.
Yesterday the pair were awoken with a room service breakfast before preparing, in different rooms, for the ceremony.
At 1.30pm Thai time - 6.30am UK time - the Babyshambles singer and Miss Moss exchanged vows in the picturesque private gardens of their five-bedroomed £4,500-per-night villa at the Amanpuri hotel.
Wearing a white Galliano shift dress and her blonde hair loose, Miss Moss looked on adoringly at her groom, who was dressed in an all-black linen suit and his trademark pork pie hat.
For the ceremony, the gardens and villa were decorated with flower petals, fragrant jasmine, orchids and a floral archway. White and pale pink lotus flowers decorated the pool.
With security at a maximum, staff guarded the perimeter of the villa, preventing any uninvited guests from wandering in.
A legally recognised marriage in Thailand would involve the couple first visiting the British embassy in Bangkok, then getting the paperwork translated by a certified translator.
They would then have to visit the Bangkok Foreign Affairs Office to get the translations stamped.
In Phuket, they would have had to then submit the papers to a local legal witness who would come to the wedding, before the wedding documents would then have to be translated into English. Then the couple would have to visit a British registry office to ensure the Thai marriage was recognised legally in Britain.
All of which red tape might explain why Miss Moss's personal assistant joined them on the trip. A local source said the paperwork could conceivably be completed in three to five days in Thailand.
The Amanpuri resort, where the ceremony took place, urges couples having a Thai Buddhist-style marriage blessing to have already - or be imminently planning - a more formal wedding in their home country.
Last night a hotel source confirmed the wedding ceremony had taken place. The Mail revealed yesterday that the pair were due to exchange vows on the Thai island on New Year's Day.
"The wedding has been planned with the utmost care and attention to detail", the source said. "irtually all the staff were informed that it was taking place but they have been under strict instructions to keep quiet about it. The couple was adamant that it should be a secret, private function."
Another hotel staff member claimed that the couple, who got together almost two years ago at the model's 31st birthday party, planned to honeymoon on another island off Thailand.
It is understood that they have been loaned a friend's private helicopter to transport them from the Amanpuri, on the west coast of Phuket, to the new destination in the south east asian country.
The couple's relationship has been dogged by scandal and drama. Only weeks ago Doherty was present when actor Mark Blanco plunged to his death at a drug-fuelled party at an East London top-floor flat.
Despite Miss Moss threatening to end their relationship if Doherty did not cure his addictions to heroin and crack cocaine, the singer was hauled before the courts to face drugs charges on three separate occasions this year.
Most recently, he was given a community probation order and under the terms of which he is required to meet up with a probation officer once a week. If Doherty is to make his next such meeting, he will have to cut short the couple's honeymoon.
Miss Moss, who underwent a stint in rehab after being photographed snorting 'line after line' of cocaine in September 2005, is said to have sworn herself off drugs.
Miss Moss have never been married before. Doherty, who has a three-year-old son Astile, has been previously married, to singer Lisa Moorish.
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