WHEN Katie Price got married to Peter Andre in a lavish £1.75m Cinderella-themed ceremony, her bridesmaids included ex-jungle campmate Kerry Katona and Liberty X’s Michelle Heaton.
But her latest whirlwind wedding to Lee Andrews was certainly no fairytale. Here, the man who helped the happy couple exchange their vows spills the secrets of the rushed Dubai wedding – and reveals how the former glamour model grabbed random hotel guests to attend and guzzled champagne moments after saying ‘I do’.
Mum-of-five Katie, who has left her closest friends and family reeling after the shock marriage revealed in The Sun, was so keen to share her happy day with others that she cornered a couple of pensioners around the sunbeds of her hotel and asked them to join in.
To boost the numbers, the 47-year-old also invited a waiter, the banquets manager and another worker to watch her walk through a courtyard and take her vows rather than any close friends.
While many brides take hours getting ready into their expensive bridalwear, we can reveal that Katie got ready and changed into a £12 Shein white dress within 40 minutes.
The 25 minute ceremony involved Katie walking through a courtyard to no music, vows were then exchanged where they promised to stand “side by side”, and they later swapped rings.
They enjoyed glasses of bubbly with the celebrant and two hotel guests following the lowkey do – before Katie flew back to Britain the next day.
Celebrant Darryl Rees, an MC from Swansea who officiated the Dubai event, said the couple seemed “very certain” about their decision to get married.
The whirlwind wedding was supposed to be last Saturday, and Darryl was phoned up just an hour before asking if he could host it.
It then got cancelled and rescheduled for the next day at the One & Only The Palm, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, where rooms can go for £1,500 a night.
DJ celebrant Darryl Rees told The Sun of the couple: “When I first met them, they were giggling, hugging each other, holding each other’s hand, laughing.
“When Katie came to join Lee in the altar, they just couldn’t keep their hands off each other, looking at each other dead in the eyes. Very touchy feely.
“There were three hotel staff. And then there were two hotel guests. I think they met them by the pool that day.
“Because the pool and the ceremony area are about 20 meters away from each other, they just kind of joined in and witnessed it. But that was it. No other witnesses.”
Matching tattoos & £12 Shein dress
The older couple had been together for 25 years but had only got married three months ago – whereas Katie and Lee got married after meeting days before.
Darryl added: “We were laughing about that. We were having a joke about it saying ‘This is the complete opposite end of the spectrum‘.”
Darryl originally got a call an hour before the first wedding was planned on the Saturday, but it was then called off until the next day because it was getting dark.
Despite being asked, Lee never told Darryl how they met but when asked for personal touches they told him about their matching 1111 tattoos and mentioned “how they both manifested this day and moment”.
He explained: “Because time was against us. I was like, ‘when you get a chance, can you send me a voice note with all the details?’
“He didn’t send me a voice note until like 12 o’clock that night. He said they were doing something.
“So then I got a voice note with the manifestation part, the 1111 tattoos they mentioned and then the names and then that. So I just personalised that bit.”
The traditional vows read included: “Do you promise to love, honour and cherish her. To stand by each other in good times and bad, in sickness and in health and be faithful for as long as you both shall live?”
Lee responded: “I do. I 100% do I’m very in love.”
Through the whole ceremony I talked about the traditional stuff. I just said, their story is very simple. From the moment they met, they both felt something.
Darryl Rees,
They were also asked: “Do you promise to share your lives as one, to love and laugh together and to build your dreams side by side?”
Rees said: “When they were repeating it and saying I do, they were just very enthusiastic and very much certain.”
He added: “Through the whole ceremony I talked about the traditional stuff. I just said, their story is very simple. From the moment they met, they both felt something.
“Lee said, when we were exchanging messages back and forth about the personal stuff, that from the moment they met, they both felt something they had never experienced before.
“I said, ‘look, it all happens fast. And they were the first to admit that. But love is not here to follow any timelines’.
“And I added more about how some people spend years searching for their person. But these two just knew they were aligned.”
“Katie was so down to earth. Considering she’s a huge celebrity, she was so nice. We were having a laugh and having a joke right from the start about random stuff.
“At first, I was starstruck, like, ‘Oh my God, I’m marrying Katie Price’, telling all my friends, this is hilarious.
“But when I arrived, they just seemed like normal people.”
After the ceremony, Darryl stayed for around 45 minutes to share a glass of champagne before leaving them for their “private time”.
He said: “It just seemed like normal people, you know? And then Katie was telling me about what she got planned for the future and things like that in terms of her work things.
“We’ll probably see her on a few more things. Like TV shows maybe, you know?
“It was weird just drinking with like Katie Price. That was just weird. She seemed just normal, slightly crazy in a way, I suppose.”
The wedding was originally planned in a rush on the Saturday. The hotel gave Darryl’s number to Lee when he asked them to find a celebrant, after one they originally asked for cancelled.
Darryl said: “Lee got in touch with me through a voice note.
“He said ‘hey, hope you’re well, hope this doesn’t overwhelm you. But I want to get married to my fiance today’.
“I was like, yeah, sure, no worries, I can, where is it? Oh, Birj Al Arab.
“I was like, no worries, I can get down in like 30 minutes, 40 minutes. He goes, no worries, we’re staying at the one and only. So let me just call the hotel, Birj Al Arab, just to make sure they’re all set up and ready.
“And then, that didn’t go ahead. They were like, ‘look mate, it’s not going ahead tonight. It’s a bit late now, cause it’s five, half five, sun’s going down’.
“So they were like, ‘look, we’re gonna do it tomorrow at 1130 at the Birj Al Arab’.
“The next morning, and then we exchanged a few messages back and forth.
“Originally it was planned to be at the Birj Al Arab the next day on the Sunday, but then we moved it then to one and only then for a 2.30 start.”
He said Lee seemed incredibly grateful afterwards, adding: “He was thanking me so much. He was like, that was really a nice reading out of the little we gave you.
“And Katie was so down to earth from the start. Considering she’s a huge celebrity, she was so sound, so nice. We were having a laugh and having a joke right from the start about random stuff.
“And then she’s like, yeah ‘I’m not all that made out to be in the media’. We have a laugh about that. they just seemed like a really nice, cute
couple.
“I didn’t have any doubts. Obviously, if I’m getting a call an hour before to do a ceremony, I am having a bit of doubt.
“But when I met them, it was like, yeah, this seems real. They looked like a happy couple.”
He had asked them how they met a couple times for his personalised readings, but Lee only said “I’ll tell you all about it later.”
‘Act of revenge’
Her choice of groom has certainly raised eyebrows though after The Sun revealed Lee had been arrested in Dubai in October amid growing concerns Katie has been used by the fantasist.
In fact, friends of Lee Andrew said they think the whirlwind wedding was an act of “revenge” after ex fiancé Alana Percival called off their engagement just weeks before.
One told The Sun she was with him in his favourite coffee shop near a gym he goes to in Palm Jumeirah less than a month ago.
The friend told The Sun: “He was heartbroken. Genuinely heartbroken. I consoled him. He told me about the breakup and I was telling him I’m very sorry about that.
“I was shocked when I saw he got married. But it was happy for him.
“I thought it was like revenge.”
We can also reveal he appears to have been holed up in the luxury hotel he got married at – despite repeatedly insisting he was heading to the UK to reunite with Katie.
Lee, who faced a string of fakery claims after he emerged as Katie’s new husband, cast a lonely figure having been seen sitting eating breakfast at a corner table of a restaurant all alone on the terrace.
He has been cheerily chatting to staff, who know him by name, and was last seen being chauffeur driven in a gold buggy around the hotel grounds on Friday morning.
It exposes another apparent lie told by him. He had told his followers on Wednesday that he had planned to go back to Britain to join Katie after “tying up a few things”.
But on Thursday he posted another Instagram story from his room, sparking a flurry of questions from fans over why he wasn’t back in the UK.
And at 6am on Friday morning he posted another one of him being chauffeured around in a hotel buggy showing him still in Dubai.
Just hours later he voice noted The Sun on Sunday insisting that he was en route to Britain, and deleted the golf buggy post shortly after.
But with his dramatic past coming to light, many are now wondering whether Katie will ever get her fairytale ending.
