Cheryl Cole: Her Story - the Unauthorized Biography (19 page)

But the gloves really came off a few months later. When Cheryl was appearing on Gordon Ramsay’s
The F Word
, the foul-mouthed chef mentioned their spat again and referred to
Lily as a ‘chick with a d***’. Even though Cheryl merely repeated what Gordon had said, Lily took offence and launched another scathing attack on Cheryl.

‘I know I’ve said bad things about people in the past but this I mean … I may not be as pretty as you but at least I write and sing my own songs without the aid of autotune.’ She added, ‘I must say taking your clothes off, doing sexy dancing and marrying a rich footballer must be very gratifying, your mother must be so proud, stupid b****.’

But petty squabbles with grumpy popstars were the last thing on Cheryl’s mind. She had a wedding to look forward to. So while Ashley jetted out to Puerto Banus with his mates for his stag do, Cheryl stayed in London where she, her mum and her mates lived it up at Umbaba, downing – according to the
Daily Mail -
around £800 worth of champagne and cocktails, until the early hours. Cheryl had laid down rules for the girls that when it came to organizing her hen do, the last thing she wanted was some oily stripper rubbing his tush in her face. She had told
OK!
magazine: ‘I keep reading about strippers, but I certainly don’t want one. I would be mortified.’ And just as she’d ordered, there wasn’t a stripper or cheesy hen night prop in sight. Of course, the paparazzi were out in full force, so when Cheryl did eventually stagger out into the street to find her car, they were there snapping at her like maniacs.

In the blaze of flashes, Cheryl appeared slightly shaky on her feet, but mum Joan ensured she made it to the car in one piece. Joan had said that while the other revellers were enjoying the booze, Cheryl had tried to pace herself so she didn’t end up being sick or making a fool of herself in front of the paps. Sue, Ashley’s mum, admitted to having had a ball, too. ‘I stayed out
with the girls until around 2 a.m. before I headed home,’ she told
OK!
‘I had such a laugh and it was very strange being out with the girls and having all these photographs taken. And then I saw them in the paper, and thought it was hilarious. But it certainly looks like everyone had a good time, that’s for sure.’

With the stag and hen dos out of the way, all that remained for Ashley and Cheryl was to get married … and it would definitely be a day they would never forget.

It was the wedding everybody had been talking about. One of the country’s biggest and most beautiful popstars was to marry a Premier League footballer. It was a union made in tabloid heaven.

Ever since David and Victoria Beckham had married back in 1999 at Luttrellstown Castle, a precedent had been set. Celebrity weddings were no longer just small affairs. Nowadays, when a high-profile couple got hitched, they went to town on celebrating their big day. The Beckhams were the first to turn a personal wedding into a world-stopping event when they married in a small chapel with a Robin Hood theme, and later changed into matching purple outfits and sat on thrones.

Following that, Victoria’s so-called rival Katie Price – aka Jordan – similarly went to town when she married Peter Andre in 2005. She had worn a pink gown that defied belief and arrived at the ceremony in a pumpkin-style coach. She wanted a fairytale wedding and that’s exactly what she got. The public
loved it and snapped up copies of
OK!
magazine as soon as they had hit the shelves.

Three days before Cheryl and Ashley’s nuptials, newspapers and magazines around the country were all of a dither. As
OK!
had previously secured a deal with the couple, it meant that no other media was allowed access to the wedding. But if the publications were to feed their readers with all the much-sought-after gossip, they needed to get some sneaky info ahead of time.

And that was the predicament in the
Heat
magazine offices, former editor Mark Frith wrote in his book
The Celeb Diaries: The Sensational Inside Story of the Celebrity Decade.
Like most editors across the country at the time, Mark wanted
Heat
to get a piece of the action, so that his hundreds of thousands of readers could gatecrash the party they hadn’t been invited to. The only thing was, as the wedding was to take place on the Saturday and
Heat
normally went to press on the Friday, it meant they needed to put together a behind-the-scenes feature without actually being there – and make it look as though it had been written after the event.

One of his reporters had been told by a source that it looked likely that the wedding was due to take place at Highclere Castle, so he dashed off to investigate. When he arrived at the castle, the sight of a huge white marquee erected in the garden suggested to him that he had stumbled across the wedding of the year. Dashing back to the office, he wrote up his findings and handed over his article. Mark was chuffed as it would mean he had a great spoiler for the following Tuesday.

But what he hadn’t anticipated was that his reporter had actually got his wires crossed. Just as the mag was about to be
put to bed on the Friday evening, Mark received a call from a paparazzo with the news that a fleet of cars had just swept into Wrotham Park in Hertfordshire, and that a certain Ashley Cole was in one of them. Mark went cold when he realized his reporter had made a terrible mistake! In record time, Mark cut references to Highclere Castle and dumbed down the copy so it was a lot vaguer. He admitted in his book that this episode was one of the most embarrassing cock-ups of his career – though he claimed the Coles had deliberately asked Highclere Castle staff to pretend the wedding was still happening there.

Meanwhile, at that very moment in Hertfordshire, miles away from the
Heat
offices, Ashley Cole and Cheryl Tweedy were exchanging vows at Sopwell House Hotel in front of just close family and friends. This wasn’t the big wedding they had planned – that was taking place the next day – but due to legal complications over licences, the couple had to marry one day early. But it didn’t matter because the following day they would have the grand wedding they’d dreamed of.

Ashley was the man Cheryl had dreamed about for the whole of her life. He treated her like a princess and she was thrilled. Unlike many other celebrities, Cheryl didn’t even want to consider signing a prenuptial agreement. ‘I think it’s disgusting,’ she said in
OK!
magazine. ‘I could understand if you were ninety-three and you’ve got billions of pounds and this twenty-four-year-old wants to marry you after a month. But we’re a work in progress, we’re going to build our married life together, not thinking about what if it ends.’

And to prove how fully committed she was to him, Cheryl had surprised Ashley by getting a new tattoo. Pulling up her hair after the Switzerland-England game at the World Cup she
revealed a brand new etching on the back of her neck that read ‘Mrs C’. He was delighted with it.

Now that the big day had arrived, the couple were pleased that the press had been sufficiently thrown off the scent to allow them to marry in private on the Friday. Up until then, every newspaper in the land had thought they were still planning to wed at Highclere Castle, so until the morning of the wedding itself, there weren’t many paparazzi hanging around the Wrotham Park gates. But by lunchtime, when word spread that the wedding was at Wrotham Park, the snappers had begun to arrive in their droves.

Twenty minutes away from the house, Ashley was getting ready in his room at the Grove Hotel. The room was in chaos, with clothes and hair products scattered all over the place. His groomsmen, Jermaine Wynters, Paolo Vernazza, Jon Fortune and Cecil Talian, and his best man and brother, Matthew, were busy slipping into their suits and teasing their hair into place, while Ashley was becoming more nervous by the minute. On the dressing table sat two Stephen Webster ring boxes – one containing his wedding band, the other Cheryl’s. He recalled in his autobiography how he opened the latter and tears welled in his eyes when he saw the eight-carat heart-shaped yellow diamond glimmering in the afternoon sunlight. He was so excited.

At Wrotham Park, Cheryl was in her bedroom with her mum Joan and her bridesmaids, dressed in her Roberto Cavalli-designed Ming-vase-inspired satin wedding dress. Joan couldn’t hold back the tears as she looked at her angelic daughter. She had never looked so beautiful, her body wrapped in a bustier that sparkled with sequins, beads and diamanté. Though the style of the dress was similar to the infamous Ming-vase dress
Victoria Beckham wore to one of Elton John’s ‘White Tie and Tiara’ parties, Cheryl said the Queen WAG had nothing to do with helping to choose the dress.

‘We just both love the designer and because we are both similar sizes his clothes fit us both like gloves. I just looked at some of the designs Roberto sketched and it turned out to be my favourite as well.’

Her bridesmaids, who did in the end include both family and her bandmates, looked at her in awe. Cheryl looked amazing. They couldn’t believe that one of their group was actually getting married, making that life-changing commitment. But they knew that she had found Mr Right in Ashley and that the couple would live happily ever after.

Her bandmates hadn’t expected to be chosen as bridesmaids. Cheryl had said before that she had a big family, and they thought she’d rather choose them. So when Cheryl spoke to them individually and told them that she wanted them to play an important part in her big day, they were over the moon. ‘Nicola and Kimberley both burst into tears while Sarah and Nadine were just in shock,’ she told
OK!
‘They thought I was going to say I was pregnant.’

At 5 p.m., Cheryl’s proud father Garry came to lead her down to the horse and carriage that would drive them out of the mansion’s grounds to the nearby chapel where she and Ashley would exchange vows.

As they made their way to the chapel, a million thoughts ran through Cheryl’s head. Today would be the most important day in her life: she and Ashley would be made man and wife in front of everyone they loved. It was all she’d ever hoped for. Inside the chapel, Ashley was standing at the altar with
Reverend Keri Eynon. Behind him the pews were packed with excited guests and his groomsmen were trying their hardest to make him laugh, but he was too nervous to humour them.

Around 5.20 p.m., the people inside the church could hear a scuffle on the public footpath outside the chapel. Cheryl had arrived. The scene was utter chaos. As the chapel wasn’t on private land, the paparazzi were able to gather around the entrance, which had been covered by a white tarpaulin so that none of them could get a picture inside. When the bridesmaids’ cars drew up at the entrance, the clicking sound of the snappers’ cameras was almost deafening, and as the girls climbed out of the cars and ducked underneath the tarpaulin, the frenzied photographers started beating down on top of it, banging the girls’ heads. The girls couldn’t believe how ferocious the paparazzi were on such a special day. Cheryl managed to follow the girls in unscathed but she too was horrified by their behaviour.

Taking as deep a breath as she could in her dress, Cheryl let her father lead her into the main part of the chapel.
OK!
magazine reported that, as the wedding party started down the aisle, a gospel choir sprang into life singing Alicia Keys’ ‘If I Ain’t Got You’. Tears filled Ashley’s eyes as Cheryl came into view. She was a vision, just like a princess. After a few words of welcome, the reverend recited the traditional wedding vows. In place of hymns, the couple decided to have the gospel song ‘Sing The Song’, ‘Amazed’ by Lonestar, and ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’. When they exchanged vows, the couple promised to love, comfort, honour and protect each other. Cheryl, consumed with emotion, could barely get the words out and wiped tears from her eyes.

After they exchanged their rings, the couple’s mothers were asked to step forward to light a pair of candles. Ashley and Cheryl were then asked to use both candles to light their own candle – symbolizing the coming together of both families.

As the couple exchanged a kiss, Cheryl’s bridesmaids burst into tears.

‘I cried,’ Nicola recalled in
OK!
magazine. ‘When I was watching her get married I was remembering back to when we shared a room during
Popstars
, thinking, “She’s my little girl.”’ Nadine said it looked as if Cheryl was becoming a woman right before their eyes.

When the ceremony was over, Ashley and Cheryl walked back down the aisle accompanied by a rousing rendition of ‘Oh Happy Day’ sung once again by the gospel choir, and then the joyous couple headed back to the house for the party.

After a champagne reception, the couple took their angel- winged seats at the top table. Cheryl’s dad Garry was first on his feet to deliver his speech, and told the room how, on the day he was handed his baby Cheryl, he thought he had been handed an angel. ‘It was the proudest day of my life,’ he said. ‘What I wanted for her was a smart, sensible, reliable partner and I’m delighted that Ashley is all of those things, and I’m delighted to welcome Ashley to our family.’ After that, Garry presented Ashley with a Newcastle football shirt with Ashley’s name emblazoned on the back.

The guests then tucked in to the wedding breakfast, which consisted of a starter of Dublin Bay prawn and crayfish cocktail, smoked salmon with English watercress, a parmesan wafer and lemon wedges, roasted and grilled vegetables with pesto dressing. This was swiftly followed by a main course of a juicy
fillet steak, with fat chips, peas, grilled mushrooms, grilled beef tomatoes, crisp onion rings and Madeira jus.

When the main course was finished and cleared away, Ashley’s brother Matthew gave his best man’s speech. In it, he said that he was chuffed that his brother had picked him to be best man but added that if he hadn’t, there would have been trouble.

Next, Ashley reportedly took the floor and, after making a few jokes about the location, turned to his beautiful bride. ‘I’m the luckiest man and proud that Cheryl is my wife,’ he said. ‘From the day I met her I knew I’d marry her. And now I’m here celebrating a great day in my life.’ He went on to honour their mums and presented them with a bouquet each.