Zeta wedding was 'disappointment'

Zeta Jones and Douglas made a court appearance in February

The wedding of Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas was a "huge disappointment" for OK! magazine because its coverage was scuppered by its rival Hello!, a court has heard.

OK! editor Martin Townsend told London's High Court that sales of their Zeta Jones/Douglas wedding edition were considerably lower than that of the nuptials of David and Victoria Beckham.

Mr Townsend took to the stand to fight for £1.75m damages from Hello! magazine for printing unauthorised pictures of the couple's wedding in New York before OK!'s own exclusive pictures were published.

Zeta Jones and Douglas are personally seeking £600,000 damages following an earlier court verdict that Hello! breached their right of confidence.

Mr Townsend told the court his magazine had considered the wedding of the Hollywood couple would be even bigger than that of the Beckhams, for which it had paid £1m for exclusive access in 1999.

The wedding of David and Victoria Beckham was a huge scoop for OK!

Mr Townsend said he had "underestimated" the popularity of the Beckhams' wedding edition, which saw sales of OK! quadruple to about 1.5 million copies.

Alastair Wilson QC, representing the Douglases and OK!, asked Mr Townsend how he thought the Douglas wedding compared with the Beckhams.

"It was much, much bigger," he replied.

OK! also signed a deal with Zeta Jones and Douglas for £1m, which gave them exclusive access to the New York ceremony and party, but which gave the acting couple power to veto pictures.

OK! believed it had got the only photographs from the celebrity wedding of the year only to discover Hello! had bought pictures from a paparazzi photographer and rushed out its own edition.

'Personal distress'

The stars were offended by the pictures in Hello! and sued, along with OK!.

Although they won the argument that their confidence had been breached, with a judge stating the couple had a right to sell the pictures, they lost the case for invasion of privacy.

In the first day of the hearing to assess the amount of damages, Mr Wilson told the court that Zeta Jones and Douglas has suffered "real distress" when they discovered paparazzi had evaded security.

He said his clients were now seeking to receive damages for "personal distress".

He added that the couple had gone to great lengths to try to ensure their privacy on their big day and that they should be awarded a figure that represented the "extreme circumstances" of the case.