Beatle wedding fever grips media

MCartney and Mills are getting married, but where?

LONDON, England -- Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney has sent the world's media here, there and everywhere in the race to find the location of his forthcoming wedding.

The time and place of the celebrity wedding of the year has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent a media circus from hijacking the couple's big day.

McCartney and fiancιe Heather Mills are believed by the media to be getting married with the next few days.

McCartney has said he and Mills will marry "this summer", but the ceremony is expected to take place before his 60th birthday, on 18 June.

He recently said he and Mills were anxious to "get wed with a bit of privacy."

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Three favourites have emerged as the possible location -- an Irish castle, or in Scotland, or near New York.

On Wednesday, a German magazine printed what it said was part of the official wedding invitation, but it shed no light on the venue.

"Meeting point: Heathrow (airport in London) 0830 ... bring your passports, no mobile phones, no cameras," the invitation as published read.

Meanwhile, the New York Post's Cindy Adams said the marriage will go ahead next Tuesday, in Ireland.

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She says Castle Leslie, set in a 1,000-acre estate near Monaghan town, 80 miles north of Dublin, will be the setting.

"Sir Beatle is inviting 300 people," Adams wrote in her column Wednesday. "They are all sworn to secrecy, lest this get in the papers."

The baroque Victorian castle is set in 1,000 acres of parkland and is known for its eccentricity.

The castle, situated near the village of Glaslough, around two hours from Dublin, also has a helipad.

However, the castle's owners insisted to CNN the reports were "absolutely not true."

There have also been rumours that the marriage would take place at Skibo Castle in Scotland, where Madonna and Guy Ritchie had their wedding reception last year.

McCartney's home in Sussex, southern England, has also been aired as a possible venue.

Scotland's Skibo Castle is tipped as a possible location

British newspapers have predicted McCartney may marry in New York at the Long Island home of John Eastman, the brother of McCartney's late wife, Linda, who died of breast cancer in 1998.

McCartney, 59, and Mills, 34, announced their engagement last July after meeting at a charity function.

Last weekend, British newspapers reported that McCartney had thrown Mills' engagement ring out of a hotel window and shouted that he wanted to call the wedding off.

Mills is a former swimwear model whose left leg was amputated below the knee after she was run down by a police motorcyclist in 1993.

The couple met at an awards ceremony and saw each other as friends before they began dating.

In an interview on CNN last year, McCartney spoke about the death of his wife

McCartney, who has three grown-up children and a stepdaughter from his first marriage, said he had cried for 14 months after Linda's death, but felt he was finally ready to get on with life.

"We knew it was coming, but we tried to pretend we didn't know it was coming," he said.

"I don't know. It's just impossible to talk about. I cried a lot ... Sometimes I'd be sitting around people and just burst out crying."