A British reality TV star who is dying of cervical cancer will go ahead with plans to get married Sunday in full glare of the cameras, her publicist said.
Jade Goody, the in-your-face star who went from being the posterchild for British boorishness to an exemplar of bravery following her cancer diagnosis, is "very excited" to wed, spokesman Max Clifford told reporters.
"She is as well as possible, but, knowing Jade, she will rise to the occasion. She's very resilient," Clifford said.
He spoke outside the Down Hall Country House Hotel in eastern England where Goody plans to tie the knot with 21-year-old Jack Tweed.
Goody _ known to most Britons simply as "Jade" _ is holding a celebrity wedding like no other. While there are the usual trimmings _ a helicopter, a fancy hotel, a television crew, a reported million pound (dollar) deal to secure photo and video rights to the ceremony _ the circumstances are far from typical.
The bride, 27, is bald from chemotherapy; the groom is on probation after assaulting a teenage boy with a golf club. She'll have a pouch concealed under her designer dress for the painkillers; he'll be wearing an electronic monitoring tag.
The brash and buxom Goody used to attract the media's ire like a magnet after being plucked from obscurity to play in "Big Brother," a British reality television show.
Her eye-popping gaffes _ she infamously complained of being "an escape goat" and questioned whether English was spoken in the U.S. _ quickly made her such a target for ridicule that her own south London school defended itself by saying she wasn't a typical pupil.
Goody cashed in on her notoriety with an autobiography, fitness videos and a line of perfume, but allegations of racism during a subsequent television appearance further clouded her reputation.
But her image began to turn around last year when she was diagnosed with cancer during the filming of yet another reality television episode in India.
Her decision to film her struggle with the disease _ to make as much money as possible to benefit her two young sons _ has drawn praise from all corners of British society.
Others have noted that screenings for cervical cancer _ which can catch the disease when it is more easily treatable _ have spiked since Goody's condition hit the headlines.
"It looks as though Jade Goody has done what no public health campaign has been able to do in the past, which is get widespread public attention on to the screening issue," British lawmaker Dr. Liam Fox told Sky News television on Sunday.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday that Goody's story was tragic. The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said Goody was "a brave woman."
"A lot of people might say 'well, it's better if she did everything in quiet,'" Murphy-O'Connor told Sky News on Sunday. "But I think she's made a decision that she wants the last months of her life to teach people something."
