'Over the top' funeral, private burial for Anna Nicole

Anna Nicole Smith was mourned by about 100 family and friends during a funeral service in the Bahamas Friday before her body wastaken by white limousine to a cemetery.

Her casket was closed and covered with a rhinestone-studded blanket and her portrait stood on the church altar during the service at Mount Horeb Baptist Church.

Pews were festooned with pink flowers and country singer Joe Nichols was to sing I'll Wait for You and On the Wings of a Dove during the funeral ceremony.

Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, and partner, Howard K. Stern, were among the mourners at the funeral, whichwas taped by Entertainment Tonight. Larry Birkhead, one of the men claiming paternity of her daughter, also attended.

Hundreds of tourists and fans watched near the church from behind steel barricades guarded by Bahamian police.

Smith's body was taken to Lakeview Memorial Gardens for a private burial with a smaller group of invited guests, said Richard Milstein, the court-appointed advocate for Smith's five-month-old daughter, Dannielynn.

Smith, a former Playboy Playmate who led a tragic life, much of itin the public spotlight, died Feb. 8.

Her body had been in a Florida morgue as her mother and her partner battled over custody of the body.

Custom-made gown

The body was flown to the Bahamas Friday morning after a Florida court rejected her mother's appeal to take the body to Texas.

Smith was to be buried in a tiara and custom-made, beaded gown designed by Pol Atteu of Beverly Hills, Calif., who had designed more than a dozen gowns for her.

Atteu's partner Patrik Simpson, who helped organize the memorial service, described the ceremony, in advance as, "a very beautiful, Anna Nicole send-off."

"Of course it will be over the top because it's Anna Nicole," he said.

She was to be buried next to her 20-year-old son, Daniel, who died in September in the Bahamas, where he was visiting her after the birth of her daughter.

An inquest in the Bahamasis planned into Daniel Smith's death, though a private coroner said a combination of drugs was involved.

Smith's cause of death is expected to be known next week.

Entertainment Tonight was reporting Smith would be buried with an urn containing some of the ashes of her late husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II.

Smith was working as a stripper when she met Marshall, who died in 1995. She had been fighting his family for a share of his fortune.

That case goes to the Supreme Court of the United States this year. It has the potential to make her daughter very wealthy.