PREACH IT! Tips for making Katy Perry's wedding as obnoxious as it should be

Katy Perry has discussed her wedding plans with the media, including her No. 1 priority, which is keeping her wedding plans secret from the media. Go ahead and read that sentence a few times if you need to. Nobody said celebrities have to make a whole lot of sense.

Perry has told Us Weekly she may even elope if that’s what it takes to keep her wedding private, special, and, presumably, exclusive enough that the photos can fetch a decent sum from OK! magazine.

If Perry is really all that worried about keeping her wedding to Russell Brand quiet and exclusive, Perry is a silly, silly girl. Almost every celebrity wedding has basic security to keep out the media and curious passersby, but it doesn’t end there. For years, celebrities have been pioneering the art of Keeping Ordinary People Far Away, particularly for weddings. (Why, yes! I did write all about it in my book!) The tools at Perry’s disposal are many, they are varied, and they range from the innocent white lie to full-on, Tom Cruise-level black ops. Here are some options for Katy Perry and her wedding planner -- assuming she has one -- care of some other celebrities and their very real wedding secrecy tactics:

Pick a spot with a helipad. When one recently married singer-actor pair was scoping out wedding spots, they were considering one venue with a helipad. The benefit to having a venue with a helipad: You can put a helicopter on it, and then turn on the motor. Flight regulations strictly limit how close a helicopter can come to another running chopper -- and that includes paparazzi aircraft.

Renee-and-Kenny Don’t tell your vendors anything. Seriously. Tell them nothing. Vendors who have worked one triple-A-list wedding told me they had no idea whose event they were working, where they were working, or even exactly when they would be working until just a few days before the wedding. Instead they were asked to block out several weeks of time and then wait for further instructions. Certain, very specific details, like the precise venue, were only revealed a few hours before the event.

(The same principle can apply to a wedding gown. Just before Renee Zellweger’s ill-fated wedding to Kenny Chesney, the actress asked her friend Carolina Herrera to make her a white, floor-length dress. For just, you know, a mystery event.)

Buy out your neighbors. Celebrities who don’t might find overhead or long-lens shots of their nuptials all over the magazines. When I covered Gwen Stefani’s wedding, I saw that paparazzi were able to bribe caretakers of nearby buildings for bird’s-eye views of the church courtyard in London.

Just ask your vendors to lie. When Christy Turlington married Ed Burns in San Francisco, she had her reception at the Asian Art Museum. The same Asian Art Museum that swore up and down that week that it didn’t host wedding receptions.

Make the locals do house calls. Julia Roberts didn’t head over to the local county municipal building to get her marriage license; she had the administrators come to her house, on the very night of the wedding.