Bride-to-be Elle keeps cool

For most people, planning a wedding involves fraught negotiations with future in-laws, exhausting bouts of list-making and telephone calls. Former supermodel Elle Macpherson, who has just announced her engagement to long-term partner Arpad Busson, appears to be having things just a little easier.

The couple were in the Bahamas when they decided to wed after five years together and they travelled to the Swiss Alps, with their four-year-old son Flynn, to work out the details.

The couple, who usually live in Kensington, also have a home in Gstaad, and it was there they discussed exactly where and when they are to have their ceremony. Judging by these pictures, negotiations do not appear to have been too arduous. An announcement is expected soon.

In the meantime, the family have been seen enjoying themselves around town. Flynn, a child so well connected he reputedly addresses King Constantine of Greece as "King Con", has been attending ski classes.

His parents have been amusing themselves shopping.

At 38 Macpherson continues to wear her nickname - "The Body" - well. In contrast, French multi-millionaire financier Busson, 39, is a confirmed smoker, drinker and lover of fine and frequently very rich food. She may not share these enthusiasms - she only drinks occasionally, never smokes and it seems implausible that she can be much of an eater.

It will be her second marriage; when she was 20, she wed and then divorced another Frenchman, photographer Gilles Bensimon.

News of the engagement was no great surprise to friends who have seen the couple together and say they are "unmistakably happy". And Macpherson has lately been wearing a sizeable sparkler on her engagement finger.