SUPERMODEL Stella Tennant is to marry her long-term boyfriend and father of her child in a summer wedding close to the family estate in the Borders.

The aristocratic model, grand-daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, announced her engagement to French photographer David Lasnet yesterday.

Speaking from the family estate in Newcastleton, Roxburghshire, her mother, Lady Emma Tennant, said the wedding would be held in Scotland in the summer. ''I'm delighted,'' she said.

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The couple, who had a son, Marcel, in August last year, will get married in Oxnam Church, near Jedburgh, where Miss Tennant's sister, Isabel, was married a couple of years ago.

A definite date has not yet been set, but it is likely to take place in May or June.

Retired minister, the Rev William Thompson, who has been asked to take the wedding, said: ''I am very pleased. She is a terribly nice girl, enormously straightforward.

''As a model she was always popular with everybody. I have tremendous regard for her.''

He said Mr Lasnet, the son of Francois Lasnet of Paris and Dominique Guelfi of Gouaix, was a good photographer and a very artistic man.

''He is a very nice man, good looking, charming and quite old fashioned,'' he said. ''Their son Marcel is delightful.''

He added: ''It won't be a showbiz wedding, it will be the opposite.

''I imagine she will want a simple country wedding and that's what it will be. It is a small church in a small country place.''

Miss Tennant, a six-foot model with pierced nose and navel, and permanent scowl, rose to prominence during fashion's fling with grunge after being photographed for a feature on British girls in Vogue magazine.

She appeared in advertising campaigns for Gap, Versus and Cerruti and was the #1m Face of Chanel in 1996 before announcing, at the peak of her career, she was quitting to become a full-time mother.

Miss Tennant's engagement is a piece of good news for a family beset by misfortune. Her cousin, Charles Tennant, eldest son of the playboy aristocrat Lord Glenconner, died two years ago from an Aids-related disease after overcoming a heroin addiction.

Six years earlier, his brother, Henry, died of Aids, while the youngest, Christopher, is partially disabled after he fractured his skull in a motorbike accident in Belize.

Yesterday, Ms Zoe Souter, fashion booking editor of Vogue, said the wedding would be a small family affair with about 60 guests.

''I am absolutely thrilled for them,'' she said. ''I think it's wonderful. I'm sure they will be very happy.''

A spokeswoman at Miss Tennant's model agency, Select, said: ''It's great news.''