Billionaire Richard Lugner marries Playboy model 57 YEARS his junior

Mind the gap: Richard Lugner and Cathy Schmitz get married at Schoenbrunn Palace

Eccentric billionaire Richard Lugner has tied the knot again - with a Playboy model 57 years his junior.

The construction magnate, 81, walked down the aisle for the fifth time to marry Cathy Schmitz, 24, at the weekend and said: “Hopefully, this time it’s the right thing.”

In a wedding of pure schmaltz he said: "Apart from the big age difference, everything fits.” Crowds lined the streets of Austrian capital Vienna as the billionaire spared no expense for his bride's fairytale day at the Schonbrunn Palace, including a horse drawn carriage led by four pure-white Lipizzan horses.

Ushers were dressed in traditional costumes, with endless bottles of champagne filling crystal flutes.

The couple even released two symbolic white doves after their marriage.

The bride wore a wedding gown of a heavily jeweled strapless bustier with a floor length purple chiffon skirt. She said in an interview before the ceremony: “We did not intend to fall in love. It just happened. Love knows no age.”

Lugner is better known for inviting many of the world’s A-list women such as Raquel Welch, Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian to grace his arm at the annual opening of the Vienna Opera House. But Kim was never destined to make the wedding's massive guest list after their disastrous date earlier this year.

Kim-Kardashian-goes-to-the-Vienna-Opera-Ball

Richard paid her £300,000 to join him at the country’s historic ball earlier this year.

But he said: "Kim is annoying me. Because she’s not sticking to the program. “She’s filming and so she doesn’t want to have me around. The guest should be with me and not anywhere else that is not agreed upon."

Kim, 33, even turned down his offer to dance. Kim, who was accompanied by her mother Kris, eventually stormed out of the annual event after she took offence at a guest who had painted his face black.