Liam Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy attends his funeral

Liam Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy attended the late star’s funeral to say a final goodbye, just over a month after his tragic death.

Cassidy, 25, attended Payne’s funeral on Wednesday, November 20, arriving with the couple’s friend Damian Hurley. She was dressed in all black and wore black sunglasses.

She joined Payne’s family and friends – including his One Direction bandmates Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan – to lay the singer to rest at a service held in a 12th-century church in the English countryside northwest of London.

Cassidy and the “Strip That Down” singer were first linked in October 2022, and while they’ve largely kept their relationship out of the spotlight, he has occasionally appeared in photos and videos Cassidy shared to Instagram and TikTok.

Shortly after Payne’s death on October 16, Cassidy revealed that the two had “manifested our life together” just weeks earlier, posting a note on Instagram that Payne had written saying he hoped to get engaged and marry with Cassidy within the year.

“I’m holding your note close even though you told me not to look at it. It said, ‘Me and Kate are getting married in a year/Engaged & together forever 444,'” she wrote in a message, that was mentioned in her Instagram carousel.

“My heart is broken in ways I can’t put into words. I wish you could see the huge impact you have had on the world even though it feels so dark right now,” she wrote. “You are – because I can’t say it was – my best friend, the love of my life and everyone you touched felt as special as I did. None of this feels real and I can’t wrap my head around this new reality of not having you here. I’m struggling to figure out how to live in a world without you by my side. Together we became children again and we always found joy in the smallest things.”

She ended the post by expressing her love for Payne. “Liam, I know we will be together forever, but not in the way we planned,” she shared. “You will always be with me. I have been given a guardian angel. I will love you for the rest of my life and beyond, and carry our dreams and memories with me everywhere I go.”

Hurley, the 22-year-old model/filmmaker son of Elizabeth Hurley, also expressed his grief for Payne, calling him “one of the nicest men I’ve ever met” in a Instagram posts.

“a devastating loss. thinking & sending love to Liam’s family especially my beautiful friend @kateecass ︎⋆｡ﾟ☾,” he wrote.

A host of Payne’s other friends attended his funeral, including Simon Cowell, who helped launch One Direction’s career on The X Factor in 2010, James Corden and ex Cheryl Cole, mother of his 7-year-old son Bear.

Payne died on October 16 in Buenos Aires, Argentina after falling from the balcony of his hotel. A preliminary post-mortem report showed he suffered multiple “internal and external” injuries in the fall, and the National Prosecuting Authority later said he was “not fully conscious or experiencing a state of appreciable fall or loss of consciousness at the time of the fall .”