What heirs, heiresses and royals taught us about getting married post-pandemic
They waited and they pined, locked down in estates and mansions, and the nanosecond it became just about acceptable to re-engage with the idea of excess, the heirs, heiresses, royals and social set got married. We may not be clear of Covid, but the contest over Wedding of the Season/Year/Decade started up again this summer with couture gowns, palatial venues and sword fighting monks (Lady Clara Paget can explain).
Anyone worth their trust fund is going bigger than ever. Hear out heiress Paris Hilton who is on her fourth engagement, this time to venture capitalist Carter Reum. Hilton this week told talk show host Jimmy Fallon three things: she is not a bridezilla, the wedding will last three days and she will wear 10 dresses. The event will be chronicled on Hilton’s new docuseries Paris in Love.
This is what we’ve learned so far about the post-pandemic mega-wedding...
Campaign hard for the wedding of the year
The title of ‘wedding of the year’ comes not without hard graft. A careful algorithm of location, guest list, dress designer(s) and length of celebration defines success, as Lady Kitty Spencer knows.
Unabashed in her approach, the niece of Princess Diana wore five couture gowns by Dolce & Gabbana to marry the fashion billionaire Michael Lewis in July. She decided not to wear the family heirloom — the Spencer Tiara — for her wedding day, but nodded to tradition just enough in the ivory gown she wore for the ceremony, which emulated her mother’s wedding dress.
Premier league socialites attended the three-day celebration at Rome’s 17th-century Villa Aldobrandini, including the Marchioness of Bath and Ladies Emilia and Eliza Spencer. There was a smattering of celebrities for balance: cue Pixie Lott and Oliver Cheshire, Sabrina Elba and Maye Musk (yes, the woman who gave the world Elon).
The final ingredient — media coverage — was managed expertly. Dolce & Gabbana gave interviews, embargoed until after the wedding when photographs were released, and suddenly, news articles sprung up everywhere. Note that Lewis took a backseat: he appears in just one of the publicly released images. So ‘Wedding of the Year' goes to Lady Kitty herself.
Reunite with your family
It doesn’t all have to be grand. Photographs of Lorraine Pascale and businessman Dennis O’Brien’s 30-guest July wedding were pure joy.
There, at Chelsea Town Hall, former model-turned-baker Pascale was reunited with her daughter Ella Balinska after 18 months of pandemic-induced separation. Balinska wore a powder blue Alexander McQueen suit to walk her mother down the aisle — the bride’s dramatic Vivienne Westwood gown, which was short at the front and long at the back, and ‘cheap’ (her words) sparkly heels made for a Carrie Bradshaw-worthy high-low look. O’Brien, wearing a sky blue suit and white trainers, looked to be having the time of his life.
... Or don’t
Limited guest lists equals more budget per head — why not add an extra tier to the cake, or hire Elton to sing Tiny Dancer as you swirl around the dancefloor? Celebrity stylist Micaela Erlanger and restaurateur Mac Osborne went big and rescinded all summons to watch them wed.
After three years of engagement and three postponements, the Americans noted that the number three was recurring in their love story. They did ‘what any Covid couple would do’, Erlanger told Vogue, and scrapped the family plans in favour of a three-part elopement in St Barths.
Ta-ta! Off they fled for a two-person rehearsal dinner at the miraculously lavish Eden Roc hotel, clifftop vow exchange and a reception at Fouquet’s. While their dearly beloved missed out, an army of hair and makeup artists, photographers, videographers and drones must have been in tow, because this so private of weddings was chronicled by Vogue along with 58 photos revealing an astounding number of outfits and poses.
To be fair, any fashionista worth their Manolos has to envy Erlanger’s dress collection: there were one-of-a-kind pieces from Miu Miu, Valentino and Giambattista Valli couture, a two-piece pink chiffon gown from Dior, and a bejewelled spring 1992 Versace couture starfish dress. The groom wore three different suits by his go-to tailor, Michael Andrews Bespoke, and at the end of it all the pair snuck off to dance alone in the streets under the light of the moon (and the flash of cameras).
Ask Cara Delevingne to plan your hen do
Surely I’m not the only one nostalgic for debauchery right now. If ever I marry, I might ask Cara Delevingne to plan my hen do.
For Lady Clara Paget, daughter of the 8th Marquess of Anglesey, the model arranged a wild party which began in London and ended on a Cotswolds estate, coined Claztonbury — an amalgamation of 'Clara' and 'Glastonbury'. The bride-to-be posted evidence of herself falling to the ground laughing in a puffy silk wedding gown, then engaging in a sword fight with a man dressed up as a monk. Cara Delevingne herself is seen wearing an outfit that’s a nod to Alicia Silverstone’s yellow plaid suit from Clueless (her pink wig I don’t profess to understand).
The best friends made it through the night and two weeks later Paget married Burberry model Oscar Tuttiett at a secret countryside venue that is not her family seat (see below). Given the hen party, outsourcing was probably a very good idea.
Show off your might at your family seat
Aristocracy holds diminishing importance in the modern world. Remind everyone of your blue blood by throwing a glamorous wedding at your family’s long-held home.
In Lady Jemima Herbert’s case, that’s Wilton House, where she wed corporate financier Hugo Davies at the weekend. The daughter of the late 17th Earl of Pembroke piled tradition on top of her head, too, wearing the Pembroke sapphire and diamond tiara.
Two dynasties are better than one
Strategic succession planning is still with us. If dynasties are to survive, they must unite — and two of Spain’s mightiest families did just that in Europe’s first post-lockdown aristocratic wedding in May. The Alba scion, The Count of Orsono, wed heiress Belén Corsini in an outdoor ceremony at the Duke of Alba’s neoclassical Liria Palace in Madrid.
The Count hails from a long line of aristocrats - his grandmother, the late Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart was a confidant of Princess Grace of Monaco and Audrey Hepburn and one of the richest aristocrats ever. The Corsini family, known as ‘the tribe’, is equally prolific in Spain. The new Countess is the great-granddaughter of Carlos Corsini Senespleda, whose company Corsan sold for €325 million in 2004.
Similarly significant unions are going on in Nigeria, where the president Muhammadu Buhari’s only surviving son, Yusuf, married Zarah Ado Bayero, the niece of the Emir of Kano, a prominent Islamic leader. Every five-star hotel in the state of Kano was fully booked by the Nigerian elite and West African dignitaries, who filled airport runways with private jets. In a tale reminiscent of the Cambridges, the couple met at university — albeit Surrey, not St Andrews — and their wedding was attended by thousands at the palace of the Emir of Bichi.
Make it jet set
Pandemic travel restrictions are not enough to stop the jet set from jet setting, it turns out. Fashion heiress and associate vice president at Christie’s, Paola Fendi married her fiancé Aram Ahmed in front of 250 guests from the Italian aristocracy and international social scene in Ibiza in June. The bride wore Valentino for the ceremony, not Fendi.
The great granddaughter of oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty, and international jetsetter, Ivy, is but one step behind.
Shortly after attending the amfAR Gala at Cannes Film Festival, she was spotted partying with her friends and cousin Isabel Getty at the Jackie O beach club in Mykonos, wearing a short wedding dress and posting videos of raucous taxi rides on Instagram. The 26-year-old bride-to-be is set to marry English tech entrepreneur Toby Engel in November. Let's see what this autumn and winter's society wedding calendar can teach us...
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