Why the Cotswolds is this summer's destination for mega-weddings

Times

3 days ago

A couple of years ago the society wedding planner Lavinia Stewart-Brown was asked an unusual question by a bride and groom: could she source two elephants to stand outside the marquee and greet the guests at their Cotswold wedding?
It took her a moment to realise that they were joking, but the idea took hold. 'We found them a pair of mechanical elephants that looked so real — they moved and even blinked,' Stewart-Brown says. The happy couple were delighted; their 200 guests spent the evening taking selfies in front of the robot Dumbos. No elephants were harmed in the making of this wedding.
If weddings have become bigger over the past decade — glitzier, splashier, more expensive, more designed for Insta — nowhere does this apply more keenly than in the Cotswolds. Getting hitched in the land of honey-coloured villages and bursting hedgerows has become a status symbol, but it won't come cheap. For a mega-wedding in this part of the world the starting figure is £1,000 per guest, but it can shoot up fast. 'For a three-day event with 200 guests, you could be looking at a million — easily,' Stewart-Brown says.
According to several weary planners, three-day weddings in this golden, moneyed patch of the country are now the norm. Would you like your destination wedding in Santorini, Lake Como — or Bourton-on-the-Water? Preparty on the Friday night, big do itself on Saturday, recovery brunch on Sunday. 'Before Soho Farmhouse it was old money rather than new,' one planner says of the boom in Cotswold mega-weddings. 'But since then, and with the celebs moving in, it has changed. There are lots of Americans. I did a huge American wedding last year and the couple live in London, but it was very much, 'We want the Cotswolds because 80 per cent of our guests are flying over from the States.' ''
Next month another American, Eve Jobs, the 27-year-old daughter of the tech bro Steve Jobs, is marrying the British Olympic showjumper Harry Charles, 26, in these parts. Nobody's squeaking about where, but one wedding planner tells me he knows there's a 'biggie' happening at the ultra-hip members' club Estelle Manor later this year, which can be taken over exclusively for the right kind of fee. What fee is that? 'They can basically name their price,' my mole says. The guest list is a similarly closed secret, but you can expect other tech progeny (Phoebe and Jennifer Gates, daughters of Bill and Melinda, are pals), other young Olympians, models from New York and a smattering of twentysomething aristos. Think Shiv's wedding in Succession but stick it somewhere near Burford.
' 'The Cotswolds has become a brand,' says Henry Bonas, who's often described as 'the king of Cotswold parties'. I went to an eye-popping wedding he organised a few years ago, not far from Stow-on-the-Wold. There was a marquee for 300, dozens and dozens of candelabra dotted along the tables, thousands of tealights, the entire annual floral output of the Netherlands, and a moment during the speeches when the mother of the bride was handed — literally handed — two rare-breed ducks for the lake by her new son-in-law as a thank-you, and we all felt rather nervous about her Catherine Walker suit.
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Bonas points out that the Cotswolds is, technically, a vast chunk of land spanning five counties, but in the past decade — as the number of members' clubs, trendy pubs and rich Londoners moving there has boomed — it has become synonymous with a certain kind of fairytale Englishness (pretty stone houses, endless wisteria), which makes it an obvious wedding choice for fashionable brides. At another Cotswold wedding I went to not so long ago there was even a cricket match during the reception and the bride gamely picked up the bat and made a few barefoot runs in her Monique Lhuillier dress in the field beside her parents' house. Bucolic.
Many of the weddings Bonas organises are at private homes, but if you're an arriviste American who doesn't have a big posh house there, you could always con-sider Badminton (the Duke of Beaufort's home, but hireable if you have the dosh), Blenheim (the Duke of Marlborough's gaff), Kirtlington Park (Capability Brown gardens, splendid for social media), Cornwell Manor, Elmore Court or Sezincote. All available for thousands and thousands of pounds and rising steeply, and that's before you even get on to catering, booze, flowers, entertainment and the rest.
If you want to go properly swank, the flower bill alone can reach £100,000, a source says, and the florist you need is Paul Hawkins. This summer, he tells me, the vibe for his Cotswold weddings has been Titania's lair meets Studio 54, 'which means achingly delicious roses, English-grown, lots of cow parsley and masses of foliage, so you literally have to cut down a whole wood. But it's all composted afterwards.'
To fit in dress-wise, look to Caroline Castigliano, Reem Acra or Emma Victoria Payne. And you want a marquee from Original Marquees, run by a charming man called Harry Jones ('His tents are always pristine and very beautiful,' Stewart-Brown says). The photographer to book is Lara Arnott, not only because she takes ravishing photos but also because every single guest falls in love with her.
Another reason the Cotswolds is handy for mega-weddings, says Jamie Simon, director of Banana Split, one of the UK's swankiest party planners, is that you can chopper in and out relatively easily. 'Plenty of space for helicopters,' he says breezily, 'and it's handy for Heathrow too.' This is helpful for both guests and entertainment. Banana Split can get you pretty much anyone you want to sing your first dance —Ed Sheeran? Adele? Stevie Wonder? One client wanted Paul McCartney, so they called him and he said, 'I don't do private events, but this is my fee.' Alas, Simon won't tell me Macca's fee.
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Anyone involved in organising a mega-wedding for an actor, a toff or a tech bro will now almost certainly have to sign an NDA ('Oh, the NDAs …' one exhausted supplier says with a sigh), but the issue of privacy can also be less fraught in the Cotswolds. 'Lots of these estates are very private,' Simon says. 'Hidden away, so they're quite easy to secure.' Although paparazzi trying to use drones are an increasing problem, he notes. 'We have to plan some of our events now like low-level military operations, but you're not really allowed to fly drones over private land.'
If you don't own a stately home in the Cotswolds, Simon says the next best thing is to take over one of the hotels. Such as Lucknam Park or Barnsley House, the latter of which has recently become another outpost of the Pig. 'If you take a 30 or 40-bedroom hotel, you've got your own private home.' A few years ago Banana Split organised a wedding at Barnsley House for a British couple that kicked off with a team-building event on the Saturday morning. 'Everyone woke up to wellies and boiler suits in different colours for their teams, and we went to a nearby farm and did duck-herding and bale-throwing,' Simon explains. 'A whole morning of activity. It was super-fun.'
The rich, as they say, are different.
Don't simply assume the wedding is 'somewhere near Soho Farmhouse'. The Cotswolds is an 800 square mile landmass. Plan accordingly.
Do triple-check what the church is called, if there's a church involved. Which St Mary the Virgin do you want? The one in Bibury,the one in Fairford or the one in Tetbury? Don't do the Hugh Grant thing of screeching up just as the bride arrives.
Do read the invitation properly and check what kind of transport arrangements have been made. At a recent Cotswold wedding I tried to drive to the church in my frock, only to realise they'd laid on minibuses because the local roads were so narrow. I had to reverse about a mile down a road marginally wider than a footpath, sweating heavily into my De La Vali.
Do check the name of the pub you're staying at. Much as with churches, there are plenty of Bulls and Bells in these parts.
Do book a taxi. You won't necessarily be able to Uber from a field at 1am.
Don't say yes to the lunch on the Sunday. Hard rule. Get up, get breakfast, get on the road. The M40 can be bloody ona Sunday afternoon.