Latest news with #SohoFarmhouse
The Independent
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Why the Cotswolds are the perfect place for JD Vance to spend his holidays
JD! You're spending part of your vacation in the Cotswolds, and you couldn't be more welcome. In order to squeeze every drop while visiting this little-known area of England, I've compiled a few tips. Firstly, where to stay? If it's an authentic working smallholding you want, you could do worse than the Soho Farmhouse, set in 100 acres with horse stables, a cinema and barns with underfloor heating. Your room will be a converted pigsty with cast-ion tubs and curated ducks. You will have a chance to discuss rural life with friendly and knowledgeable countrymen. If it's kids' entertainment you're after, try nearby Estelle Manor, where your offspring can race around in mini–Land Rovers. It's where all the local kids learn to drive. Premium cabins are a very reasonable $1,500 a night. From there, it is a short hope to another working farm, the quaintly-named Diddly Squat, owned by a real local 'character', Jeremy Clarkson. He is your kinda guy: a petrolhead, anti-woke, no-nonsense salt of the earth multi-millionaire. You will undoubtedly bond. You use your outrage to galvanise voters. Clarkson uses it to sell books, TV rights and chilli-flavoured mayonnaise. You will love his fart jokes and his encyclopaedic knowledge of 14th-century sheep taxation. Understand that Clarkson's agricultural odyssey is genuinely rooted in the absurd realities of British farming — but it's also brilliantly edited television. Think the Apprentice meets James Herriot. The show is a love letter to rural life, a middle finger to government overreach, and a sitcom disguised as a documentary. You will doubtless meet another delightful local, Kaleb Cooper, who works alongside Clarkson. You'll instantly recognise him as the archetype of the forgotten working man, except that he has 2.9 million Instagram followers, which is about a million more than you. See this as a meeting of populist icons. Don't try to win him over with libertarian homilies or war stories from Senate hearings: he'll just challenge you to reverse a trailer into a tight gate without taking out a water pump. Next, you must drop in on Daylesford Organic, where all the locals shop. It is technically a farm in the same sense that the nearby Blenheim estate is a garden. Don't be put off by the prices, which might be considered a hate crime in Appalachia (organic active manuka honey for only £36 a jar!). Only this is not Appalachia: it's Aspen with sheep. You'll love the owner, Lady Bamford, who will acknowledge the trauma in your memoir Hillbilly Elegy, but also wonder if the aesthetic has potential. You can discuss diggers with her old man, the Tory-donor Lord Bamford of JCB. Just don't mention the £500m tax inquiry that was reportedly launched in 2020 – the outcome of which remains unknown. You may be feeling peckish by now, so where better for a pint and some grub than a local hostelry? May we recommend the Bull Inn in Burford, a 16th-century grade II coaching inn lovingly restored by another real Cotswold 'character', Matthew Freud? Know that Matthew doesn't do small talk: he does narrative control. Once married to Elisabeth Murdoch, he will admire your origin story and suggest that he could help you with some strategic rebranding. Next, it will be time to meet the other members of the Chipping Norton set: think the Hamptons, only older, colder and with mud-speckled Defenders and labradors named Beckham. It is now a slightly marginal but still potent clique of political-media aristocracy that peaked during the Cameron years. These days their power is subtler, more slippery. Do not try to bond over populism. They'll nod politely, then have you edited out of the group photo. If you meet Rebekah Brooks remember Trump is suing her boss Rupert Murdoch for a cool $10bn. When in doubt, change the subject to the weather. Do not, on any account, travel south to Oxford; it will simply annoy you. If you think Harvard is bad, just wait until you encounter the real thing, with their obsession with pronouns, unisex toilets and trigger warnings; and woke professors who don't believe in American exceptionalism. They also have a tiresome obsession with facts. They still speak Latin at dinners and graduations, and when you learn about the ructions over a tiny statue of Cecil Rhodes you'll just get mad. He was just trying to Make Africa Great Again. Head north instead to the RSC at Stratford, where you may just catch the Winter's Tale, a character study in paranoia and power. Or too much of a busman's holiday? Is there something about Leontes that might resonate – an uncanny capacity for self-destruction, reinvention and spectacular ideological whiplash? Back in Shakespeare's day, every female character would have been played by a teenage boy in drag. But thankfully, there is no gender-bending cross-dressing in modern performances. You can relax. Over at Garsington Opera, things are more fluid, so you should probably give their current production of Fidelio a miss. The vibe includes quite a lot of cross-dressing, tyranny and liberation – though the disguise theme arguably aligns with your own trajectory of self-reinvention from Middletown, Ohio, to Yale Law School to MAGA Trumpworld. If you were hoping for a bit of shooting, you're out of luck since partridge and pheasant shooting on estates such as Coombe End or Salperton Park doesn't start until October. It's probably just as well. Semi-auto shotguns are frowned on: everyone shoots vintage hand-engraved Purdeys that cost more than a Cadillac. Even the ammo is woke: lead-free and bio-degradable. Do not mention AR-15s. No one knows about the Second Amendment. A note on clothing. A MAGA hat in the Cotswolds would be like turning up at Garsington Opera wearing camo. Barbour, yes. Patagonia, never. Cotswolds outerwear must say: 'I could survive a blizzard, but I'm really just popping to the farm shop for some heirloom fennel.' The trick is to look poor, but in a rich way. In the Cotswolds, wealth is whispered, not shouted. Leave behind anything from Under Armour, North Face, LL Bean, or anything that says 'Outlaw and Hillbilly' in League Gothic script. Forget your loafers: wear boots. Mud is a class signifier, but maybe not in the way you imagine. The locals in the Cotswolds do not know what 'pill mills' (that illegally dispense drugs) are, and they'd very much like to keep it that way. If you strike up a conversation in the Bull Inn about intergenerational trauma and opioid dependency, you may be asked to leave. Or, worse still, taken for a Guardian columnist. In summary: keep your opinions zipped and your nostalgia for Appalachia hidden. When in doubt talk about Europe: the locals share your loathing for it. Remember you're not in Yoo-S-A! any more. You're in Clarkson Country, which — odd as it may seem — may be even more confusing.
Graziadaily
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Graziadaily
We're Obsessed With Apple Heiress Eve Jobs's Lavish Cotswolds Wedding To A British Olympian
When your father was the founder of the most successful brand in the world then you have more than a few pennies to play with to plan a wedding. Eve Jobs, daughter of the late Steve Jobs, is set to marry the Olympic equestrian gold medalist Harry Charles this weekend and it will be a no holds barred affair. Apparently, the couple plan to commandeer the luxury members' club, Soho Farmhouse, in the Cotswolds for their guests and the decadent Estelle Manor in Witney for their £5 million wedding celebrations. The local village will be under tight security with limited access for outsiders described a 'state of semi-lockdown'. The celebrations have been planned by elite wedding planner Stanlee Gatti and everyone from former US presidential candidate Kamala Harris to Jessica Springsteen and Princess Beatrice are on the guest list. Elton John is also due to perform. 'The wedding is being planned like a military operation,' an insider told The New York Post. 'The itinerary is scheduled so precisely, with guests starting to arrive all this week before the wedding celebrations begin on Thursday.' Of course, Eve's mother Laurene Powell Jobs as well as her siblings Reed and Erin will also be in attendance. Eve, 27, and Harry, 26, who is from the UK, first hard-launched their relationship at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris where Harry was competing. They began dating in 2022. Since graduating from Stanford University, Eve has worked as a model and has also competed in equestrian World Cup Finals. She is currently signed with DNA Model Management and has appeared on the cover of Vogue Japan . It's unclear whether the couple will settle in the US or the UK once they are married, but they have been enjoying plenty of European trips already this summer. Eve recently celebrated her hen weekend in Capri, with Olympian Eileen Gu and Harry's sister Scarlett and his mother Tara all in attendance. Eve Jobs at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in 2023. (Photo by Steve Granitz/FilmMagic) When Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, Eve's mother Laurene inherited billions through shares in Apple and The Walt Disney Company. However, in 2020 Laurene stated that she does not have plans to pass on her wealth to her children. Speaking to The New York Times she said, 'I'm not interested in legacy wealth building, and my children know that... Steve wasn't interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me.' Laurene also expressed that her interest remains in philanthropy and building sustainable communities to honour Steve's legacy. Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Revealed: Glamorous Oxfordshire countryside venue where Apple heiress Eve Jobs will marry Team GB equestrian - as their VERY glitzy guestlist is leaked
With a billionaire heiress as the bride, an Olympic gold medallist for the groom and hordes of A-list guests, the wedding of Eve Jobs and Harry Charles was already set to be the society wedding of the year. And now, MailOnline can reveal that Apple founder Steve Jobs' youngest daughter and her Team GB star fiancé will tie the knot at Soho Farmhouse in the Cotswolds on Saturday - the cherry on the cake for the fantastically star-studded ceremony. The glamorous private members club is beloved by A-list celebrities - even hosting Meghan Markle 's hen do - as the place to go for private events for the social elite, all with the background of Britain's finest countryside. Eve, 27, who once was named by society bible Tatler as one of its 'new generation of It Girls', and sportsman Harry, 26, got engaged last September and began dating in 2022, making their debut just a year ago at the Paris Olympic Games. Their extravagant nuptials - rumoured to come at a hefty price tag of £5million - will take place over four days, starting on Wednesday - almost exactly one month after Eve jetted to the Italian isle of Capri for a glitzy hen do. And on the guestlist, as revealed by The Sun, are a mixture of British sports stars, American politicians and even a sprinkling of royalty. Former US Vice President Kamala Harris is tipped to be among the VIP guests, with Sir Elton John reportedly set to be performing - for a rumoured fee of £1million - and even Princess Beatrice expected to attend. Eve's mother Laurene, left a widow following Jobs' passing in 2011 aged 56 from pancreatic cancer, is said to have gone 'all out' for the wedding with help from renowned society events planner Stanlee Gatti. According to the newspaper, A-list parties are set to fly to Oxford airport on their private jets, where they will be met by helicopters to transport them to the venue. Also making the VIP guestlist are Kamala's daughter Phoebe and Bill Gates's daughter Jennifer, according to the newspaper. They will be joined by celebs including Arctic Monkeys star Matt Helders, Bruce Springsteen's daughter Jessica - an equestrian, Apple designer Jony Ive, Sofia Abramovich, daughter of ex-Chelsea owner Roman. And it's not just Kamala set to make an impression from the politics scene in the US - as a source told the paper that 'a lot of important American political figures' will be present. Sources close to the family previously said invites have gone out to figures from fashion, sport, and business, with speculation that Princess Beatrice and Jennifer Gates may be among the attendees. Eve, a model and show jumper in her own right, has two older siblings and one half-sibling. Reed Jobs, 33, and Erin Jobs, 29, will likely be at the wedding. However it's currently not known if her half sibling Lisa Brennan-Jobs, 47, will attend. Aside from her siblings, Eve has a plethora of high-profile friends descended from other tech billionaires, who will likely see her walk down the aisle. She is also friends with Lilli Hymowitz, daughter of billionaire Gregg Hymowitz, the CEO and founder of investment firm EnTrust Global. In 2023, Eve was spotted mingling amongst high society's wealthiest members at a gala in New York City, including Rupert Murdoch's ex-wife Wendi Deng, who she struck a pose with for photos, and Lili Buffett, the granddaughter of billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet. Former US vice president Kamala Harris is also expected to attend the event thanks to her long-time friendship with Eve's mother and one of the richest people in the world, Laurene Powell Jobs. Laurene and Kamala have been friends for more than 20 years, with the billionaire philanthropist backing Kamala's run for US presidency last year, which she eventually lost to President Donald Trump. And while Eve is tech royalty, there may even be real royalty at her and Harry's wedding. According to Tatler, Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi are expected to attend too. On top of Eve's impressive connections, Harry has his own entourage who will surely bring the party. His father is Peter Charles, whose team won Britain's first team jumping gold medal for 60 years at the 2012 London Summer Olympics. His Olympic teammates Scott Brash and Ben Maher may also attend, having claimed victory in team jumping together at the Paris Olympics. Eve also frequently appears on front row seats at Paris Fashion Week, attended her first Met Gala in 2022, and is regularly seen at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party wearing designers such as Molly Goddard and vintage Donna Karan. A source told The Sun: 'Eve and Harry's wedding is like a multi-million-pound fairytale. 'It's a society wedding like no other and it's turning rural Oxfordshire upside down. 'The sleepy village in which it's taking place feels like it's turning into a no-go zone, with secret service operatives and blokes who look like they work for the FBI.' The ceremony will be held in the star-studded Cotswolds, where celebrities including the Beckhams have flocked in recent years. The entire neighbouring village in Oxfordshire is expected to go on lockdown, with huge trucks already bringing supplies through the sleepy and picturesque villages. Most recently Ellen DeGeneres has succumbed to the charm of the Cotswolds after leaving the US when Donald Trump was reelected as president. Soho Farmhouse meanwhile has been described as a Butlins for toffs and attracts some of the most famous faces in Britain. Much more than a country bolthole, the stylish location is set within 100 acres and features manmade lakes and Scandi-style cabins. It has a festival feel in places - a playground for grown-ups filled with table tennis and pool, not to mention fire pits where people congregate wrapped in luxurious blankets. To allow its clientele to relax, photos are not allowed - not even of the spectacular indoor-outdoor pool, which resembles a private lake. There are surfboard yoga sessions in the swimming pool, a Japanese grill house serving seared raw fish salads and soft-shell crabs, a lifestyle shop that sells £290 boots and a bar that stays open until the last customer leaves - and on at least one occasion that person was Prince Harry. The estate, complete with man-made lakes, stables and an ironically ironic crazy golf course, sits within the Cotswolds' golden triangle: a sought-after area between Chipping Norton, Burford and Stow that is home to the so-called Chipping Norton set of celebrities and politicians. David and Samantha Cameron went to the Farmhouse opening party in 2015, drinking cocktails and dancing around the fire pits to crooner Paolo Nutini. Eve and Harry meanwhile were first spotted in public together at last year's Olympic Games in Paris - where Harry bagged a gold medal in team jumping. The pair have kept their relationship largely private, but their shared love for equestrian sports is likely what brought them together. Eve, whose mother is the philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, is a rising star in both equestrian sport and fashion. She has appeared in campaigns for Louis Vuitton and posed for Vogue while maintaining a competitive showjumping career. Harry, son of former Olympic showjumper Peter Charles, has represented Great Britain internationally and is currently one of the sport's top-ranked athletes. The couple share a passion for horses and are frequently seen supporting each other at events. Eve, a self-described 'horse girl', started riding when she was just six years old and had made some considerable achievements, including winning a bronze medal in the team event at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. She was front and centre to watch Harry win his gold medal last year and shared a loving post on Instagram with the caption: 'TEAM GOLD!!!!!! Beyond proud of you my love!!!!' She made her modelling debut in a 2020 holiday campaign for makeup brand Glossier alongside Sydney Sweeney and Naomi Smalls. Eve is signed to DNA Model Management, who also represents Kaia Gerber and Emily Ratajkowski. Eve also frequently appears on front row seats at Paris Fashion Week, attended her first Met Gala in 2022, and is regularly seen at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party wearing designers such as Molly Goddard and vintage Donna Karan. She may even go in another direction entirely and pay tribute to her late father, who died in 2011 when she was just 12 years old, and wear something from his favourite designer, Issey Miyake. The iconic Japanese designer, who died in 2022 at the age of 84, was behind Steve's iconic black turtleneck uniform that 'helped make him the world's most recognisable CEO', according to Gawker. However, neither Eve nor Harry have divulged any details on what their wedding looks will entail at the time of reporting. Eve was previously linked to Mexican show jumper and University of Miami business student Eugenio Garza Pérez, according to the Latin Times. There were also rumors that she dated singer Harry Hudson, Chainsmokers member Drew Taggart, and Outer Banks star Chase Stokes. Steve Jobs died in 2011 from pancreatic cancer, and according to his official biographer, Walter Isaacson, Jobs didn't doubt that it would be his youngest daughter who would run Apple in the future. In his biography about Steve, writer Walter Isaacson described the youngest Jobs as a 'strong-willed, funny firecracker.' He said that as a child, Eve would often call up her father's assistant and make her clear out his calendar so that they could spend one-on-one father-daughter time together. The family grew up in a 'low-key Tudor-style house on a prosperous street' in Palo Alto, California, according to U2 front man Bono. He wrote in his memoir that the abode had a 'cottage garden full of wildflowers and stuff you could eat, with a gate opening yards from a front door he never locked.' The LA Times reported that the 5,768-square-foot seven-bedroom home was built in the 1930s and looked like it was 'plucked from an English village.' It's been said that the billionaire Apple founder did his best to give his children a normal upbringing, despite his immense wealth. The outlet reported that he had 'no live-in help, no security guards, no drivers.' He also once revealed that he limited his kids' technology use - even though he created one of the most successful tech companies on the planet. He told the New York Times when a reporter asked if his kids 'loved' the new iPad, 'They haven't used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.' Steve passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2011, when Eve was 12, and was worth an estimated $10.5billion at the time of his death. But Eve and her siblings won't get any of his money, as he left his immense wealth to wife Laurene who revealed in 2020 that she has no plans to give any of it to their kids. She told the New York Times that her husband made it clear before his death that he didn't want to pass his earnings down to their kids because he wanted them to work for their own money. 'I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn't care about the accumulation of wealth,' she said. 'I'm not interested in legacy wealth building, and my children know that... Steve wasn't interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me.' Like both of her parents, Eve graduated from Stanford University in 2021, where she majored in science, technology, and society. She then made her runway debut at Paris Fashion Week while walking in the Coperni show that September. 'I never foresaw modeling, and on a whim, I was like, "Why not?" It drew upon things I knew, igniting the part of me that competing always did,' she previously told Vanity Fair. She was signed to DNA Model Management in March 2022 - the same agency that looks after Cindy Crawford's daughter Kaia Gerber, Dutch model and actress Doutzen Kroes and Girl star Emily Ratajkowski. Besides her modeling career, Eve is also an experienced equestrian and was named Show Jumping Hall of Fame 'Rider of the Month' in March 2017. She has competed in show jumping competitions all around the globe, including events in the Hamptons, Lexington, Kentucky, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and was ranked as the fifth best rider under 25 in the world by Horse Sports in 2019. Despite posting infrequently, Eve has 408,000 followers on Instagram. Last month, as she jetted off to Capri for her hen do, Eve wore a sparkling white mini dress and veil as she joined a group of girlfriends for the sun-soaked weekend, which included yacht trips, late-night parties, and poolside lounging at a private villa overlooking the sea. In one photo posted to her Instagram account, Eve is seen sitting in a pink-seated buggy with a wide smile as she revels in her pre-wedding antics. 'What a weekend with my favorite girls,' she captioned the post. Among those who liked the photos were Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill Gates, and Olympic skier Eileen Gu - who are expected to make her esteemed wedding guest list. Guests included a mix of friends from the fashion and equestrian worlds, many of whom appeared in coordinated outfits for both daytime antics and evening celebrations. One image shows the group walking down the steps of a local ristorante, dressed in relaxed resortwear. Another showed them strutting through the cobbled streets of Capri at night, with Eve leading the way in her veil and glittering white dress. The party gathered by the Tyrrhenian Sea at sunset, where Eve posed for photos with a group of close friends, including one shot of her wrapped in the arms of Eden Mack, a creative development assistant at Apple TV+, against a backdrop of dark blue sea and cliffs. At the villa, decorative touches included pink inflatable pool loungers and a floating silver sign reading 'BRIDE' tied with string.
Condé Nast Traveler
7 days ago
- Condé Nast Traveler
10 Best Hotel Saunas Around the World
Saunas are having a moment. In the US, we've finally cottoned on to what the Finnish have known for centuries—that sweating it out makes you feel good. Sauna-stocked spas and wellness clubs (like Othership) keep popping up all over major cities, and ads for at-home saunas can be spotted on social media pages across the country. But plenty of wellness hotels worldwide have been doing the sauna thing excellently for years. There are high-tech offerings, such as RXV Wellness Village in Thailand, which has a hyperbaric chamber for skin and tissue regeneration, an infrared sauna, and a cryo sauna for extra-speedy muscle recovery. Then there are the Finnish hotels, many of which have suites with in-room saunas, like Hotel Kämp in Helsinki. In the UK, plenty of lovely hotels are revamping their offerings: Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire recently expanded its spa to include various onsen tubs, three infrared sauna cabins and an ice hut, while at the Lake District's Brimstone Hotel & Spa, you're taken on a thermal journey around a sequence of Finnish, lava, and herbal saunas, before settling in for a blast in the Himalayan steam rooms. Touted benefits of a sweat session include pain relief, deeper sleep, improved circulation and a glowing complexion, so working a few stints into your vacation is a no-brainer. For the top places to soak, steam and sweat yourself happy, see below for our editors' picks of the best hotel saunas in the world to visit in 2025 and beyond. For more wellness inspiration, visit:
Times
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Why the Cotswolds is this summer's destination for mega-weddings
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. • Wedding etiquette: from bridesmaids to reception and photos 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. • How to be a cool bride in 2025 — from the hen do to the wedding dress 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.
