What a to do!
Eugenie and Jack aren’t the only people to have a big wedding. Today celebrations can last for days
YOU’VE GOT to hand it to the younger royals, they know how to party. And with lavish details emerging of an extravagant third wedding celebration on Saturday night following her wedding to Jack Brooksbank on Friday, it appears that Princess Eugenie is the biggest party girl of them all – probably due in no small part to being the daughter of excess-loving Sarah, Duchess of York.
On Saturday the bride’s father Prince Andrew and his ex-wife hosted a funfair-themed event for 500 guests at their home in Windsor Great Park. The spectacular bash was organised by party planning firm Bentley’s Entertainments which also arranged the Beckhams’ marriage. It featured dodgems, funfair rides, food stalls and Bloody Marys on tap to help guests deal with their hangovers from the previous night’s festivities.
One guest described it as the “party to end all parties”.
Apt words, given the two that had gone before. These had included a grown-up champagne reception thrown by the Queen along with a second, tequilafuelled evening reception held at Royal Lodge – home to the bride’s parents – which went on into the early hours of Saturday.
That party featured both Ellie Goulding and Robbie Williams performing for the guests during an evening that featured wild dancing, emotional speeches, gourmet pizza, a singalong and liveried waiters serving bespoke cocktails – including one called Genie In The Bottle named in honour of the bride.
All this followed Eugenie and Jack’s nuptials at St George’s Chapel on Friday morning in front of a star-studded guest list of 800, including Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Liv Tyler – rather reminiscent of the nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May.
Harry and Meghan also had three parties – at the “after-after party” DJ Sam Totolee “curated” Harry’s favourite House tracks while guests drank from a “drinks of the world” themed bar and nibbled candy floss and “dirty burgers” as midnight snacks.
BUT the era of the two or three-day wedding is not an approach confined to the new generation of royals. It’s actually becoming de rigueur among the public at large.
In her column in Saturday’s Daily Express, Judy Finnigan explained how her daughter Chloe will have a tiny wedding in a rural church this December followed by a “main event” to take place “abroad the summer after next, with 150 guests and the whole works”.
Perhaps not surprisingly a survey this summer revealed that the average cost of a UK wedding is now £30,355 – up 12 per cent from 2017. The Bridebook survey also noted that the multiple-day wedding is becoming popular, with 23 per cent more couples choosing to have their wedding run for two or three days.
Hamish Shephard, the company’s CEO, says, “Increasingly brides and grooms want to tell their story through ‘themes’ and they are becoming extremely imaginative. Everything can be personalised and that doesn’t come cheap.
“We are seeing that people are prioritising the ‘wow’ moments, wanting to surprise and delight their guests with ‘insta-worthy’ theatrical performances.”
And foreign destinations increasingly popular.
Lisa Burton, founder of The Bridal Consultant, organises luxury weddings abroad and has seen her business grow exponentially in the past few years. When she launched her company in 2003 she planned 10 overseas weddings. Last year that figure was more than 100.
“We are now fully booked for the 2019 wedding season. From are 2020 we will only be planning a few weddings each year with a minimum budget of 25,000 euros (£22,000),” she explains.
Of course this is all so different from the experience of couples in decades gone by who were blissfully content with rather less – and still had money left over to spend on the serious business of buying a house and raising a family. In the 1950s or 60s you were in and out of church in an hour and would perhaps celebrate with a cold buffet in the church hall and a glass of sparkling wine if you really wanted to push the boat out.
This type of “DIY wedding” was representative of oldfashioned values and the norm for millions in the pre and postwar years.
However the cost of exotic destinations, extravagant gift demands and celebrations that turn a simple wedding into a lavish mini-break can prove financially crippling for guests who feel it is their duty to attend, whatever the costs and however much time is required.
Bridesmaid Claire Duke never imagined that it would cost her so much money to attend her friend Siobhan’s lavish ceremony in the Caribbean – a two-week odyssey five years ago – that her debt would last longer than her friend’s marriage.
Eighteen months later, despite the exotic location and noexpense spared reception, Siobhan told Claire that she had filed for divorce.
“Meanwhile we were still paying my dad back in instalments,” she adds.