Married by a hooded monk in a castle? It doesn’t get more Game of Thrones!
Stars Rose and Kit will wed this Saturday
WITH ornate, gilt-edged frescoes, historic family portraits and near-floor to ceiling windows overlooking rolling parkland, the Grand Drawing Room at Wardhill Castle would not look out of place in fantasy series Game of Thrones.
But when the cast of the hit HBO show gather there, there will be no dragons or bloody battle scenes – and the only lines will be the vows exchanged by stars Rose Leslie and Kit Harington.
The pair, who met while playing lovers Ygritte and Jon Snow, will wed this Saturday at 12th Century Wardhill, which has been in Miss Leslie’s family for generations.
The high-level security surrounding each season’s new release of scripts to the cast appears to have rubbed off, with the couple maintaining a veil of secrecy over their impending nuptials.
Even their 200 guests were not told of the venue, with the pair sending out ‘save the date’ invitations in April – adorned with Royal Mail Game of Thrones stamps, featuring faces of the key characters in the show, including Jon Snow.
Last week, however, it emerged they will be married by a ‘hooded monk’, which sparked great excitement among avid fans, with one saying: ‘They’re getting married by a monk in a castle. It doesn’t get more Game of Thrones than that.’
In reality, the Benedictine monk officiating is Father Chad Boulton, 53, a senior chaplain at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, the Catholic boarding school where Rose’s father Sebastian and her brothers, John and William, were pupils.
Many guests flying in to nearby Aberdeen airport will be familiar faces from film and TV but, in particular, from the fictional houses of Stark, Targaryen and Lannister.
Filming for the eighth and final season, to be shown next year, has been temporarily halted following a personal appeal by Mr Harington to the programme makers, to allow his fellow cast members to attend.
Among those joining the couple at the venue, eight miles north of Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, will be one of their best friends from the show, Emilia Clark, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, and ironically now Jon Snow’s new love interest after Miss Leslie departed Game of Thrones in 2014.
Also there will be Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, who play Snow’s half-sisters Arya and Sansa Stark; Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, incestuous siblings Cersei and Jaime Lannister; as well as Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth) and John Bradley (Samwell Tarley).
On the Jonathan Ross show in October, Mr Harington said he had got in touch with Game of Thrones producers to let them know filming schedules would have to change.
The actor said: ‘I rang up and I said, “I’m getting married and it’s your fault actually...” I was like, “You need to factor in a Game of Thrones wedding – the cast have all got to be there so the whole thing has got to shut down”.’
A month earlier, the couple had announced their engagement formally in The Times.
London-born Mr Harington and Miss Leslie also splashed out £1.75 million last year on a seven-bedroom country home in East Anglia. But it was clear there could only be one place for their special day. Miss Leslie told Stylist magazine, in an interview to promote her latest series, US legal drama The Good Fight, that the Aberdeenshire castles owned by her family were still ‘close to my heart’.
Her clan has a second castle, 15th Century Lickleyhead, just 15 minutes’ drive from Wardhill, where Miss Leslie lived until she was ten.
On the day of the wedding, Miss Leslie will travel to Wardhill with her father from Lickleyhead, which her mother, Candy, now runs as an AirBnB rental property. The grander Wardhill Castle, with its eight bedrooms, including a sumptious honeymoon suite, already operates as an upmarket holiday let and wedding venue.
Providing the entertainment will be folk rock band Mumford & Sons, whose lead singer, Marcus Mumford, was a guest – along with his wife of six years, movie star Carey Mulligan – at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.
‘I’m getting married and it’s your fault...’