The rise of indulgent multiple weddings - how the super rich are making up for lost time

x - Christopher Mills and John Nassari
x - Christopher Mills and John Nassari
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Before the pandemic, jet-set weddings were typically grandiose affairs, with wealthy and famous couples enjoying expensive, multiple-day-long nuptials. Just think back to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s extravagant, 200-guest big day in 2014, for which invitations were gold-plated, the dress Givenchy, and rumoured multi-million-dollar costs eye-watering.

For Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra’s 2018 wedding, celebrations were similarly spectacular, comprising a range of events and outfits. The couple held traditional Hindu and Christian ceremonies for hundreds of guests, the first of which took place at the Taj Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, India. One of the bride’s gowns was embroidered with 2,380,000 mother of pearl sequins and another – her traditional lehenga – was crafted by Indian fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee and sewn by 110 embroiderers.

Almost 18 months into the global crisis, wedding planning has been recalibrated. Even the one percent have been forced to postpone or downsize their nuptials with micro-weddings, spontaneous elopements, and vows exchanged over Zoom. Unable to pull out all the stops with one great big bash, Covid-era couples have had to think of creative ways to wed - but there is one unexpected silver lining.

Newlyweds with exceptional means are no longer limiting their wedding to a single day. Covid has ushered in the era of the belated after-party, wherein several opulent wedding festivities can be extended across months and even years. A proper high-society wedding might now include an initial small ceremony, the wedding proper, and colossal post-wedding party (or several) once restrictions have been lifted. For many couples with limitless budgets, the question is now not “when is the big day?” but “when are the big days?”

Royals, celebrities, and even the Prime Minister are leading this trend. Boris Johnson married Carrie Symonds in a secret, 30-person ceremony at Westminster Cathedral in May, followed by a bohemian wedding party in the garden of Number 10 Downing Street, and they are planning to celebrate and honeymoon on a larger scale next summer.

Princess Beatrice and property tycoon Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi wed last summer in an elegant ceremony attended by around 20 guests, but are expected to party with friends once rules permit. Russian model Natalia Vodianova and the LVMH scion Antoine Arnault married in a stylish civil ceremony in Paris last year, but the bride says that she is hoping to have a “big celebration” with extended family and friends when able to do so.

Luxury wedding planner Jane Riddell, founder of Planned for Perfection, says she’s seen an increase in demand for “multi-layered” weddings among her clientele, for whom bashes can cost upwards of £150,000. “There’s a definite desire to keep celebrating,” Riddell says, “but obviously the rules are restrictive at the moment, so a lot of our couples are having a small wedding this year and booking in a massive party for the same weekend next year.”

Ridell is organising an array of separate belated celebrations for one couple. The newlyweds tied the knot last March, but are now planning for a weekend of different events this summer: a Friday night celebration for friends, a wedding blessing for family on the Saturday, and a barbecue for family and friends on the Sunday. “We’ve also got some weddings planned for France, where we’re doing massive firework displays and incredible entertainment,” Riddell says.

For these big, belated celebrations, there’ll be no whittling down the list of invitees – it will be a case of the more, the merrier. “Numbers-wise, people are having [everyone] they want rather than culling the guest list, because they had to for their immediate wedding,” says Riddell.

x - Roberta Facchini; https://www.robertafacchini.com/
x - Roberta Facchini; https://www.robertafacchini.com/

For Christopher Mills, Creative Director at The Events Mill by Christopher Mills, the boom has been exponential: 80% of his recent wedding enquiries have been for multiple-event celebrations. “They want to have the legal part of the wedding now, but they still want to celebrate the big party element too – and they want to go big with that.”

A client that Mills recently pitched for, who will have had her legal wedding by the time of her celebrations, wants a “spectacular, Disneyfied wedding”. The client’s budget is £3.5m for a Disney-themed party - “we’re talking at the level of the Met Gala,” Mills says. The bride wants to recreate a scene from The Little Mermaid at the main wedding event, and the hen-do would be held at Disney World Florida.

x - Christopher Mills and John Nassari
x - Christopher Mills and John Nassari

“It’s interesting to see how people’s aspirations are growing,” observes Mills. “It seems to me like people are bundling celebrations together [such as large birthday parties and christenings that couldn’t take place this year] and tagging them onto bigger life events like weddings.”

x - Christopher Mills and John Nassari
x - Christopher Mills and John Nassari

Matthew Oliver, who plans international weddings for high-net-worth individuals, says “pretty much everyone’s doing it”. One of his clients recently had a 25-person, £50,000 wedding in London, with the ceremony held at Marylebone Town Hall. Now, Oliver is planning their second, larger celebration – a £150,000 bash in Dubai this December.

This trend of eked-out wedding celebrations is primarily pandemic-induced, and all of the planners I spoke to agreed that couples have had an incredibly stressful time navigating Covid with postponements and restrictions. But Oliver acknowledges that out of the difficulties have arisen perks, enabling people to draw out their festivities over different events. As he points out: “Why not? You’re engaged for that amount of time.” The pandemic has changed the cultural norms around weddings; just as long engagements are common today, now long-term celebrations are too.

x - Adam Alex
x - Adam Alex

Given restrictions on weddings were finally dropped on June 21, this could be the summer of belated receptions. These bashes seem to have started already: Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark, who married Swiss entrepreneur Nina Flohr in a small Saint Moritz ceremony in December, recently enjoyed a second round of celebrations at Stibbington House, the Cambridge home of hosts Alice and Tom Taylor-Neyland.

It’s now time to prepare ourselves for a flurry of second, third, and even fourth wedding celebrations. Yet this new era of extended nuptials - where each event might require fresh outfits, time off work, gifts, and renewed enthusiasm from attendees - also means that guests (and the happy couple) have a complex new social terrain to navigate.

While these secondary events allow Covid brides, grooms and their families to hold the large, belated celebrations they were deprived of during lockdowns, there can be shades of grey here as well - particularly when guests who might not be able to afford to are expected to splurge on several gifts for jet-set hosts.

And these events also create a greater scope for offence to be caused: where once a guest might have grumbled at being demoted to a ‘lower table’ at the reception, they might now find themselves on the dregs of the guest list, excluded from the main extravaganza and relegated to the second (or third) celebration. Being invited to one party but not others would likely leave a sour taste.

Despite this small print, there are grounds for renewed optimism. After over a year of social isolation, these serial high-society weddings might be the perfect launchpad for a cathartic, roaring-twenties-style era of connectedness - and much-needed, indulgent partying.

Sign up for the Telegraph Luxury newsletter for your weekly dose of exquisite taste and expert opinion.