Modern-day fairy tales do exist. Handsome polo player George, the Marquess of Blandford and future 13th Duke of Marlborough, married his childhood sweetheart, the effervescent, petite and unfailingly polite Camilla Thorp, at Blenheim Palace this autumn. They met when 26-year-old George was only 16, while on holiday on the Isle of Wight. ‘One day he just started holding my hand,’ Camilla, 31, says sweetly, sitting in the drawing room at Blenheim Palace. ‘Our parents have been friends for years, which made life much easier. We didn’t have to do the whole “meet the parents” thing.’
Aviation broker George is the ultimate catch, good-looking with an assured yet gentle manner, and a combination of aloof charm and excellent manners that Camilla says is down to his mother, who ‘is very warm and enveloped him in so much love as he was growing up’. And although he’s heir to the 187-room Blenheim Palace and a £183 million fortune, as well as a distant relative of Sir Winston Churchill, George wears his grand background lightly, though with pride – the Rolls-Royce the couple rode in from the church was used by the Second World War Prime Minister himself; George’s great-great-grandfather, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, was his first cousin.
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Still, George has a formidable family history: as well as his illustrious forebears (Blenheim was given to the 1st Duke by Queen Anne in gratitude for his many victories in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14)) he is the son of the reformed scapegrace, James Blandford, now 12th Duke of Marlborough, and his first wife, Becky Few Brown. The couple divorced in 1996, and the Duke remarried in 2002: he and his wife, Edla Griffiths, an artist, have two children: Lady Araminta Spencer-Churchill, who is 11, and Lord Caspar Spencer-Churchill, who’s 10. ‘Everyone gets on very well,’ says Camilla, and Caspar was one of the last remaining revellers on the dance floor on their wedding day. Camilla’s own family consists of her mother Philippa, who owns Thorp Design in Belgravia, where Camilla works; her father James who lives on the Isle of Wight, running pheasant shoots (her parents are divorced); and her siblings Belle, 30, and Letty, 27.
It was a decade after holding hands on that summer’s day on the Isle of Wight that George surprised Camilla with a proposal at Soho House, Istanbul – though she had an inkling of what was to come when he unpacked his own suitcase: ‘In 10 years he’s never unpacked anything,’ she laughs. ‘Still, I didn’t allow myself to think that he would.’ The engagement ring was from Graff, and George chose it on his own: ‘His grandfather was good friends with Laurence Graff,’ she says.
Camilla had always imagined that she would get married at her mother’s house in Hampshire, but it was George who ‘thought it important for us to celebrate Blenheim’. He was right – during the wedding ceremony at St Mary Magdalene Church (decked out with masses of John Carter blooms) in nearby Woodstock, the local community all waved Union Jack flags outside and offered round cupcakes iced with their initials ‘G&C’. Schoolchildren lined the drive to Blenheim with as much fervour and joy as at any Royal wedding – it was almost a rerun of the excitement evoked by the 1895 marriage of the beautiful American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt (who was known as the ‘Dollar Princess’) to Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, in New York, or the nuptials of Sunny Blandford (later the 10th Duke) and Aristotle Onassis’ ex-wife Tina in 1961, when vast crowds gathered outside the church to congratulate the newly married couple.
Camilla looked mesmerising on the day, in an elaborate off-the-shoulder Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda couture wedding dress, which had a carefully constructed lace bodice with appliqué pearls and flowers in white and pale pink, with an impressive organza and lace skirt and train, scalloped at the hem. She wore, too, an extraordinary veil and heirloom tiara, given as a present to Consuelo Vanderbilt by her father on her wedding day (along with a mansion on Curzon Street and a dowry worth around £52 million today). It was the prefect fusion of old and new – antique pearls and diamonds twinned with Dolce’s Alta Moda. Camilla’s lace evening dress was woven with silver embroidered thread and gems; the organza cape was offset with Boodles diamonds, and the bride took her hair down for the hours of dancing.
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George had walked in D&G’s catwalk show two seasons running, and it was he who suggested that Domenico and Stefano ought to meet his fiancée. And they did. The couture process involved five fittings in Milan, with Camilla’s mother and sisters in tow. Alta Moda had to construct the smallest mannequin they’d ever made to suit Camilla’s tiny form. ‘The shape of the wedding dress made me nervous as I didn’t want to look too over the top, but the scale worked with Blenheim in the background.’ For his part, George simply opted for a traditional suit from his tailor, Dougie from Davies & Son on Savile Row.
The wedding guest list was a roll call of the best and brightest of English high society: Cadogans, Astors, Cadburys, Sangsters, Bamfords and Harmsworths. No surprise there: George and Camilla are a highly sociable pair, with piles of great (and rather attractive) friends, not to mention endless family links, ties and crossovers. In all, there were 300 guests, though Camilla bravely shunned all offers of a wedding planner. Instead, ‘I basically hit Pinterest in a rather full-on manner.’ She had her doubts: ‘I was particularly worried that the pink and gold colour scheme for dinner was rather girly [her bridesmaids wore pink satin by Emma Victoria Payne] but it felt very me in the end.’ At dinner, which took place in a beautiful marquee over the century-old Water Terraces – built by the 9th Duke – the tables were named after the couple’s menagerie of dogs and horses, including Darcy, Tadpole, Ted and Wilbur.
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Refreshingly personal, the entire affair was nonetheless a major production. After the service, the reception was held in a giant marquee beneath the cedar trees on the South Lawn of the palace grounds, and was more akin to a mini festival, complete with food stands: a seafood stall serving lobster rolls, a potting-shed stall with crudités, a liquid-nitrogen ice cream bar and a roaming oyster shucker. Then everyone got changed into black tie and returned for drinks in the Great Hall, followed by a three-course dinner and a full-on dance party, which featured the newlyweds crowd-surfing – not to mention an elaborate firework display, aerobatics, a helicopter ride between events, huge helium balloons over the palace ponds, and a magician. Camilla pours out a torrent of tales of the great day and its lead up – including how she found the wedding cake design she wanted on Instagram and drove all the way to Birmingham to meet the baker.
George, by contrast, is a man of few words, but loves being taken along for the ride. ‘He’s not much of a talker,’ Camilla confides, ‘so I had no expectations for his speech, which was actually brilliant. Very heartfelt and genuine.’ The most triumphant speech, however, came from George’s father, the Duke. ‘He announced that perhaps he hadn’t been the best father, but was making up for it in recent years – and he said how proud he was of both of us.’
Of course, the Duke’s wayward years are long behind him, but the same couldn’t be said for everyone as, splendidly, some guests behaved very badly. One friend took his clothes off on stage during the afterparty. ‘And one couple “enjoyed” the cricket pitch, which was played on the next day by the unsuspecting local team,’ continues Camilla, with a naughty smile.
The party reached its crescendo at 3.30am (although almost everyone refused to leave) and the couple disappeared into the night in a Mini Moke that Camilla’s sisters had decorated with a ‘just married’ sign and white balloons, driving across Blenheim’s Grand Bridge, over the glittering waters of the Queen Pool and out into the Capability Brown-designed park, lit up with flares flickering in the darkness. It was a glorious finale to a glorious wedding between two glorious (and happy) young lovers.
