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Hugh Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster, is getting married this week, on the 7th. Prince William is reportedly the only royal who will attend the wedding, which has caused about six months’ worth of headlines. Hugh did invite the Sussexes but they declined (and Hugh hasn’t said a word against them), and Hugh also invited King Charles, but reportedly the king and queen are not going to the wedding either. The Princess of Wales is obviously skipping it too, given no one has heard from her in months. For months, there’s been all of this outsized focus on the royal guests, which must be so upsetting to Hugh, who genuinely seems to fly under the radar and not want any kind of attention. Thankfully, the Telegraph did sort of a lovely piece about Hugh and his bride Olivia Henson and their post-wedding plans. Keep in mind, Hugh is one of the richest men in the UK, with a vast real estate portfolio. Apparently, he’s planning to move to his country home and start a family.
The Duke of Westminster has plans to settle down into the farming life of a country gentleman after his wedding, according to friends. Next week Hugh Grosvenor, the seventh Duke, will wed duchess-to-be Olivia Henson in Chester Cathedral, Cheshire, with the Prince of Wales as an usher. Following the nuptials, Chester is where the couple “want to lay down the foundations of their future”, and where the Duke will nurture his love of “nature, sustainability and farming,” a source close to them has said.
Friends of the Duke, 33, have described him as having “a genuine love of the land” that is fitting for one of the UK’s largest landowners who studied countryside management at university. He is also president of the Country Trust, a charity that encourages children from disadvantaged backgrounds to connect with “the land that sustains us all” through visits to farms across the country, including the Duke’s Grosvenor Farms on his Eaton Estate in Cheshire.
Jill Attenborough, CEO of the Country Trust, said: “He’s really aware of his responsibility as the next generation of farmers and landowners and he gently, certainly not in a sort of pushy way, tries to draw in his network as well of ‘next gen’ to talk about whether they might also welcome children into their farms and estates and showcase what they’re doing for a more sustainable future.”
The Duke also currently has an ongoing project to create the largest continuous area of wildflowers in the country using local Cheshire wildflower seed and is passionate about timber production and developing his “cutting-edge” dairy farm. The site of the farm, the family’s sprawling 11,000-acre Eaton Estate, will also play an important role in hosting the 400 wedding guests after a service at Chester Cathedral next Friday. The guests, who have all been issued a strict no gifts instruction, will descend upon the picturesque county town for the main event followed by a more intimate gathering the next day for family and close friends.
Chester will be decorated with 100,000 flowers paid for by the Duke to mark the occasion, and they will be planted in displays across the cathedral city throughout the summer. The wedding flowers, it is understood, will be donated to local charities and organisations following the ceremony in keeping with a theme of sustainability and locally sourced food throughout.
The couple have recently embarked on a few public charitable visits to highlight their support of their future home town, with Miss Henson insisting on one of them that the couple want to “put down roots” in the north-west county town where they will be wed.
“It’s obviously a place where we will live,” she said. “We’ll be building our lives together and we’re slowly transitioning to move up from London and be much more permanent here and really putting roots down.” The bride-to-be added that it had been “an easy decision” for the couple to make. However, a friend of the couple has caveated that the parameters of his role as chair of the Grosvenor Group, which manages more than 300 acres of Mayfair and Belgravia, means that they will “still be in London regularly”.
I really hope photo agencies are allowed to get wedding photos and some pics of the decorations. It sounds like they’re doing a “village wedding” and then everyone will move to Eaton Estate for the reception, which we probably will not see at all. As for Hugh and Olivia’s plans to spend more time in the country… it reminds me of what they used to say about Prince William, circa 2014-2017. That was when William and Kate moved to Norfolk and William was acting like a “Turnip Toff” with no royal responsibilities. Hugh is actually living William’s dream life.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red & Richard Eden’s IG.
Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales, Royal Honorary Colonel The Queen's Own Yeomanry, attends a consecration service and presents a new Guidon to The Queen’s Own Yeomanry during a parade at Bramham Park, Bramham.,Image: 387915817, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Hugh Grosvenor,Duke of Westminser, Credit line: John Rainford / Wenn / Avalon
