Frock and roll... Lady Mary Charteris's very alternative wedding

The bride was discovered by Issy Blow, her father has been trepanned, the dress was hardcore and Florence (minus the Machine) sang in the church. Karen Dacre and Joshi Herrmann on the alternative wedding of the year
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4 August 2015

The blushing bride

A Tatler party pages regular, Lady Mary Charteris is best friends with aristocratic actress Tallulah Harlech, daughter of Amanda, and stylist Sophia Hesketh, daughter of the UKIP politician Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, the 3rd Baron. Mary, 24, is a veteran in the fashion industry. Championed by the late Isabella Blow, she embarked on a modelling career aged 15 and in the years that followed won notoriety from stylists and photographers alike who admired her rebellious approach. These days, this West End girl has decamped to Bethnal Green where she lives with her new husband. Surprisingly, given her choice of dress, she told a newspaper last year that she prefers winter months because “I don’t enjoy looking too naked”.

The groom

Londoner Robbie Furze is one half of electronic rock duo The Big Pink, a partnership with Milo Cordell. They are best known for their catchy 2009 single Dominos and released their second album, Future This, in January of this year. Lady Mary says he’s the coolest person she knows — an opinion unlikely to be shared by the heckling fan he punched during a gig in Atlanta two years ago. “I thought, ‘Well, it’s either my fist or my guitar’, and I thought ‘Well, I don’t wanna damage my guitar’,” was his explanation. He doesn’t like melon but loves Mary.

The father of the bride

Mary’s father Jamie Charteris, who is known by the surname Neidpath, is the 13th Earl of Wemyss and 9th Earl of March, and he’s one of the more colourful characters in the Scottish peerage. His second wife Amanda Feilding got him into trepanning, a prehistoric surgical procedure that involves drilling a hole in the skull. In 1996 the couple found a surgeon willing to carry out the procedure in Cairo, which the then Lord Neidpath described as “very beneficial”. On the death of his father, the 12th earl, in 2009, he inherited the family’s spectacular Gosford House estate in East Lothian, although he lives at his Cotswolds pile, Stanway.

The clan

The heir apparent to the Wemyss earldom, Mary’s lawyer brother Dick Charteris, Lord Elcho, was in attendance. As were her three step-siblings, Francis, Violet and Anna, her mother’s children with her second husband Robert Hesketh. “Cannot believe my sister is getting married today!” 21-year-old Anna tweeted on the wedding day. Mary’s mother, Ingrid Guinness, is the daughter of the 3rd Baron Moyne and divorced Mary’s father in 1988, two years before marrying the late Robert Hesketh, a cheerleader for the ancient sport of hare coursing.

The fearsome aunt

Daphne Guinness is not your average auntie. Can yours walk in a pair of McQueen Armadillos? Partly responsible for her niece’s keen interest in the fashion industry — at the tender age of 15 Charteris accompanied her aunt and Issy Blow on a whistle-stop tour of Paris Fashion Week. Forgoing an aunt-of–the-bride two-piece, the style veteran chose a rabbit fur-trimmed scarf and a hat by Phillip Treacy to celebrate the nuptials. Full marks to Auntie Daph.

Stan-wasted

Stanway House, the Charteris family home, is the kind of country house that many happy couples pay thousands to use for one afternoon. Characterised by Jacobean mullions and gables, it is surrounded by ancient parkland. In 2004 the Earl oversaw the construction of the world’s tallest gravity-fed fountain on the estate, a 350ft gushing folly that might have been funded by the family’s sale of a £10 million Botticelli to the National Galleries of Scotland. This was not the first time Stanway has hosted society high-jinks: in 2006 the Earl hosted “an upper-class rave party” in the grounds, which was reportedly attended by the princes. The estate’s website is unclear about whether Stanway has a billiards room.

Hogg-mania

Given the bride’s credentials as a style plate — not only is she a Louis Vuitton model but a respected stylist and regular on the front rows of Paris and Milan — her choice of wedding dress designer was this remarkable event’s greatest surprise. While on her big day Kate Middleton had wallflower Sarah Burton on hand to titivate her train, Charteris chose yellow-haired fashion rebel Pam Hogg as her right-hand woman. The dress, a patchwork creation for which squares of transparent silk were joined — by Hogg’s fair hand — to layers of ruffled tulle, was the result of Charteris’s request for a typically Pam Hogg dress with a vintage feel. The bride’s friendship with the designer is a relatively new one. While Hogg met the groom at Lily Allen’s 21st birthday party, it wasn’t until a few years later that she and the young stylist would become friends.

The mad hatters

Headwear played a starring role — and not just on the head of dear Aunt Daph. Wearing his credentials as a north London born raver firmly on his noggin, Alfie Allen chose a graffiti-inspired cycling cap to wear to the wedding while Jaime Winstone opted for a bejewelled skull cap. The award for best — and most inappropriate — wedding attire ever went to one of Furze’s groomsman, who chose a feather-detail red Indian headdress to attend the ceremony.

Happy snapper

When deciding on who might best document their special day, Charteris and Furze ignored the likes of Testino and Walker and instead asked one of their friends if he’d mind taking a few snaps. Incidentally, that friend was Sean Lennon, son of John and Yoko, and arguably one of the coolest men on the planet. Better accustomed to being behind the mic than behind the lens — Lennon forms one part of alternative band GOASTT —the part-time snapper chose a vintage Leica camera to record the action.

The wedding singer

Ceremonials singer Florence Welch is at home in a divine setting. Not least because she honed her voice by singing at family funerals throughout her adolescence. It is little wonder then that Furze enlisted the eccentric flame-haired pop superstar to belt out a ballad or two at his wedding. Arguably the best-dressed guest of the day, newly single Welch wore a flowing Pre-Raphaelite-inspired gown in which to celebrate with the newlyweds. Of course, the big question is what did she sing? Our money’s on Build Me Up Buttercup. Stranger things have happened.

Guests

The guests who swept into the Stanway estate were a colourful mix of big names from the arts, young models and the family’s aristocratic connections. Jools Holland and his wife Christabel were there, along with Lily Rose Cooper — the latter bringing 10-month-old daughter Ethel and husband Sam. The modelling fraternity was represented by Poppy Delevingne and Jerry Hall, who towered over her daughter Georgia May. Also on hand were Liberty Ross’s little brother Leopold and society minx Willa Keswick.

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