It will come as no surprise that weddings in the Cotswolds have become increasingly more popular. Things stepped up a notch when Kate Moss married The Kill’s guitarist Jamie Hince in the village of Southrop. Roads were closed and guests included Jude Law, Vivienne Westwood, Snoop Dogg, Iggy Pop and Shirley Bassey. Although the marriage lasted little longer than the celebration, the event placed the Cotswolds firmly on the map as a cool wedding location.
Other celeb weddings include that of Lily Allen and Sam Cooper in Cranham, Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar. Elton stayed at Barnsley House for that one! Alex James married Claire Neate near Cheltenham and Jade and James Jagger scored a high celeb count when they respectively wed in the area.
Thanks to the recent trend for winter weddings, barely a weekend goes by without a new couple heading off from the Cotswolds. There’s a trend too for ‘exclusive use’ house parties where a couple will book a luxury hotel for a private event. It’s quite a smart move, with all the advantages of having an entire hotel team at your disposal for the weekend.
Many hotels offer a scheme where guests can settle up for their own rooms, thereby reducing the cost substantially. And it’s nice that our Cotswolds hotels often come with their own gardens, lakes, riverside views and other photogenic highlights. If Elton is coming, there’s often a helipad nearby too.
Other Wedding Trends in the Cotswolds
2017 has been the year of the engagement photoshoot. The results are generally more relaxed than wedding pics and engagement is a great moment to capture on camera. Speaking of cameras, there are more requests for drone photography of the wedding day too.
Same-sex weddings are thoroughly established too. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the scheme of things and a welcome addition to the day-to-day life of our luxury hotels in the Cotswolds.
Another trend is for micro-weddings – small and intimate wedding celebrations, often for couples entering into a second marriage. The more popular hotels tend to be smaller and ideally suited to such celebrations.
Hotel wedding planners say that the hipster trend is coming into colour schemes and decorations. Candles, centrepieces and tabletops with runners are in and exotic flowers and orchids are back. ‘Experiences’ from silent discos and cocktail makers to guest performers are being added into the big day. The Pantone ‘Colour of the Year’ is becoming a reference point for colour fashion at weddings. This year’s colour was ‘green’, pretty much the Cotswold colour anyway!