Hugh Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, and Olivia Henson Are Married! Here's What We Know About Their Royal-Adjacent Wedding

It’s official: Britain’s most eligible bachelor, Hugh Grosvenor, who holds the title of the Duke of Westminster, is off the market. The duke married Olivia Henson, who he has been dating since 2021 and proposed to in April of 2023, during a wedding ceremony at Chester Cathedral in northern England today, June 7, 2024. Though he’s not an official member of the British royal family, Grosvenor’s nuptials are considered a royal-adjacent bash that have been garnering nearly as much attention as celebrations thrown in honor of Prince William and Kate Middleton and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In fact, multiple outlets, including The Times, dubbed the union “the most royal non-royal wedding of the year.”

According to The Independent, over 400 guests attended the couple’s wedding ceremony, including Prince William, who served as an usher for the important event (Grosvenor is one of Prince George’s godfathers); he arrived at the property discreetly on Friday morning. Princess Eugenie was also in attendance, per People. Noticeably absent for the festivities? Prince Harry, who declined the invitation given his ongoing familial rift. People reports that the longtime friends came to the mutual decision that Harry would sit the celebration out, and that the Duke of Sussex sent “his love and support and admiration for the couple.” Royal watchers speculated that Prince George would play a role in the big day, standing in as a page boy, but rumors began circulating on Friday morning that he would be skipping the event according to GB News; he was not spotted at the wedding. Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, along with their mother Kate Middleton, were not in attendance.

Ahead of the wedding, the bride and groom funded the city of Chester’s annual summer flowers project, in which over 100,000 blooms were planted in displays around the city; they also provided free ice cream and sorbet to visitors in the city center via three local businesses, BBC reports. “It’s a lovely touch from the couple and will put a lot of smiles on faces,” one vendor told the outlet.

As for their actual wedding décor, the happy couple decked out the exterior of Chester Cathedral with a massive greenery arch (punctuated with a few white purple and botanicals, including Queen Anne’s lace) that framed the doorway and continued along the building’s walls. The venue was an obvious and meaningful choice for the couple, The Independent reports. “We’ve obviously got a long association with the cathedral as a family so we were here for my father’s memorial, my sister’s wedding, and every Remembrance Sunday that I can attend is here,” the groom told the outlet earlier this year.

The duo walked down the aisle while a trio of students from The Queen’s School in Chester and members of the Chester Cathedral Choir performed. After arriving in a vintage Bentley car with her father, the bride stepped out in a wedding dress by British bridal designer Emma Victoria Payne, which billowed in the day’s high winds. She paired her gown, an ivory silk satin number with three-quarter sleeves, a bias-cut skirt, pleated waistband, and a detachable, six-foot-long train, with a veil with meaningful embroidery (it featured the florals and edgings that appeared on her great-great-grandmother’s own veil in the late 1800s). She finished the look with statement blue shoes, which had large bows and chunky heels. The groom selected traditional wedding attire, including morning dress (complete with an elongated jacket) and a pink tie.

According to Town & Country, jewelry experts expected that Henson would walk down the aisle in a tiara from the Westminster family collection, with options like the Princess Mary Fringe tiara and the Bagration Spinel tiara cited as possibilities. In the end, she chose to wear the Faberge Myrtle Leaf tiara; this piece was made for brides in the Grosvenor family to wear on their wedding days since it was created in 1906. Her look’s other accent? Her colorful bouquet, with blooms picked from the grounds of Eaton Hall, her groom’s family’s estate. The arrangement included blossoms like clematis, scabious, sweet pea, ox-eye daisies, iris, and roses, per People.

Now that the duo’s ceremony has concluded—we don’t know much about their actual nuptials, but the pair left the church together and shared a kiss in front of the crowd—the newlyweds and their family members and friends will head back to the very place where those flowers were plucked: Eaton Hall, which People describes as an 11,000-acre farm, for a reception. The property is located just a few miles from Chester Cathedral.