Big day: Thomas van Straubenzee and Lady Melissa Percy
After that hilarious, fake-tanned Tamara Ecclestone knees-up in the South of France last week, it’s time for a properly grand affair to raise the tone of the wedding season.
And today there’s a wedding to eclipse all of those samey country affairs that Pippa Middleton seems to trip off to every weekend.
When the Duke of Northumberland’s daughter Lady Melissa Percy marries Thomas van Straubenzee — a great friend of Princes William and Harry — it’ll be the Royal Wedding of the North.
It might be the marriage of a tennis instructor to an estate agent, but if that sounds a little humdrum, think again. Lady Melissa Percy is known as the ‘Hogwarts heiress’, and the backdrop to her wedding is the moated, turreted, positively wizard ancestral home Alnwick Castle, where the first two Harry Potter films were shot.
William will attend with Harry, who is due to be an usher, though Kate will remain in London just in case she goes into early labour. Beatrice and Eugenie should be there with their boyfriends (let the bells ring out!) and Pippa will bring up the rear.
Most interesting is the thorny issue of Prince Harry and his blondes: both his ex, Chelsy Davy, and his current squeeze Cressida Bonas, are on the guest list. What japes!
So who’s who in the royal romantic comedy set at Hogwarts?
The ditzy blonde bride
Lady Melissa Percy, 26, ‘Missy’ to pals, is the youngest daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, and third of their four children.
Lively — friends say she’s a ‘dancing on the table’ kind of girl — willowy and blonde, she teaches tennis at the exclusive Queen’s Club in West London (membership £12,000). She was a ranked player for a while.
Missy went to sporty public school Millfield. She skis, snowboards, water-skis, fishes and shoots.
Party girl: Prince Harry with Lady Melissa Percy outside the Brompton Club, London
The Percy girls are a highly physical and multi-talented bunch — elder sister Lady Katie is a car mechanic who repairs motors in a London garage.
Missy’s been going out with Thomas since 2008, though they split up for a while, during which time she was pictured smoking anxiously on the fire escape of a nightclub with Harry.
She can be slightly ditzy, and once set fire to her London flat after a deep fat fryer caught alight.
The estate agent groom
Thomas van Straubenzee, 31, is said to be much more serious and ambitious than his bride.
Prince William’s best friend from Ludgrove, his Berkshire prep school, he went on to Harrow and spent six months working in a school in Uganda, before studying at Newcastle University then carving out a career in property.
Prince William’s best friend from Ludgrove, his Berkshire prep school, he went on to Harrow and spent six months working in a school in Uganda, before studying at Newcastle University then carving out a career in property.
At the wedding rehearsal: Thomas van Straubenzee in Alnwick
He worked at Strutt & Parker estate agents, and as a property finder, and last year set up VanHan, a London estate agency, which has offices in London, Dubai, Moscow and Hong Kong.
It is a sign of his closeness to the Princes that he went to New Zealand with William on his year off, and when Thomas was mugged at knifepoint in Battersea while talking on the phone to Harry, the concerned Prince drove across town to check that he was OK.
He’s famously discreet, which is why the Princes have allowed him to grow so close to them.
Her Blackadder family
History’s wheel doesn’t turn without a Percy onstage. They were everywhere, in the medieval Crusades, the Gunpowder Plot, the Napoleonic Wars and both World Wars. Harry ‘Hotspur’, teenage knight and hero of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, was probably the most famous Percy.
Family crest: The Percy lineage dates back to least as early as the Crusades
The family crest shows a lion rampant, though Tim McInnerny’s Lord Percy Percy in Blackadder II was played as a dim-witted fop.
More recently, things have taken a prosaic turn. The last eccentric Duke — the current Duke’s elder brother, Henry — had a taste for parties, drugs and the company of women such as model Naomi Campbell’s mother, and the Bond girl Barbara Carrera.
The current 12th Duke and his wife, Jane, moved to Alnwick Castle when the 11th Duke died after an overdose of amphetamines in 1995.
Like his about-to-be son-in-law, the Duke is a chartered surveyor by training and runs an estate that includes 120,000 acres of land, 171 tenant farms and 700 houses and cottages. He is estimated to be worth £325 million, putting him four places ahead of the Queen on the Sunday Times Rich List.
The Duchess of Northumberland spent millions of private and public money reshaping the Alnwick Garden as a tourist attraction and opinion is divided as to whether this ‘Versailles of the North’, as it has become known, is a vanity project or a much-needed regeneration project for the North-East that appeals to the people rather than gardener grandees.
Jane has a subversive streak and once even staged cage-fighting on the estate.
As well as the garage mechanic daughter, there’s also the tantalisingly single and eligible son, George, who runs a renewable energy firm and flirts with his ex-flatmate, Pippa Middleton; and his younger brother, Lord Max Percy, who has an aristocratic Euro girlfriend, Princess Nora Oettingen-Spielberg.
His links to Diana
The Van Straubenzees are squirearchy who came over from Holland in the 18th century and provided continuous military service for 150 years. The groom’s father, Alex Van Straubenzee, was an officer in the Royal Green Jackets and lives in Lincolnshire with his wife, Claire.
Such is the nature of Establishment connections that the Van Straubenzees were old family friends of Princess Diana; she was nanny to Thomas’s cousin for a while. William and Harry often went to Cornwall with them when they were young.
Tragically, Thomas’s younger brother, Henry — Harry’s best friend at Ludgrove — died at 18 in a car crash outside the school, where he was working after he left as a pupil in 2002.
His parents set up The Henry van Straubenzee Memorial Fund (which aims to lift Ugandan children out of poverty through education), with help from Thomas. Princes William and Harry became joint patrons.
Watch out for cheeky Chelsy
Alongside matron of honour Lady Katie Valentine, the bride’s sister, there is the bride’s best friend — Prince Harry’s long-time former girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
There are also 12 bridesmaids and pages.
Newly single: Chelsy Davy is the bride's best friend
Chelsy is now a trainee solicitor at Allen & Overy, and currently single since splitting up with property developer Matthew Mills — Labour grandee Dame Tessa Jowell’s son — earlier this year.
Chelsy arranged Melissa’s hen night, which involved persuading four handsome young male toffs to serve the drinks ‘oiled up’, semi-naked and wearing aprons that said ‘Missy’s Hen’. Cheeky Chelsy.
The court jester
Good time guy: Nightclub owner Guy Pelly
Another member of the inner circle, the royal court jester and nightclub founder Guy Pelly, will be playing a key role alongside Prince William.
Pelly organised the stag — he’s a posh-stag veteran.
He organised William’s do — at his new Mexican-themed bar/club, Tonteira, off Sloane Square.
The party saw William and Harry carousing till 1.30am surrounded by scantily-clad girls and blow-up objects in saucy shapes.
The club boasts a toy train set that delivers shots of tequila.
Pelly was involved in royal favourite clubs Mahiki and Whisky Mist.
He is sometimes seen as a dubious influence on the Princes.
That said, he is undoubtedly entertaining company, and will make a funny speech.
Along with Thomas, he helped Harry with his best man’s speech at the Royal Wedding.
A party in Harry Potter's castle
The setting is also the star. There’s been a castle at Alnwick (pronounced Annick) for 1,000 years with Percys in residence there for 700.
The ancestral home became famous around the world after Daniel Radcliffe and his pals donned their Quidditch robes to film the first two instalments of the Harry Potter franchise here.
Enchanting: Alnwick Castle in Northumberland where the wedding will take place
Stone lions guard the austere, foreboding, magnificent exterior: Canaletto, Titian, Turner and Van Dyck paintings and Louis IV furniture light up the inside. The landscape round the castle is by Capability Brown.
Alnwick staff will be unfazed by the wedding — the castle is hired out as a venue on a regular basis.
Toffs galore
Aristocratic sisters: Socialites Astrid and Davina Harbord
There will be more than 500 guests: an assortment of friends of Harry and William, such as the Van Cutsem brothers; socialite sisters Astrid and Davina Harbord; film-maker heir Arthur Landon; Pippa’s ex-boyfriend, banking heir JJ Jardine-Paterson; jockey Sam Waley-Cohen; William’s ex, Bella Musgrave; and Harry’s one-time fling, the TV presenter Natalie Pinkham... it’s a tangled love map of royal and Middleton exes, a mixture of Beaufort Hunt boys and leggy girls who went to Newcastle University.
Her carriage awaits
This is truly regal. The bride will arrive at the church with her father and leave with her husband for the reception in the family state coach, a gold-and-black affair which once carried the 3rd Duke of Northumberland as George IV’s personal representative to the coronation of Charles X in France in 1825.
It was repainted in 1902 for use at the coronation of Edward VII, and was restored in 2011 for the wedding of Melissa’s sister.
The fabulous frock
Lady Melissa’s wedding dress was designed by Bruce Oldfield, the one-time Barnardo’s boy from the North-East who also made her sister Katie’s wedding dress, as well as bridal gowns for Samantha Cameron and Jemima Khan.
In charge of the dress: Fashion designer Bruce Oldfield
He frequently dressed Princess Diana, too, so the bride will look exquisite; Oldfield cannot do bad taste.
After the wedding, the dress will go on display in the Coach House at Alnwick.
Parade for the plebs
The wedding takes place at 5pm in nearby St Michael’s Church, Bailiffgate. Locals will line the streets for a glimpse (drinks in hand probably, as they did for Melissa’s sister) and the royal guests parading down Bailiffgate in fascinators and morning coats will be the key photo opportunity for the crowds — and the biggest security headache for the police.
The reception will be held in the castle’s elaborate State Rooms, hung with family oils and tapestries, followed by dinner in a marquee and fireworks accompanied by music; locals can watch the firework display from the meadows below the castle.
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