How Prince Harry was ousted from Hugh Grosvenor’s society wedding of the year

Ahead of the wedding taking place at Chester Cathedral on Friday between the Duke of Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, and Olivia Henson, the billionaire groom paid for the Cheshire city to be decorated with 100,000 flowers, planted in vibrant displays which will remain for the rest of the summer. The Prince of Wales, one of “Hughie’s” closest friends, will act as usher, and other guests are expected to be a who’s who of the aristocracy, including everyone from Princess Eugenie – a friend of the bride’s from Marlborough College – to the Van Cutsems Fellow Cheshire yahs the Marquess of Cholmondeley and his wife Rose, whose ancestral seat Cholmondeley Castle is down the road, are likely to be there, too, along with historian Dan Snow and It-boy about town Galen Crawley, a cousin and one of the King’s many godchildren. open image in gallery Prince Harry and Hugh Grosvenor in 2015 That he’s cut himself so resolutely adrift is sad, regardless of whether you sympathise with his reasons. As a source who knows the Grosvenors said last year: “They don’t like it when people criticise their way of life in public, which is exactly what Harry and Meghan have been doing for the last few years.” And although it’s tempting to regard Harry’s move to Montecito as a shedding of a stuffy, outdated way of life in favour of a more dynamic, forward-thinking, American approach, the Grosvenor wedding actually reveals that the younger generation of aristocrats are far more aligned with Harry’s values than we might think. open image in gallery The young princes with William Van Cutsem as they leave the wedding of Lady Tamara Grosvenor to Edward van Cutsem at Chester Cathedral in 2004 Projects on Grosvenor Estate lands include creating the country’s largest continuous area of wildflowers and recycling manure into organic fertilisers to replenish soils.