Grooms in Cornwall and Devon

---

Grooms Column: Low Key Vs Statement Weddings

---

Lovingly low-key or veiled statement? Nathan Midgley ponders an A-list wedding with a difference...

---

---

Lovingly low-key or veiled statement? Nathan Midgley ponders an A-list wedding with a difference...

I've been thinking about Keira Knightley. No, not like that. About her wedding. It was 'the least pretentious wedding ever' according to Karl Lagerfeld, who knows a thing or two about pretentiousness.

By the standards of superstar actresses marrying rock musicians, it probably was. A few family and friends in a town hall in southern France, then 50 or so guests at the Knightley house down the road.



Admittedly the 'house' is a country estate, and the guests included Lagerfeld himself. But the point is it was an unfussy affair. So unfussy it looked almost... fussy. Were they putting it on? Sending a message to the bloated celeb wedding industry? What?

Here's the bit that got me: after the ceremony they drove away in a Clio. Being of a certain age, I thought I saw a reference to the last of Renault's 'Papa and Nicole' adverts, in which Nicole left Vic Reeves at the altar and eloped with Bob Mortimer.

It was around then that I realised I was standing in a generation gap.

I spent my formative years with Vic and Bob and The Simpsons. Everything came with layers of irony and pop culture references. The Nicole series began in '91 as a wry fantasy about French life, but by '98 Clio ads were making jokes about previous Clio ads, while riffing on the on-screen relationship of a comedy duo and parodying 'The Graduate'. Just describing it is exhausting.

Knightley, on the other hand, was just hitting her teens in '98. Arch-ironists Blur were going straight, and Kings of Leon and The Strokes were about to release debuts full of wholly unironic American rock. Instead of being veiled or double, meanings were starting to just, you know, mean stuff.

It was too late for me. Fifteen years on I'm still perpetually searching for nods and winks. But for Generation Knightley a rock record rocks, and a Clio is a Clio: a practical little car for nipping around French villages and country lanes. There was no hidden meaning to the wedding. They put on some nice clothes, did the business, and went home for a knees-up. The Telegraph dubbed Keira an 'impromptu bride,' which would be a nice phrase if it didn't also conjure images of 24-hour Vegas chapels and angry fathers with shotguns.

Of course, it's easier to make impromptu look good if you have an estate in France and the creative director of Chanel as your stylist. But still: while everyone else was chasing Gatsby-style glamour, Keira and James went in the opposite direction.

Good thing too, since Gatsby's parties are founded on loneliness and thwarted passion. And perhaps that's what we '90s teenagers are good for: our overdeveloped cultural radars can help wedding planners spot all kinds of unwelcome twists.

If you have Keira's talent for impromptu plain dealing, you probably needn't worry. Otherwise, I'm available for short-term consultancy work. Irony audits, subtext control. Ten per cent off for Wed readers. Tell your friends, okay?

words Nathan Midgley


Copyright Wed magazine 2013