Ella Mountbatten, a first cousin twice removed to HRH Prince Philip, might not have got together with Miller Insurance broker Fergus Wright, were it not for the pandemic. The pair lived in a shared house in Clapham after finishing university (she studied anthropology at Bristol, he read business and marketing at Edinburgh), with Ella scheduled to move to New York to pursue a career on Wall Street soon after graduating. The world had other ideas, and lockdown was enforced the day she was due to fly. “I had a leaving party and everything,” says Ella, letting slip that she shared a kiss with Fergus on their sofa, “something that would never have happened had I not been thinking I wasn’t going to see him for a year.”

Ella and Fergus went from being best friends to a bona fide couple within the space of days, then, last July, the revolving door of friends in that beloved communal house off Abbeville Road suddenly shut, and it was just them. Fergus proposed on that very same sofa with his grandmother’s ring, which, explains Ella, was a “push present” from his grandfather to mark the birth of his father.

Wedding planning then began in earnest, with a September 2026 date confirmed for “practical reasons”. “We had so many friends that had taken all the dates throughout this year that there were hardly any weekends free,” says Ella, highlighting another potential spanner in the works: “Six months before we got engaged, my father sold our family home, which was a wedding venue.” (Royal watchers will know that Lord Ivar Mountbatten, a second cousin of King Charles III and recent winner of US Celebrity Traitors, swapped the grade II-listed Bridwell Park in Devon for a smaller home in Sussex.) No matter. Ella’s uncle, George Mountbatten, the 4th Marquess of Milford Haven and his wife Clare were delighted to host the wedding at Great Trippetts Estate in Sussex. This equestrian farm suited the bride’s English countryside brief and the racing-mad groom’s predilection for horses. Even better? St Luke’s Church sits on top of the hill overlooking the estate’s polo pitches – perfect for the couple, who cruised from the church down to the reception in the original car. “My God mother, Mary Montagu Scott’s brother, owns The Beaulieu Motor Museum,” explains Ella. “She had special driving lessons to take on the journey – hopefully the song didn’t get stuck in everyone’s head all day.”

Some 200 guests supped Coates & Seely English sparkling wine while the ’60s Chitty racing car careered through the grounds, made even more spectacular by trees loaned from Rupert Griffin at West Sussex’s Griffin Nurseries. “It was like being a kid in a sweet shop,” says Ella, who picked out crab apples, silver birch and beech columns to complement her “wild and tumbling” brief with Fergus’s mother Lucinda, who managed all the creative aspects of the day. With marquee maestro Sail & Peg on board, and Martha MacGuffog in charge of the flowers, Ella was able to realise her pink and green dahlia and cosmos dream.

The entire wedding bloomed with another type of flower. “When my mum [Penny Mountbatten] married my dad, she was given a sweet pea called The Lady Penny,” shares Ella, who was gifted her own Ella Mountbatten sweet pea – a two-tone pink and purple posy – for her 21st and had it printed onto pyjamas for the bridal party, thanks to Emerald Baring of Bramble Baring. “And because obviously sweet pea season isn’t now, my mum had them grown up in Dumfries so she could arrange them in my bouquet with pink tipped cosmos and phlox.”

While Fergus busied himself with naming all the tables after racehorses, Ella embarked on the journey of deciding what to wear. The bride received valuable advice from Honour Wainwright, who told Ella that designing her own wedding dress was her favourite part of the planning process, which put the bride on the right path. “I was really obsessed with Vivienne Westwood corsets, as I knew they suited my body, but I wanted to personalise the look,” shares Ella, adding that tens of iterations were considered. “You learn a lot about yourself, and honestly, I didn’t realise how indecisive I was.”

With the help of friend Ella May Sangster, who runs bespoke wedding business Ella May London, they cycled through pleats, lace, puffy short sleeves and coats, before settling on a double-faced ivory silk satin bodice and full circular skirt, which extends into a large sweeping train, designed to be bustled for the evening: “You’re only going to get married once, so you may as well go for it!” Jennifer Chamandi kindly put a personalised plaque on the sole of her signature Eye of the Needle heels, but the pièce de résistance was undoubtedly the jewellery. “We have a beautiful family tiara, but, although my mum wore it, it’s so heavy,” Ella shares of looking to Moussaieff, a brand she had worked with previously in her role as partnership manager at Peninsula London, for a leaf-motif tiara befitting her look. Boodles earrings, borrowed from Wainwright, were the final flourish for the ceremony.

Ella’s sister, Luli, fashioned the bride a “sexy, fun, looks-really-good-when-you-dance” skirt with a “vintage-y, sparkly top” for the reception, while Yasmin Salmon was tasked with perfecting fresh make-up and hairdresser Kerry Chambers perfected relaxed waves that would hold the entire day. “Wearing a tiara can look quite grand, so I was keen to make it more relaxed,” explains Ella, who notes it was the influence of every recent bride, rather than her family history, that persuaded her to wear one: “I’ve noticed a real theme; I haven’t seen that many girls wearing a tiara.”

While Claire Doggart of Doggart & Squash, who handled the catering, was integral in planning the wedding, a special mention must go to Ella’s mother, who runs an events company and is, says her daughter, “the most organised person in the world”. Penny, the mother-of-the-bride, wore a dress created by designer Aimee Joyce along with a John Boyd hat – brands that have created looks for the Mountbatten family for Royal Ascot and many weddings over the past decades.

Other guests of note included TRH The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and Madeline Lloyd Webber, Fergus’s godmother, who watched an emotional Ella and her father, Ivar, enter the church to “Gabriel’s Oboe”, played by oboist Marjorie Carrington, before the exchanging of vows and rings. Fergus and Ella left the church as husband and wife to Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be”, performed by conductor Quintin Beer and his choir. Their first dance song was “Adore You” by Fred Again and Obongjayar (“we’re both probably rather clichéd fans and have seen him live three times”), and they danced into the night, stopping only for nibbles of cheesecake-flavoured mochi, which Little Moons founder Vivien Wong made into a croquembouche-style cake for the bride, whose mother indeed calls her mochi. That Fergus happened to book the same African honeymoon as her parents – down to the same Tongabezi lodge in Zambia – some three decades later, only added to the sense of occasion.