There are standard celebrity weddings and then there are those that instantly enter the fashion canon. Dua Lipa’s marriage to British actor Callum Turner this weekend felt very much like the latter.
The Grammy Award-winning British singer born to Kosovan-Albanian parents arrived at Old Marylebone Town Hall wearing a custom powder-blue Schiaparelli skirt suit. Sharply tailored with a nipped waist and the house’s signature gold buttons, the look featured a bias-cut skirt with a subtle high-low hemline.
She completed it with a wide-brimmed hat by British milliner Stephen Jones, its underside seemingly gilded in gold leaf, matching baby-blue Louboutin pumps and a bouquet of spring daffodils. Beside her, Turner wore a navy double-breasted suit with a tonal shirt and tie, finished with patent leather shoes.
The pair looked impeccably effortless – less like newly-weds and more like the stars of a lost Helmut Newton editorial.
The references were impeccable. Lipa’s look paid deliberate homage to Bianca Jagger’s famous 1971 Saint-Tropez wedding to Mick Jagger, when the former actress rewrote the rules of bridal dressing in a Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking skirt suit and sweeping hat. More than five decades later, the silhouette remains as compelling as ever, blending elegance and rebellion in a way that still feels modern.
The venue
The choice of Old Marylebone Town Hall – officially the Westminster Register Office – may have been about more than its central London location. Commissioned in 1914 and designed by Sir Edwin Cooper, the Edwardian Graeco-Roman building occupies a unique place in British cultural history, having become one of the world’s most enduring celebrity wedding venues. Rock royalty, in particular, seems unable to resist it.
The building reopened in 2018 following a four-year restoration. Today, it offers seven ceremony rooms, accommodating between eight guests in the intimate Paddington Room and 100 in the grand Westminster Room.
Celebrity weddings at Old Marylebone Town Hall
Liam Gallagher
Clearly a fan of the venue, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher has married there twice. He first wed actress Patsy Kensit in April 1997, at the height of Britpop, in one of the decade’s most-talked-about town-hall weddings. The couple exchanged vows early in the morning to avoid attention.
Eleven years later, Gallagher returned to the venue to marry All Saints singer Nicole Appleton in an intimate ceremony.
Paul McCartney
In March 1969, Beatles singer-songwriter Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman in a quiet civil ceremony at the town hall. As Beatlemania swept the world, tearful fans gathered outside, dismayed that one of the era’s most eligible bachelors was tying the knot. The ceremony lasted just four minutes, and the couple remained together until Linda’s death in 1998.
More than four decades later, McCartney returned to the venue to marry his third wife, Nancy Shevell, in October 2011, in a civil ceremony attended by about 30 guests.
Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach
A second Beatle also chose the registry office. Ringo Starr married actress Barbara Bach there in April 1981. While Starr was the band’s drummer, Bach was best known for playing Bond girl Anya Amasova in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me. The couple remain together 45 years on.
Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas
In May 1996, American actress Melanie Griffith married Spanish actor Antonio Banderas in a secret ceremony that wrong-footed the world’s press. One of Hollywood’s most celebrated couples at the time, they opted for a low-key wedding in London while visiting from the US.
Reportedly pursued by photographers, the pair repeatedly changed taxis and slipped through hotel side entrances to evade paparazzi, ultimately succeeding in holding a private, camera-free ceremony.
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