“Britain’s top divorce lawyer” Ayesha Vardag has unveiled a new blog to spread the word about her forthcoming nuptials to her colleague, Stephen Bence. Readers are left in no doubt of Vardag’s commitment to attaining excellence in all things.
1. The wedding will be held in Britain’s top cathedral
“It is the most immense privilege to be able to engage in the sacrament of marriage in a place so suffused with history,” writes Vardag of Winchester Cathedral.
Yet, adds the solicitor and barrister who enjoyed spells at Linklaters, Weil Gotshal and 4 New Square before starting her own firm, a personal touch will be applied: “even though it’s in perhaps the most beautiful and grandest cathedral in England, this is going to be different. This is going to be completely ‘us’.”
2. Top guests will arrive by top modes of transport
Arrival, it appears, will be by steam train and Rolls Royce.
3. A top mass will be held
“The full, sung, mass, will be by Monteverdi…” explains Vardag. “It will be sung by people who are stellar singers, some at international professional level, but all of who are our friends and guests at the wedding.”
4. Vardag will be marrying a top husband
Britain’s top divorce lawyer’s second husband-to-be Stephen Bence did some impressive CV-building before he joined Vardags, Vardag’s law firm, as director of strategy in 2012. The blog reveals that Bence “read Astrophysics at Cambridge for his PhD and did his field work up a giant mountain in Hawaii, where, after passing through six different forms of vegetative habitat to reflect the changing climate and significant hypoxia, you get to the world-leading astronomical observatory where Stephen worked out how stars throw out matter in the process of their creation.”
5. Bence will give Vardag a top ring
“My ring,” discloses Vardag, “is a Harry Winston peridot and diamond affair, not designed to be an engagement ring at all. Peridots are among the most ancient of precious stones, and match both Stephen’s and my eyes. The side shoulders are diamond and have a very Great Gatsby feel to them. The ring caught my eye amid the fields of diamond rings and the periodot spoke to me as peridots spoke to Cleopatra thousands of years ago.”
6. Glamour will be added to the occasion by Vardag’s top heritage
Proclaims the top divorce lawyer: “I’m as much Pashtun princess as Scottish farm girl and Oxford bluestocking.”
7. The styling will be top class
“My hair,” confides Vardag, “will have been done by Tom at Nicky Clark, who has cut my hair since I was 22 years old; my makeup by the artist who styled me for my first glossy magazine feature in Easy Living and the photographer will be from the same shoot. My dress, and our daughters’ bridesmaids’ dresses, will be painstakingly made by my mother, who has extraordinary creativity and sartorial training now rare.”
8. A top reception will be held in Vardag’s top gaffe
Even the trees in Vardag’s charming horse-filled garden (pictured) are top ones, with some yielding delicious fruits, and others boasting incredible genealogy, as the blog details:
“The garden has apples, pears, plums, figs, blackberries, loganberries and an ancient mulberry tree cut from the one in Christ’s College, Cambridge, under which Milton, aptly enough, wrote Paradise Regained.”
9. The couple will jet off on a top honeymoon
To Bence’s old stomping ground, Hawaii. And the top guests are paying!
“We have said for years,” imparts Vardag, “that if we married we would go to Hawaii on honeymoon, and indeed so we shall. We’ll probably go via San Francisco on the way out and LA on the way back. If you wish to give us a wedding gift, therefore, please buy us a piece of that trip.
The full “VardagBenceMarriage” blog is here.