Get Wed

   I think that for an alternatively dressed wedding, one's nods to tradition should retain both bearing and visual interest

   A friend of mine recently stood out amongst the formally-observant male guests at a summer wedding in a Scottish ensemble redolent of one John Russell, the 13th Duke of Bedford, here at home in 1966 and adorned in the hedonist's formalwear of that time:

Photograph by Terrence Spencer//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

   This peacock streak carried on to his son, Lord Francis, OE - uncle of the present Duke - when he married the Malayasian Singapore-born model Faith 'Anak' Ibrahim in 1971. In the spirit of the times, he wore an appealingly cheeky, suitably aristocratic velvet frock coat suit with braided piping and a dégagé approach to neckwear. This might make his later conversion to upmarket estate agency seem unglamorous in comparison, but such is natural progression. I understand that his father's tome, How to Run a Stately Home, is fairly edifying (such a pity that his The Duke of Bedford's Book of Snobs is something of a rarity - I'd expect it to be barrel-full of laughs)

   This certainly is nowhere near the level of today's proliferation of pooling trousers, undesirable, inauthentic corsages and shiny, embroidered waistcoats that may as well be hewn from leisure suit-grade polyester. And why begrudge a little preening on that most happy of occasions?

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