RICHARD KAY: Welcome to the most royal non-royal wedding of the decade: How did the £10bn Duke of Westminster - who marries today - pull off a feat of diplomacy by keeping William and Harry onside... even though only one will attend?

RICHARD KAY: Welcome to the most royal non-royal wedding of the decade: How did the £10bn Duke of Westminster - who marries today - pull off a feat of diplomacy by keeping William and Harry onside...

even though only one will attend? By Richard Kay for the Daily Mail Published: 02:08 BST, 7 June 2024 | Updated: 09:32 BST, 7 June 2024 e-mail 35 View comments At noon today the bells of Chester's medieval cathedral will ring out in joyous peal for a wedding. For ambitious mothers of aristocratic daughters they may have a mournful tone, however. Their sound will mark the moment when Britain's most eligible suitor will be struck from the list of the kingdom's bachelors.

Fittingly, Prince William , who once himself headed that eminent roll call, will be a witness to the moment when the handsome, dashing and very rich Hugh Grosvenor, the seventh Duke of Westminster, marries his middle-class fiancee Olivia Henson. History is full of occasions when an attractive young beauty courted by a man of fortune and title says 'I do'. But rarely have a bride and groom had to navigate the perils of a social minefield in the weeks and months leading up almost to the moment when they exchange vows.

The reason, of course, is the Duke's relationship with two royal Princes, William and Harry. Uniquely among that gilded company who once counted themselves as friends of both brothers, Hughie Grosvenor, as he democratically likes to be known, is something of an outlier. The Duke of Westminster and Brit.