The Bride Wore Elie Saab and a Diamond Tiara for Her Classic English Wedding at Drayton House
Anna Pops and Luke Stopford Sackville first met through a mutual friend on Mustique’s Macaroni Beach. Looking back on it today, the bride says the encounter feels fated. “Mustique holds a very special place in my heart,” Anna shares. “My family has been going since I was a very little girl, making it feel like home. I smile to think that I met the love of my life on the same beach where I grew up building myself mermaid tails in the sand.”
But in the moment, it ended up being exactly that: a moment. Luke, a financier, lived in London and Anna, who works in marketing at Charlotte Tilbury, lived in New York. While their chemistry was immediate, the reality of living on two separate continents was not. They left the island wanting to get to know each other better, but not quite sure how.
A few weeks later, however, Luke was in New York for business. He worked up the courage to ask her to dinner, but failed to make it clear that it was a date. So Anna asked if she could bring her close friend and her close friend’s husband. A confused Luke agreed—and then invited a friend of his own. “We had an amazing time—the five us,” she says, laughing.
When Luke learned Anna was visiting Italy with her family that summer, he knew this time he had to make his interest obvious. “Luke suggested that he come meet me and plan a special trip,” Anna says. “In hindsight, this was a crazy leap of faith, but I didn’t think twice about it.”
“I had never done anything like that before,” she adds.
Luke proposed to Anna twice. The official proposal was in the summer of 2023, at his grandparents’ house in Mallorca as the sun set. But the real proposal came weeks earlier. Luke had asked Anna’s father and mother for her hand in marriage. They gave their blessing. Hit with a simultaneous case of nerves and impatience, Luke decided he couldn t wait. So the next morning, Luke asked Anna to go for a walk. On a bench in Central Park, he asked her to marry him with a Haribo gummy ring.
The two always knew they’d marry at Drayton House, the Stopford Sackville’s family home for more than 700 years. (Despite its relative seclusion, the Northamptonshire estate has been in the spotlight lately as the house in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn.) “We feel so fortunate to be married in a place with such historical family importance and excited to be a part of Drayton’s ongoing story,” says Anna. They set a date for June 22, 2024, and joined forces with event planners Fait Accompli to help execute their vision.
Anna and Luke’s wedding weekend began on a Friday with a Midsummer Night’s Dream–theme party. Guests wandered around the gardens of Drayton in their best “enchanted” dress, stumbling upon everything from secret bars serving “love potions” (French 75 with muddled berries) out of vintage teacups, to a tree corridor lined with moss lanterns. Anna wore a Zuhair Murad ribbon dress, which she accented with a satin love knot wristlet by Anya Hindmarch. Her hair was woven with fresh flowers.
As the sun set, the bride gave a speech to the crowd. “Anna does everything with such elegance and style but she has a particular way with words that elide her innate joy and so it was such a happy moment, amongst many others, to hear her speak on Friday night talking about our life together and our future,” Luke says. When it was finally time to leave Drayton, guests were handed a book of love poems bound in their custom wedding toile. “We began our relationship long distance, and handwritten letters and little notes have always been a part of our love story,” says Anna. (The wedding toile, designed by Lotty Bunbury, served as a decorative accent for much of their weekend—covering everything from their invitations to the bridal party’s silk pajamas. The motif included Drayton House, Mustique palm trees, and the Central Park bench where they got engaged.)
On Saturday, the two wed at St. Peter’s Church in Lowick, which was constructed by Luke’s ancestors in the 15th century. Anna walked down the aisle wearing Elie Saab, arm-in-arm with her father as a choir, orchestrated by Quintin Beer of St. Peter’s College at Oxford University, sang.
The legendary socialite and style icon Deeda Blair, a close friend of Anna’s mother, played an integral role in her bridal trousseau. “My bridal journey began with iced tea, fabric swatches, and select dress photos and sketches around the table with my mom and Deeda,” she says. “Hearing her stories, playing dress-up in her apartment, and ideating together was the dreamiest entrée into the process.” Together with the Elie Saab atelier, they designed a strapless lace gown with a Reticella lace train.
Upon her head was the Stopford Sackville tiara, which consists of six rosette peaks and a fleur-de-lys on a diamond halo. “Family history and tradition are very important to us both, and it was a privilege to join the women who wore it before me,” says Anna. Luke’s mother also gave her daughter-in-law a diamond crescent brooch to pin on her bouquet. “Like most special items in life, we are merely custodians for the next generation and I hope to one day give it to our son’s wife on their wedding day,” she says.
Luke waited for her at the altar in a custom morning suit in sage green—a color that recurs throughout Drayton—made by Antonia Ede at Montague Ede.
Throughout the readings, which included Bible verses and Shakespearean sonnets delivered by three of their close friends, the couple found themselves overwhelmed by the magnitude of the moment. “The ceremony was incredibly special,” says Anna. “Luke and I did not break contact during the ceremony and every time we got emotional, he would rub my arm or I would squeeze his hand. We couldn’t help but smile.”
The newlyweds exited the church to the sound of ringing bells as guests threw flower petals, then drove away as man and wife in a 1935 Drophead Bentley Coupe. Meanwhile, the congregation boarded vintage buses back to Drayton for a cocktail reception in the courtyard. Right before dinner was set to begin, the footmen led them through the historic rooms of the house to a grand marquee tent on the grounds.
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