Daisy Hoppen’s Elegant London Wedding Featured 3 Custom Dresses and Trolleys of French Fries
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Daisy Hoppen and Vincent Gilbert’s meet-cute reads like the script from a Richard Curtis movie. Our newly single British heroine, who runs her own fashion PR company, has just moved to a flat overlooking Highbury Fields in north London when the pandemic strikes. Disappointed that her Carrie Bradshaw–inspired “cocktails and dating” dream is on pause, and determined not to let COVID get her down, she resolves to run a few laps of the park every morning before work. Meanwhile, our hero Vincent Gilbert is a 6’4” Frenchman and cyber-security expert who completes daily dawn circuits of the same park.
Every morning at 7:15 a.m., they run past each other. After a few weeks, Vincent offers a smile as Daisy jogs past. She thinks he’s cute, if a little weird. “I thought he was just being friendly, or he was gay, or married without a wedding ring,” she recalls. One morning in August 2020, Vincent stops Daisy, introduces himself, and informs her that she is wearing the wrong type of trainers. (They were New Balance non-performance sneakers, but then Daisy is more comfortable running doors at fashion shows for clients including Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard, and Rejina Pyo than marathons.)
They get chatting, and eventually go on a few coffee dates, since anything more glamorous is prohibited on account of the U.K.’s social distancing rules. “It was a period when you couldn’t even hug your family, so the idea of even sitting on a park bench—it felt so Pride and Prejudice,” recalls Daisy. The other old-fashioned element? Vincent, being a cyber-security geek, did not have a digital footprint. “There was no way to digitally stalk him, not a single social media account,” says Daisy. “I didn’t know anything about him until we began meeting in person and later exchanged numbers.”
They dated for several months, until a proposal came over the Easter weekend, while the pair were enjoying time away with friends in Bath. “I was eating a Magnum ice cream in between moaning about how I didn’t want to walk up the hill and then I looked down and he was on one knee speaking French,” Daisy says. “It was a massive surprise.” Gilbert had consulted Hoppen’s sister, Mimi, director of jewelry and watches at Dover Street Market, prior to the proposal, and presented Daisy with an 18th-century rose-cut diamond William Welstead ring. “I’ve always thought William’s jewelry was impeccable,” says Daisy. “It was stunning. And I felt really, really, really happy.”
The couple knew they wanted to get married in London—and quickly. “It had been such a tumultuous few years for everyone, and we felt we should just go for it,” says Daisy. They settled on November, and Hoppen swung into gear, drawing on a wealth of contacts amassed over years of producing events for names including Ganni and Florence + the Machine. With Liz Linkleter as her wedding planner (“Liz, Jess Ruff, and their team were incredible and thought of so many wonderful details”), Hoppen enlisted old friend Margot Henderson to do the catering (“an exceptional woman and chef who makes food that is comforting and welcoming”) with her son Hector. She booked Two Temple Place, a 19th-century neo-gothic mansion by the river where she had once waitressed at weddings herself, and called upon the florist Silka Rittson-Thomas, another old friend, for blousy roses to elevate the space.
As for the dress? “I was very lucky that friends and clients got in touch to say they would love to help as a wedding gift,” says Daisy. “I also trust them all implicitly. I didn’t take anyone to a fitting.” For the night before the wedding, where guests gathered in the Albion pub in north London, Hoppen took her client and old pal Molly Goddard up on the offer of a cornflower-blue smocked dress adapted from one of her bridal designs. “I’ve always loved Molly’s way with color, and this dress felt a bit Disney, which I loved,” she says. For the party element of the wedding, she knew it had to be The Vampire’s Wife. “Susie [Cave] makes the best slightly naughty dresses—sexy, but on the verge—so she made me a sheer pink mini.” Hannah Weiland of Shrimps, another client and close friend, made her a snow-white swing coat inspired by an old photograph of Jackie Kennedy.