Brexit is killing our business at the real Downton Abbey

Weddings are such an intrinsically happy part of human life yet they can also be pregnant with characters and contrived situations which can create amusing sets and scenes that are bound to go wrong both in real life and on the screen. It makes them irresistible to filmmakers.

- FIONA CARNARVON

From films based entirely around nuptials, such as Four Weddings and a Funeral to our own, much-loved TV series, Downton Abbey weddings allow us to admire beautiful settings with characters from all walks of life, chic fashions and unfolding plot lines gathered together in one space. As Noel Coward said: There are many reasons why you should marry for love or for money and many why you shouldn’t.”

As one of six daughters, my father always said he was not in the least averse to elopements perhaps envisaging us absconding out of an upper window. My mother, however, felt very differently.

In Downton, it seemed as if almost every cast member was able to walk up the aisle at some point from the scandalous match of Lady Sybil and the chauffeur Branson, to the below-stairs tribulations of Anna and Bates; as well as the romance of Mrs Hughes and Carson, the tribulations of Lady Mary and in the end, thank goodness, even Lady Edith managed to get married).

Like many other stately homes, weddings used to be a large part of our business portfolio at Highclere Castle, which is of course) the set for Downton. Each year, we would help organise anything up to 25 weddings and had part of our team dedicated solely to wedding planning. Most famously, before Downton Abbey came along, we hosted the unforgettable celebrity wedding of Katie Price and Peter Andre with 52 pages of coverage in OK! Magazine and a large spread in Hello.

Over the years, the chefs and banqueting team have prepared and delivered many wedding breakfasts, while the days were marked by the arrival of beautiful flower arrangements, large bows for chair coverings and musicians beginning to set up.