I Dua, I Dua: star joins the double wedding set with city ceremony and Sicily celebration

This weekend pop star Dua Lipa and Callum Turner, the latest actor to be touted as the new 007, brought 300 guests to the Sicilian coast for a three-day wedding celebration.

The hub of the festivities was Villa Igiea, a five-star hotel overlooking the Gulf of Palermo where rooms cost up to £6,000 a night. On Friday night the couple’s guests celebrated at Palazzo Gangi, whose mirrored ballroom appears in The Leopard, the 1963 film about Sicilian aristos. Yesterday the party moved to the 18th-century Villa Valguarnera in Bagheria, one of the island’s most opulent residences which, thanks to a reported €10,000 donation to the council, has a no-drone zone in place. It’s where Mick Jagger stays when he’s in town.

The grandeur contrasted with the couple’s intimate legal ceremony at Old Marylebone town hall in London last Sunday, where they officially tied the knot in front of eight guests. By opting for a “double wedding”, Lipa, 30, and Turner, 36, join well-known couples such as Charli XCX and her husband George Daniel, the 1975 drummer, and Made in Chelsea stars Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo. The new drill: do the paperwork with close family and best pals at a small, chic town hall before jetting off to Sicily or Marbella to host a larger weekend of celebrations for a wider circle of family and friends.

And where the A-list leads, the rest of the alphabet follows. “It takes two (baby)” is the new wedding mantra. Morgan Elizabeth Hall, a 31-year-old celebrity stylist, married at Islington town hall in north London last year before travelling to the Italian coast for a four-day celebration. Originally the decision was “purely practical”, she said, allowing her and her partner to marry on their anniversary. But in hindsight “it was such a blessing”, said Hall, adding that “the London ceremony almost felt like a warm-up for the main event”.

The bank accounts of the guests at such elaborate weddings may be a little less blessed. According to new research by Experian, attending an overseas wedding costs an average of £1,525 per guest. This figure does not include money spent on attending earlier UK celebrations.

The rise of the “double wedding” correlates with the increase in town hall weddings. Last year was Marylebone’s busiest on record, with more than 3,000 ceremonies between April 2025 and April 2026, making it one of the UK’s busiest venues. On peak Saturdays, up to 25 ceremonies run between 10am and 6pm. A team of six ushers guides couples through Jo Malone-scented rooms to the front steps for photos within a dedicated one-hour slot, which costs up to £1,800. There are plans for couples to be able to extend their allotted hourly slot by another hour, a premium to capture more wedding content.

Other civic venues are seeing similar growth: last year Islington town hall weddings were up 51% on pre-pandemic levels, and Pinterest reported a 162% rise in searches for “registry office wedding dress” in 2025.

Lipa, who wore an ivory Schiaparelli skirt suit paired with a matching floppy hat by Stephen Jones at her London wedding, epitomised the city-chic minimalism embraced by town hall brides such as Charli XCX and Habboo. In Sicily, it was a different story. The bride wore leather – a feathery, leathery halterneck dress by Bottega Veneta – on Friday night to receive the first guests. It was presumed that Donatella Versace had had a hand in the frock for yesterday’s ceremony itself.

According to Karen Bell, editor of Belle Bridal Magazine, this shift, amplified by social media, has not only raised expectations but also “restructured the entire emotional architecture of how brides think about their appearance” ahead of the big day, encouraging greater self-expression and individuality.

With far more of a couple’s special day (or days) to capture, many are now hiring dedicated wedding content creators alongside traditional photographers and videographers to ensure no moment is missed. According to Bell, this offers “instant gratification” for couples, as coverage is often delivered within 48 hours of the wedding.

This has been noted by Laura Rios-Perez, director of events at Sarah Haywood Exceptional Celebrations – Vogue’s top-rated luxury wedding planning company – who said there has been a clear rise in demand for wedding content creators. “The style, format and pace of content created for social media platforms is often very different from traditional wedding photography and videography,” she said. “So it makes sense for couples to have a dedicated team focused on capturing those moments.”

Hall, who has amassed tens of millions of views across 190 TikTok videos dedicated to her wedding, said that hiring specialist wedding content creator Wed Amore was “one of the best decisions” she and her husband made. “Of course, it also gave me plenty of content to share online afterwards, but more importantly, it gave us memories we’ll have for ever.”

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Photographs by Pino/Backgrid and courtesy Charli XCX, Dua Lipa and Jamie Laing via Instagram