Five bridesmaids wore custom silk gowns in emerald green (Boulter’s favourite colour), designed by Grace Lane in collaboration with each woman. This time the bride’s brother, entertainment agent James G Boulter, walked her down the aisle. The processional music was Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”, chosen, Boulter admits with a laugh, because it was the piece that had made her cry the most during the selection process – a decision she came to regret once she started walking.
Formalities complete, Boulter changed into the Westwood dress she’d worn for the English ceremony (“I wanted to tie the two weddings together in some way,” she explains) for Hugo and Aperol Spritzes in the gardens. A dinner of prawns, lamb and sole was served beneath breathtaking chandeliers in a marquee overlooking the Tuscan hills, before guests were invited into a long-running debate between the couple over whose favourite pasta reigns supreme. Boulter’s penne alla vodka and de Minaur’s cacio e pepe were put to a guest vote, overseen by one of the bridesmaids, Laura, a professional sports commentator drafted in as MC for the evening. (The bride’s dish won.) Dessert was a two-tiered cake – one tier lemon, the other white chocolate – iced with the couple’s initials and cut outside ahead of a firework display perfectly timed to Coldplay’s “A Sky Full of Stars”. “It didn’t feel real,” Boulter says. “A lot of people cried.”
A first dance to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” followed (“We’re not natural-born dancers,” Boulter concedes, “the only goal was not to fall over”), before the party moved into a centuries-old trattoria built around a single oak tree, where a live band and DJ kept the dance floor full until 4.30am. But not before the bride’s third and final change of the night: Boulter danced the night away in a lace minidress by Grace Lane, paired with custom Nike Jordans that the brand made for the bride using lace from her ceremony gown. Inside one shoe was a kangaroo (a nod to de Minaur’s native Australia), and in the other a rose (for Boulter’s England). The day after brought a low-key pool party: caprese salads, melon and prosciutto, pizza and gelato, soundtracked by a DJ.
Not everything went entirely to plan. De Minaur’s one assigned job – chauffeuring his new wife away from the ceremony in a 1956 Porsche Speedster he had bought specifically for the occasion – almost went awry when the car twice refused to start in front of the entire wedding party. (“Everyone thought I was joking,” he says, mock wiping PTSD-induced sweat beads from his temple, “but I was stressed out of my mind!”) Boulter, meanwhile, popped a seam on one of the arms of her dress while climbing out of the car upon arrival, sending her mother and wedding planner scrambling for a safety pin behind the scenes. The case of the groom’s missing shirt button was resolved at the eleventh hour courtesy of Boulter’s brother and de Minaur’s groomer, who between them stitched a replacement into place before anyone was any the wiser.
For two people who spend much of the year at a distance from their loved ones, chasing trophies on opposite sides of the world, the significance of both ceremonies was clear. “Ultimately, it was about our families – and joining them.” Reflecting on it all a few days later, still processing, still fiddling with a wedding ring he admits he’s not yet used to wearing, de Minaur puts it perfectly: “It felt like our own movie.”
