Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen Talks Weddings, Love and Wonderful Golden Cocks
You’ll know Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen as the handsome dandy from BBC’s Changing Rooms, or from his Living TV docusoap To The Manor Bowen. What you might not know is that he and wife Jackie (a former wedding planner and editor of You and Your Wedding, don’t you know), also do a mean line in beach weddings and recently appeared at the National Wedding Show. We took a few moments to chat with the Llewelyn-Bowens about getting wed, doing Hello and Laurence’s wonderful golden cock.
STAGGERED: Hello! You’re at the National Wedding Show to talk about Beachcomber Tours, have you always been involved with weddings?
LAURENCE LLEWELYN-BOWEN (LLB): We’re here to talk about Beachcomber but also to talk about getting married. We’ve been married a long time and we believe that getting married is a very good thing.
We were in a quandary this year because it’s our 20th wedding anniversary and we were going to do it quite quietly but then, to be honest, the whole Jordan and Peter Andre thing blew up and we thought, “Fuck it, we’re going to do Hello and we’re going to make a fuss of it!” because we wanted to show that relationships can work if you work at them and marriages can last.
JACKIE LLEWELYN-BOWEN (JLB): With the holidays we helped to design some all-inclusive wedding packages to make it as easy as possible for couples to know that they can go abroad and have a stylish wedding and be the only couple getting married that day – and we’ve been over there and tested it.
LLB: We’ve tested everything: we’ve jumped on the beds, we tried the cakes, we’ve thrown the bouquets – so we know that they’re good.
STAGGERED: It seems that more and more men are getting involved with their own weddings, do you think this is a good thing?
LLB: 
There has been a complete change in the last 20 years. For the first time at wedding shows brides are bringing the grooms and I think a lot of that is about couples paying for the wedding themselves, so men are more connected to what goes on.
STAGGERED: Aside from financial issues why else are men getting involved?
LLB: Guys are so much more style-conscious than they’ve been for an incredibly long time and actually that’s more and more acute. We’ve noticed with friends of our daughters that the boys are really into style and grooming.
This old fashioned thing about a wedding hierarchy where it was the bride, then the bride’s mother, then the groom’s mother, then the chief bridesmaid and the groom was about fifth on the list – that’s all bollocks. The wedding is actually about the bride and the groom.
JLB: This is why we were so excited by getting involved in this kind of package deal. It’s the idea of knowing where you are. Lots of blokes are concerned by the big production of a wedding – the speeches, the suits – and a wedding abroad is the other option. Also you can completely control who’s there. Everything down to the music, your transfers, the photographs are all there and included.
STAGGERED: So what elements of the wedding should blokes get involved in?
JLB: When I was working as a wedding planner I always tried to encourage the grooms to get involved in as much as possible, although obviously not on the fashion side of things, that’s still the bride’s domain.
LLB: I got involved in the fashion at ours though!
JLB: There are so many key areas that need attention in wedding planning and some are ideal for the blokes, for instance, the music. Most blokes feel comfortable looking at the music, the transport, perhaps some of the more techy things. The bride is more concerned than what she looks like. 
LLB: Obviously, I think we should all forgive my wife for being quite sexist here!
JLB: I’m being honest! Women want to focus on what they look like and the visual side of things. So that gives the blokes a chance to get involved in the things that are perhaps less glamorous.
STAGGERED: So why is it ok now for blokes to be into style, what happened?
LLB: I think men like David Beckham have done more for moving our perception of manhood than anybody else. But on other levels people like Gary Lineker – you look at these men and you think, “It’s ok for them to be stylish and to be sensitive, so I can too.”
Let’s be honest, 200 years ago people like Jamie Oliver would never have got a shag, he’s too scruffy and too much of an oik. 200 years ago you had to show yourself off as a bit of a peacock and a bit civilised and there’s no reason why now that men should not enjoy that, particularly on their wedding day.
STAGGERED: It sounds like you’re quite untraditional when it comes to weddings.
LLB: One of the things we fought against so strongly when we got married was this idea of my wife being some kind of product that was passed on from her father to me. It’s crazy. Jackie didn’t wear a veil and she wore purple shoes and everyone was dumbstruck. A wedding should be a celebration of a union between two grown-ups and that’s not some passive, simpering virgin and it’s not some oik who would rather be gaffa-taped to a lamp post – you have to make up your own traditions.
STAGGERED: Go on then Laurence, what style tips do you have for blokes?
LLB: Vivienne Westwood cufflinks. More men need to marry with Vivienne Westwood cufflinks. These were given to me by Jamie Oliver for my 40th birthday. I’ve done so many press calls and no one has noticed and I’ve been waiting for someone to go, “Oh my God! Laurence has got a cock on his cuff!”
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