The run-up to any big event is tiring for any party planner, so it is little wonder that Lady Elizabeth Anson is fortifying herself with extremely strong tea as she gears up for tomorrow’s royal wedding.
The flame-haired 69-year-old is an adviser for the wedding and tells us that her cousin the Queen has been very hands on with the wedding arrangements.
‘People might think she wouldn’t have time to worry about menus and tastings and how things look, but she is the most meticulous hostess,’ says Anson, in a cut-glass English accent.
‘She is really interested in what people are going to eat or when they are going to get drinks and making sure that they not waiting too long.’
The wedding brings back many memories of that of Prince Charles to Princess Diana - it did not last, but it was a fairytale occasion Cousins: Lady Elizabeth Anson, left, is preparing herself by drinking strong tea and, she says, the Queen has been very hands on with arranging the wedding
Lady Anson says she hopes the public and press don't try and compare Kate to Princess Diana
The crowds will turn out in force tomorrow to see the newly weds appear on the balcony after their trip from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace
One's throne a party: After the wedding the Throne Room will host the party of the century with some of the most high-profile people in the world
When you get to the altar steps your immediate family are sitting on either side, so you feel you are getting married in a chapel with just your family,’ she explains.
The couple had a daughter but the marriage faltered. She and her husband spent more than 25 years living apart before splitting up for good last year - using a do-it-yourself divorce kit from stationer’s Rymans.
Anson may have married in Westminster Abbey like Kate Middleton but she has often been compared to Princess Diana. Both young women’s aristocratic parents split when they were very young, and both went on to suffer from an eating disorder and crippling shyness in their teens.
‘I had bright red hair, I had freckles and I had a big round moon face as a child. I was seriously overweight,’ she says. ‘I was called ‘Tubby’ at school and it’s pretty difficult to shrug that off.’
After her parents separated when she was four, Anson’s mother moved to Paris and the couple’s children divided their time between France and their father’s ancestral seat of Shugborough in Staffordshire.
When he died suddenly, Lady Elizabeth was just 16 and she took over the running of the household, while her older brother - the late Patrick Lichfield, who went on to be a famous society photographer - inherited his title aged only 18.
She launched Party Planners at 19, and was soon organising lavish bashes for high profile clients - including the Royal family.
Anson hoots with laughter when she remembers a disco organised at Windsor Castle for Prince Charles and Princess Anne when they were teenagers. She recalls: ‘Prince Charles was so shy he would only talk to the mothers and the older women and Princess Anne was trying to give it a go but she was only 14.’
She went on to advise on the wedding of both Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
While obviously close to the Royal Family, there was a minor hiccup in their relationship two years ago when Anson was reportedly asked to withdraw some of the late Queen Mother’s personal letters from an auction in Paris - on request of the Queen.
The documents could have raised a large sum considering that the previous year a note in which the Queen Mother had written to a servant asking that gin and Dubonnet should be packed for an outing sold for £16,000. But if there was any animosity between the cousins it appears to have passed and the Queen attended Elizabeth’s recent party celebrating 50 years of Party Planners at St James’s Palace.
A guest at what she describes as ‘dozens and dozens’ of Royal Weddings over the years, Anson is surprised how much they have changed. In the past, the high point, partywise, of a royal wedding would be a ball held a couple of days before the ceremony - meaning the reception on the wedding day itself would be a small family affair.
Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones’s wedding in 1999 was the turning point. ‘Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones got married in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, at five o’clock and they had an evening reception. That was when they began getting into the modern idea of the whole thing going into one reception with a dance.’
After tomorrow’s abbey service, a reception at Buckingham Palace for 600 guests will begin straight after followed by a dance for 300 in the evening.
‘Most of the old who are going will be leaving after dinner, allowing the young have fun,’ she says.
While Anson might not make it to Saturday’s 6am ‘survivors’ breakfast’ reportedly being planned by Prince Harry, she has been busy planning her own appearance as a guest and has been on the Dukan diet (like Carol Middleton). She is chuffed to have lost 33lb.
Only once has Anson encountered any problem with clients. In the 1990s she was embroiled in a bitter seven-year legal battle with the socialite Ivana Trump for whom she had organised a lavish wedding party - with hot-air ballooning, lunch and a gourmet dinner.
The two women fell out over the £36,500 bill, with Anson pursuing Trump for £6,500 in unpaid fees. The case eventually went to court and a judge found in Trump’s favour, leaving Anson with a legal bill reported to be £110,000, and rebuked both women for wasting the court’s time.
The spat clearly hasn’t put her off arranging spectacular parties. Anson shows no sign of slowing down, and is organising an event for 600 just the day after the Royal Wedding.
When asked which is the best party she has ever organised. She automatically replies, ‘the next one’. Few who see the fruits of her labours tomorrow are likely to argue with that verdict.
