Taki Taki

Midsummer marriage

Broadsides from the pirate captain of the Jet Set

issue 15 July 2006

Rome

Frankly, this was not a cool wedding. There were no security guards, no stretch limos, no Liz Hurleys, no cutting-edge genetic technology, not even a same-sex marriage. Not very with it, I know, but there we are. John Taki and Assia got hitched last Saturday in the most magical setting I have ever seen — a Xanadu. ‘And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills/Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;/And here were forests ancient as the hills,/Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.’

Old Sam Coleridge must have visited Prince Nettuno Borghese’s property by the sea, west of Rome, because what Kubla Khan decreed is where my boy got hitched. Assia’s father Count Maurizio Baudi di Selve and her mother Maria Grazia never let on what they had in store for us. Maurizio is the scion of the Borghese clan, the oldest princely family of Italy, and he began the celebrations on Friday evening in the Palazzo Borghese, with a small dinner for around 250.

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