The rescue dog who rescued us
They were a gilded couple who seemed to have it all: wealth, beauty, brains and huge social clout.
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Zoe Appleyard, a city high-flier who raised millions for healthcare and technology start-ups in the late 1990s and early 2000s and filled gossip-column inches with her high-profile relationships with Boris Becker and Rory Bremner, met her match when she became engaged to Sven Ley, the dashing scion of the Escada fashion brand, after a whirlwind eight-week courtship.
The couple wed 11 months later at Salzburg Cathedral in Austria on a cloudless May day in 2004.
The three-day extravaganza (which reportedly cost in excess of £1 million) included 650 guests from Europe’s grandest families: the Fürstenbergs, the Bismarcks and the Bourbons rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as Elizabeth Hurley, whose son Damian was a pageboy.
The party’s grand finale was a black-tie ball at the Felsenreitschule, the location from The Sound of Music where the Von Trapps make their dramatic escape from the Nazis.
Zoe and Sven’s own adieu was equally epic, as they drove off in the wake of a dizzying firework display in an Aston Martin DB6 (a wedding present from the bride to the groom).
