travelhoneymoon
CLOCKWISE Guinness and Chandler stroll in Big Sur. San Diego’s US Grant hotel. The couple visit antiques shops in San Francisco.
JOY RIDE
For their weeklong honeymoon, Rachel Chandler and Tom Guinness drive a classic Ford Mustang up Highway 1
Chandler channels Steve McQueen driving on the streets of San Francisco. RIGHT The Palace Hotel’s famed garden court.
C 88 SPRING WEDDINGS 2014
I
’m from Los Angeles, so I was excited to show Tom the West Coast,” says photographer Rachel Chandler, who married stylist Tom Guinness (of the famed Irish brewery clan) in February 2012 at a family-only ceremony in L.A. The couple later celebrated with a shaman and a larger group of friends in the English countryside in March 2013 before returning to the Golden State for their honeymoon. Chandler, who shoots for Vogue and Dazed and Confused, hadn’t driven through California in years, so she consulted her friends and the concierge team at The Luxury Collection Hotels & Resorts for a curated itinerary. With their bags all packed, Guinness hopped in the passenger seat of the classic Ford Mustang at Chandler’s insistence, so that he could take it all in. The New York-based pair started from San Diego’s US Grant hotel, where Chef Chris Kurth took them on a moonlit lobster-diving trip. “I even got to drive the boat for a bit, dodging the sea lions,” says Chandler. After a stay at the SLS Beverly Hills, the couple’s friend Susan Feldman of One Kings Lane took them shopping for their new nest at Peter Dunham’s Hollywood At Home boutique. “Peter is an old family friend of Tom’s, and we had a laugh hearing stories about his elder siblings as children.” Driving through Big Sur, Guinness gazed at the towering Central Coast cliffs. “They reminded him of Cornwall,” says Chandler. At their friend Jacqui Getty’s recommendation, the couple broke for cocktails at S.F.’s Tosca and checked in to the Palace Hotel before heading on to Portland’s Powell’s Books and The Nines hotel. The pair returned to their home in New York after the weeklong whirlwind, but not without some souvenirs and cherished memories from their first coastal jaunt as husband and wife. starwoodhotels.com/luxury. •
COURTESY OF RACHEL CHANDLER
BY ELIZABETH VARNELL