St George's, Hanover Square was an Anglican church located in the fashionable Mayfair area of central London. The church was completed in 1725 as part of an unsuccessful government project to build fifty new churches in the city. Its location made it a popular location for the weddings of London's high society.
"The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"[]
This church was the site of the wedding of Lord Robert St Simon to the American heiress, Miss Hatty Doran of San Francisco. The wedding was a small affair: the only people in attendance were Hatty's father, Aloysius Doran; Lady Balmoral, the groom's mother; his two younger siblings, Eustace and Clara; Lord Backwater, a friend of the groom; and a Lady Alicia Whittington. Some members of the general public were also present. Lord Balmoral, the groom's father, and Lord Robert's elder brother were notably absent. Nevertheless, it was still considered notable enough to be reported in London's society pages.
The day of the wedding, the ceremony proceeded without incident with one exception: as the couple went towards the vestry, Hatty dropped her bouquet, which was promptly returned to her by a stranger in the front row. However, Lord Robert said the incident prompted a complete change in her mood, extinguishing her earlier enthusiasm, and that she refused to talk to him about it.
Sherlock Holmes, investigating Hatty's disappearance after the wedding, soon realizes that the dropped bouquet was a device. Hatty had been previously married in America to Francis Hay Moulton, whom she had wrongly believed killed in an Apache raid. Moulton had traveled to London to find Hatty, and learning the location of her impending wedding from the papers, seated himself in the front row of the church. Hatty saw him when she approached the altar with her groom, and thinking of no way to talk to him, dropped the bouquet as she passed his pew so he could slip her a note.