The big problem with Meghan Markle’s retreat guest list,
Meghan Markle’s upcoming Sydney ‘Her Best Life’ wellness retreat may promise serenity, sound healing and a carefully curated escape – but one detail is proving harder to ignore: the guest list is looking surprisingly thin on familiar names.
For an event commanding $3000 a ticket, industry watchers say the usual signals of social interest simply aren’t there.
In a city where attendance is often telegraphed well in advance, the silence has been notable.
‘We’ve been keeping an eye on it, and there’s no real traction among the usual crowd of celebrities and socialites,’ one eastern suburbs insider said.
‘No one’s hinting they’re going, no one’s posting about it. That’s very unusual for something positioned as this exclusive.’
Even among influencers, typically quick to align themselves with high-end wellness experiences, enthusiasm appears muted.
The Duchess of Sussex will be the headline guest at the inaugural Her Best Life Retreat, organised by the events company Besties, founded by former radio queen Jackie ‘O’ Henderson and her manager Gemma O’Neill.
Guests are being charged around $2,699 for a standard ticket or up to $3,199 for VIP premium packages offering more direct access to the Duchess.
The event will take place from April 17 to April 19 at the Intercontinental in Coogee.
Around 300 guests are expected to attend the three-day event, and the website states the ticket allocation has been ‘exhausted’.
However, there have been separate claims that not all tickets have been sold yet.
One celebrity who may not be making an appearance is Jackie, who has reportedly been ‘banned’ from Meghan’s keynote appearance.
A source told Woman’s Day that Meghan did not want Jackie – whose high-profile legal battle against ARN has dominated headlines – to steal her thunder.
And while those involved in the event spent Thursday at the Intercontinental preparing for Meghan’s arrival, Jackie was busy elsewhere.
The mother-of-one spent the day in Clovelly checking out the construction site for her three-storey mansion.
Dressed in a breezy white sundress, the former KIIS FM breakfast host, 51, looked relaxed as she strolled around and inspected the rebuild’s progress.
She completed her look with brown sandals, sunglasses and a silver bangle.
Jackie splashed $13.25 million on the blue-chip property in 2023, before lodging plans for a reported $5 million transformation.
The site – located in a scenic position featuring sweeping oceanside views – was cleared of the original 1960s-era six-bedroom home, leaving a vast, open canvas for the huge job.
The house is set back from the road, offering Henderson the privacy she didn’t have on the narrow streets of her former address.
Jackie has certainly been taking a hands-on approach to her rebuild, being pictured on site on a number of occasions in the midst of her legal dramas.
She bought her new home after pocketing a tidy $2 million in profit on the sale of her old home in Woollahra, after paying $11 million for it in 2020.
Last year, she shared snapshots of herself alongside the construction team, jokingly captioning one photo: ‘Site meeting’.
