After he and film-maker David Furnish have swapped vows at Windsor’s Guildhall, 700 guests are due at a glittering bash at the musician’s Crimp Hill mansion, Woodside, to mark one of the most high-profile gay unions on the planet.

But as Elton, 58, settles down — if that’s the right word — with Furnish to married life for a second time (there was a brief marriage in the 1980s to his German sound engineer, Renate Blauel), does the couple have enough space to prevent the rows that can bedevil newlyweds adjusting to life together? And what are the legal implications of this civil partnership when it comes to the string of expensively appointed homes around the world that Elton — whose worth is put at £185m by The Sunday Times Rich List — has built up?

Julia Thackray, who specialises in family law at the London firm Bindman & Partners, says: “The marriage and divorce rules apply. The Civil Partnership Act mirrors almost exactly the law that covers financial settlements on divorce.” It is likely a couple’s assets would be pooled and divided, with the length of the relationship both before and after registration taken into account, alongside the needs and earning capacity of each.

Furnish’s marriage therefore entitles him to a good chunk of a stunning property portfolio with an estimated value of £20m.

Woodside, his future husband’s Queen-Anne-style mansion set in 36 acres, is the much-loved flagship, and it was here at a dinner party in 1993 that love first bloomed between the pair. Elton was already a huge star when he bought Woodside in 1975, and it’s now estimated to be worth at least £8m. For more than a decade it was decorated in over-the-top rocker style: all jukeboxes, pinball machines, palm trees and art nouveau statuettes. Elton’s domestic environment has always been plagued by his shopping addiction, and the house soon became crammed with works of art, knick-knacks and thousands of clothes.

After his divorce from Blauel, Elton cleared out a lifetime’s clutter at a Sotheby’s auction in 1988 (which netted £5m), and called in designers Andrew Protheroe and Adrian Grigg.

“The look he was after was English country house. We did it in a way that looked like generations of the same family had lived there,” says Protheroe. This template, with relatively sensible colours, still forms the basis of Woodside’s appearance. The grounds were remodelled, with a large lake dug in front of the house and an even larger one at the back, and gardens installed by the late Rosemary Verey.

There were plenty of challenges for Protheroe’s team during the three-year project. “There was this life-size tyrannosaurus rex, a gift from Ringo Starr, that used to sit in the middle of the lawn and was a bit of an eyesore, so when the house was redone we lifted it by crane into the woods behind. Now it greets people who walk through the woods, which is rather scary.” Not least because its eyes light up.

Elsewhere, as Elton himself has explained, there are other surprises, such as his dog cemetery. “There are all these little headstones with names like Bruce and Brian Anybody looking at them would think they were boyfriends I had bumped off.” He also bought a complete Melbourne tram to grace the grounds, of which he said, “that was in the cocaine days”.

Protheroe and Grigg laid out 12 bedrooms, but several have been converted into bathrooms and clothes-storage areas, so now there are six. Visitors report that the three-storey house has five reception rooms, a billiards room, well-stocked libraries for books, music and films, a pool, gym and, in the bedrooms, televisions that rise from the ottomans.

The enthusiastic work down the years at Woodside, however, saw the house lose its Grade II- listed status in the late 1990s, after a Doric porch, a dado and some cornicing were removed.

After the death in 1996 of Elton’s grandmother Ivy, who lived in an 18th-century orangery at the start of the drive, Protheroe transformed the building into a Petit Trianon-style party house. The walls of a private chapel, built in honour of Ivy, and Elton’s late friends the designer Gianni Versace and Princess Diana, are inscribed with Elton’s coat of arms and “Eltono es Bueno”.

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