Mathilde of Schleswig-Holstein. Emperor Alexander II had hoped that at least one of his sons would marry a princess of Hesse as he had done. Sergei eventually chose as his bride Princess Elizabeth of Hesse, a daughter of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom. She was an older sister of both Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and Alix of Hesse, later the Empress consort of Nicholas II of Russia and a niece of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who marries his older sister Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. They were first cousins once removed (i.e., Elizabeth's great-grandfather, her father's paternal grandfather, Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse, was Sergei's maternal grandfather) and had known each other all their lives. There were hesitations on both sides and Elizabeth first rejected his proposal of marriage. Queen Victoria, who had anti-Russian sentiments, opposed the marriage of her motherless granddaughter. Elizabeth and her sisters were not pressured into following political marriages; they were allowed to follow their own inclination. After the couple spent some time together at Schloss Wolfsgarten in Darmstadt in September 1883, Elizabeth agreed to marry him. Their engagement was announced publicly on 26 February 1884 when Sergei returned to visit her in Darmstadt. Upon her marriage, Princess Elizabeth took the name of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia. The wedding took place on 15 June 1884 in the Winter Palace. They spent their honeymoon in Ilinskoye, Sergei's country estate forty miles west of Moscow on the left bank of the Moskva River, that he inherited from his mother. The couple later settled in Saint Petersburg in a mansion occupying the southeast corner of the Fontanka Canal and the Nevsky Prospekt, a short drive from his former apartments in the Winter Palace. The Beloselsky Belozersky mansion, bought by Sergei to live with his wife, was renamed Sergeivsky Palace. The couple also had Ferme, a villa located in the grounds of Peterhof that Sergei had inherited from his mother. They usually entertained at Ilinskoe during the summer months, with guests occupying various wooden villas dotted around the park. There was also Usovo, a substantial stone and brick house with an innovative central heating, that Sergei had built on the opposite bank of the Moskva River. The couple was close to Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna, and the Tsar