Vita Sackville-West married diplomat and writer Harold Nicolson at Knole's private chapel on 1 October 1913.
On 1 October 1913, Vita Sackville-West married Harold Nicolson, a young diplomat and writer, in the private chapel at Knole. Though both partners were openly aware of their own attractions to members of the same sex, their marriage endured for nearly five decades and became one of the most famous open unions in twentieth-century literary history.
The couple had two sons, Benedict (born 1914) and Nigel (born 1917), the latter of whom would later publish Portrait of a Marriage (1973), a candid account of his parents' unconventional relationship, including Vita's passionate affair with Violet Trefusis and her later relationship with Virginia Woolf.
Despite numerous affairs on both sides, Vita and Harold maintained deep mutual respect, intellectual partnership, and affection, corresponding voluminously throughout their lives. Their marriage is frequently cited as an early and influential model of a companionate, non-monogamous partnership that nonetheless preserved loyalty and creative collaboration—most visibly in their joint creation of the gardens at Sissinghurst Castle from 1930 onward.