Royal Wedding Special Royal Weddings of the Past
T
he interest and excitement generated by news of a Royal Wedding is nothing new. Certainly when Victoria married Albert on 10 February 1840
“immense multitudes assembled to gaze upon the processions.” Many years later, 3,500 wedding guests assembled and a 600,000-strong crowd filled the streets to see Prince Charles wed Lady Diana at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 July 1981 (not to mention the 750 million people watching at home). No doubt this contributed to Diana’s nerves during the service that led to her calling her future husband Philip Charles Arthur George, rather than Charles Philip. One Royal Wedding tradition, started by Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later to become The Queen Mother) at her
26 BRITAIN
Royal couples on their wedding days: Above: Princess Elizabeth II and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in 1947. Main picture right: Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981
wedding to Albert (Duke of York, later King George VI) continues to this day. After turning down Albert twice, being “afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to”, they married at Westminster Abbey on 26 April 1923. As Elizabeth entered the abbey she laid her bouquet at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Twenty four years later – on 20 November 1947 – Princess
Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) was escorted by her father King George VI in the Irish State Coach from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, for her wedding to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten RN (later Duke of Edinburgh). After leaving the abbey to the strains of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, Elizabeth sent her bouquet
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