Queen Elizabeth Preferred Kate Middleton’s ‘Excellent’ Wedding to Princess Diana’s—Here’s Why.

 

Queen Elizabeth Preferred Kate Middleton’s ‘Excellent’ Wedding to Princess Diana’s—Here’s Why.

Queen Elizabeth was “uncharacteristically overjoyed” at the 2011 nuptials.

Few events are as memorable as a royal wedding, from the star-studded guest list to the history-making wedding attire. The late Queen Elizabeth II had attended her fair share of these fairytale nuptials, and reportedly enjoyed some more than others. Thirty years after her son Charles wed Diana Spencer, her grandson, Prince William, married Kate Middleton. Despite the pomp and circumstance of both affairs, Queen Elizabeth preferred Prince William’s wedding. 

One thing that stood out to the queen about the 2011 affair was Kate’s comfort with a life in the spotlight, per Marie Claire. The then-20-year-old Princess Diana had famously struggled with the onslaught of media attention she received after marrying Charles, who was twelve years her senior. Then-29-year-old Kate, on the other hand, had grown accustomed to being in the public eye throughout the near decade she and William had dated.

In her 2022 book, The Palace Papers, royal expert and former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Tina Brown wrote, “For The Queen, the wedding day [of William and Kate] brought a special satisfaction. This new, 29-year-old granddaughter-in-law, the future Queen Consort, was unlike the child bride Diana, road-tested in resilience as well as royal life.” Brown also reported that, following William and Kate’s ceremony, the Queen turned to her husband, Prince Philip, and said, “That was really excellent, wasn’t it?”

A key part of Kate’s then-preparedness for the royal road ahead is owed to the private “princess lessons” she received from Queen Elizabeth before her wedding, per Marie Claire. The late monarch gave Kate tips on royal protocol and etiquette to help the young bride-to-be prepare to become a working member of the royal family. Princess Diana, on the other hand, famously stated that she received “little guidance” from Buckingham Palace about navigating her new life once she got engaged, per E News.

Princess lessons weren’t the only thing the Queen offered Kate Middleton ahead of her wedding. She also lent Kate her Cartier Halo Tiara, a ‘something borrowed’ that is now valued at $1.3 million, as InStyle previously reported.

Not only was the queen confident in Kate’s ability to navigate the pressures of royal life, but also happy to know that the line of succession was now certain, per People. Courtiers told the outlet “the monarch was uncharacteristically overjoyed on the couple’s wedding day, content in the knowledge that the line of succession—so fraught in the years following the checkered marriages of three of her own children—was secure.”

A contributing factor to the different levels of security between the two marriages was how long each couple had dated. Diana, 20 when she wed a 32-year-old Charles, had only been dating her future husband for around six months. In contrast, William and Kate were college sweethearts who’d dated for nearly a decade. “They were both royal brides, but Kate and Diana, for all the comparisons, were two very different women,” royal biographer Katie Nicholl wrote in her 2013 book Kate: The Future Queen.

Elizabeth’s biographer, Sally Bedell Smith, told People that the Queen has served as a role model to Kate. “Catherine has learned by observing,” Bedell Smith said in August 2022, one month before the queen’s passing. “She knows what resonates. She will have absorbed a lot from this Queen.” It follows that Elizabeth likely saw much of herself in the new princess on the day Kate and William married.

Queen Elizabeth’s wedding featured several parallels to Kate Middleton’s. Both the late monarch and the future queen wore long-sleeved v-neck dresses with lace-trimmed bodices, and said “I do” at Westminster Abbey, which holds around 2,000 guests. Diana and Charles’s wedding proved to be a much more extravagant affair, featuring Diana’s 25-foot-long dress train and 3,500 guests all seated in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Kate and Diana may have been very different brides, but they had a few things in common. While Queen Elizabeth had vowed to “obey” her husband Prince Phillip in her wedding vows, Diana instead said she would  ‘’love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health,” according to People. Kate Middleton, and later, Meghan Markle, followed in Diana’s footsteps while reciting their vows at their respective weddings in 2011 and 2018.

Tags: Queen, Prince Charles, Camilla, Prince Louis, Prince William and Kate Middleton, Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Meghan, Lilibet

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