London Wedding Planner

With just 3 days to go until Prince William’s and Kate Middleton’s big day, today I thought I’d share a few quirky little facts from Royal Wedding history.

Did You Know…

1. Queen Victoria introduced the tradition of wearing a white wedding dress when she married Prince Albert on 10 ^th February 1840. Before this brides wore coloured dresses, as a white dress that could only be worn once was considered too much of an extravagance

2. The wedding of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later to be the Queen Mother) to Prince Albert the Duke of York (later to become King George VI) in 1923 was the first royal wedding to be held publicly in Westminster Abbey and also to be recorded on film. Up until then, royal weddings were generally held behind closed doors at private locations like Windsor Castle. The move to make royal weddings more accessible to the general public was made by King George V, who was worried about following in the footsteps of the Russian Tsars and losing favour with his people

3. Royal wedding processions may have been televised from 1923, but the ceremony itself was not permitted to be broadcast in case “men would listen in pubs whilst still wearing their hats”! A royal wedding service wasn’t televised until the wedding of Princess Margaret almost 40 years later on 6 ^th May 1960, but the live broadcast of the exchange of vows wasn’t seen until Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981

4. A sprig of myrtle has been included in the royal bridal bouquet since 1840, when Queen Victoria had it picked from the gardens of her favourite residence, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, and added to her bouquet of snowdrops

5. The royal bridal bouquet is placed on the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey in a tradition that was started by the Queen Mother on her wedding day. The exact reasons for her leaving her bouquet on the tomb are unknown, although it is widely thought to be an act of remembrance to her brother who was killed during World War I

6. Rationing after the Second World War was still in place when Princess Elizabeth married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in 1947, and like any other bride at the time the future queen had to collect clothing coupons for her dress. It was also imperative that nothing from ‘enemy’ countries was used for the wedding day, and particular care was taken over the origins of the silkworms that provided the threads for the wedding gown – although most commonly available from Italy or Japan, it was not acceptable to use material made from ‘enemy silkworms’, and consequently they were sourced from China instead

7. If the bridegroom is not descended from royalty he will have a best man (or best men); however, if he is a member of the royal family he will have ‘supporters’ instead

8. The wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 had to be held at St Paul’s cathedral as Westminster Abbey was not large enough to accommodate the 2600 guests

9. The train of Princess Diana’s wedding dress was 25 feet long, and the dress was adorned with over 10,000 pearls and sequins

10. When Sarah Ferguson married Prince Andrew, Duke of York in 1986, she wore a satin dress with her family’s coat of arms embroidered into the train, reportedly so that no replicas would ever be exactly the same as her wedding gown

Do you have any other interesting royal wedding facts?

Photo Credits:
Queen Elizabeth’s wedding and Princess Diana’s wedding gown: via Royal Wedding here and here
Queen Mother: via Top Foto
Myrtle: Plant of the Week
Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown: via The Telegraph

You might also find interesting:

• The Royal Wedding – Royal Wedding Fashion
• The Royal Wedding – Personal Thoughts
• The Royal Wedding – A Modern Design
• Royal Wedding Round Up