Spencer · 1981
Lady Diana Spencer's wedding
At twenty past eleven on the morning of Wednesday the twenty-ninth of July 1981, Lady Diana Frances Spencer, twenty years old, third daughter of John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer, and Frances Roche, arrived by Glass Coach at the west door of St Paul's Cathedral, London, for her wedding to Charles, Prince of Wales, thirty-two, eldest son of Elizabeth II. The wedding had been announced on the twenty-fourth of February 1981. The bride's dress, designed by David and Elizabeth Emanuel, with its eight-thousand-pearl bodice and its twenty-five-foot ivory silk train (the longest train in royal wedding history), had been kept secret until the moment Diana emerged from the coach. Three thousand five hundred guests filled the cathedral. The television audience was, by the BBC's published audit, seven hundred and fifty million viewers across seventy-four countries; the largest single live broadcast in television history to that date. The marriage was followed by sixteen years of public scrutiny, two children (Prince William of Wales, born June 1982; Prince Harry, born September 1984), a public separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996. Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris on the thirty-first of August 1997, thirty-six years old.
It is twenty past eleven on the morning of Wednesday the twenty-ninth of July 1981, in the antechamber of Clarence House on the Mall in central London, with the summer-clear light through the long sash windows. She is twenty years old. She is Lady Diana Frances Spencer, born at Park House, Sandringham, on the first of July 1961, third daughter of John Spencer, then Viscount Althorp and later 8th Earl Spencer, and the Hon. Frances Roche, schooled at Riddlesworth Hall and West Heath, in her sixth month of engagement to Charles, Prince of Wales, the elder son of the reigning monarch.
Her father, Earl Spencer, sixty-seven years old, still recovering from a near-fatal stroke of 1978, is in the antechamber with her in his full-dress morning suit. The wedding gown, designed by David and Elizabeth Emanuel and made over the past four months in the strict secrecy of the Emanuels' Brook Street workrooms, has been brought to Clarence House the previous evening in a series of unmarked cars. The dress is ivory silk taffeta, with an eight-thousand-pearl-and-sequin embroidered bodice, mutton-leg sleeves, a twenty-five-foot train (the longest in royal wedding history), and the Spencer family tiara on her head.
She thinks: the dress has been crumpled in the Glass Coach during the ride from Clarence House. The Emanuels are waiting at the cathedral door with the emergency steamer and the emergency seamstress for two minutes' frantic repair before I walk up the aisle.
She thinks: the country has, by the BBC's announcement at six this morning, six hundred thousand people on the route between Clarence House and St Paul's, every one of them with a flag. The country has been on a wedding-pitch since February.
She thinks: Charles is at the cathedral. I have not seen Charles since the rehearsal on Monday afternoon. Charles has, since Monday, been in two minds about the Camilla matter and I have been in two minds about Charles being in two minds.
She thinks: I am twenty. The country expects, on the rhythm of a national wedding, fifty years of marriage and a young king-and-queen of the next century. Both of us are walking up the aisle with the private knowledge that the marriage is not what the country is going to see.
She thinks: I will walk up the aisle anyway. The wedding is the wedding. The marriage is a separate question. Today the wedding.
She gets into the Glass Coach (the royal coach used for state weddings since 1910) at half past eleven with her father. The drive up the Mall to St Paul's takes thirty-two minutes. The crowd on the route is, by the Metropolitan Police count, six hundred thousand. The Glass Coach reaches the west door of St Paul's at four minutes past twelve. The Emanuels' assistant, Nina Missetzis, has the emergency steamer and the fold-out mirror set up inside the porch. Diana steps out of the coach, by the photograph that would be on the front page of every newspaper in the English-speaking world the next morning, in a creased dress; Missetzis works on the train for ninety seconds, the dress is straightened, the train is laid out twenty-five feet behind her. The procession into the cathedral begins at six minutes past twelve.
The ceremony was conducted by Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, before the 3,500 guests of the Cathedral and, by the BBC's published audit, an estimated 750 million live viewers across 74 countries. The bride mis-said the groom's name in the wedding-vow (she addressed him as Philip Charles Arthur George instead of Charles Philip Arthur George, the dyslexic transposition becoming, on the BBC microphone, the most-quoted moment of any royal wedding before or since); the groom mis-said all thy goods as all thy worldly goods. The procession back to Buckingham Palace took fifty minutes through the crowd of (by the Met Police count) about two million people.
The marriage was followed by sixteen years of increasingly public marital difficulty. Prince William of Wales was born on the twenty-first of June 1982 and Prince Henry ("Harry") of Wales on the fifteenth of September 1984. The royal separation was announced by John Major in the Commons on the ninth of December 1992. The royal divorce was finalised on the twenty-eighth of August 1996. Diana, Princess of Wales (the title she retained after the divorce), was killed in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in central Paris on the thirty-first of August 1997, thirty-six years old. Her funeral at Westminster Abbey on the sixth of September 1997 was watched by, by the BBC's audit, about 2.5 billion viewers, the largest single live broadcast in television history. The wedding dress is, on permanent display, at Althorp House in Northamptonshire, the Spencer family seat, where Diana is buried on a small island in the lake. The visitor traffic at Althorp on the anniversary of the wedding (the twenty-ninth of July) is, by the family's published figures, the largest single day of the year.