From opulence to obscurity: What a difference a year makes for royal weddings

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Harry and Meghan, 2018

The crowds were unprecedented, with more than 50,000 people an hour pouring into the Berkshire town of Windsor and packing the streets and the Long Walk in the Great Park.

TV crews from America, Britain and around the world paid thousands for vantage points. 

And the atmosphere was electric as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle married in May 2018 in the grand St George’s Chapel in the Castle. 

There, hundreds of guests — including George and Amal Clooney and Oprah Winfrey, along with the Royals. 

In Britain alone, 13 million watched on TV. The Prince and the Hollywood star — we all thought it was a new dawn for the Royal Family but, sadly, it was not to be.

Jack Brooksbank and Eugenie, 2018 

Just a few months after Harry and Meghan’s big day, a packed St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle hosted its second Royal Wedding of the year. 

Eugenie, younger daughter of Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York, married Jack Brooksbank, the European brand manager for Casamigos Tequila, a company founded by George Clooney.

Thousands of members of the public lined the streets of Windsor to catch a glimpse or the couple whose bridesmaids and pageboys included Princess Charlotte and Prince George.

Members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra provided the music, while the guests included Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. 

Brooksbank drove his wife to the reception at Royal Lodge in a Aston Martin DB10, one of the eight made for the 007 movie Spectre.

 

Edo and Beatrice, 2020

Hit by the double whammy of Covid-19 and the scandal engulfing her father, Princess Beatrice’s wedding to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi was as low-key as you could imagine. 

The venue — originally planned to be the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, in London — was the relatively humble Royal Chapel of All Saints in the grounds of her parents’ home of Royal Lodge, in Windsor Great Park. 

It is usually used as the parish church for Royal Household staff. Closed off entirely to the public, the event was attended by only about 15 guests, but among them joyfully was the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

At least the bride’s father Prince Andrew looked more than happy after the ceremony.

Why Beatrice had to marry in secret: Groom’s cousin blames Prince Andrew’s ‘problems’ after first royal wedding behind closed doors for 235 years that only the family’s ‘inner circle’ knew about in advance

Prince Andrew walked his daughter Beatrice down the aisle on Friday in the first ‘secret’ royal wedding for 235 years.

The disgraced royal put his troubles over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal to one side to give the princess away in a remarkable private ceremony. 

The clandestine nature of the hastily arranged nuptials meant the Queen’s beleaguered son was spared appearing in public.

Beatrice, 31, wed her fiance Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 37, known as Edo, at All Saints Church on the Queen’s Windsor estate in an intimate ceremony, with just 15 family and friends. 

The couple had planned a much bigger event in London for May but had to cancel due to lockdown.

Her grandparents, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, were the only royals present beside Beatrice and her immediate family including her mother, Sarah, Duchess of York, and younger sister, Princess Eugenie.

The monarch shared her delight with Captain Sir Tom Moore, who she knighted at Windsor Castle hours after the nuptials, telling him: ‘My granddaughter got married this morning. Both Philip and I managed to get there – very nice.’

Edo’s son Wolfie, four, was his ‘mini best man’ as Beatrice became the first ‘blood princess’ to become a stepmother. The last royal believed to have married in secret was George IV, who wed his mistress Maria Fitzherbert in 1785 in a furtive ceremony in her Mayfair drawing room.

Details of Beatrice’s wedding were briefly confirmed by Buckingham Palace yesterday. But the Daily Mail can also reveal that:

• Only members of the family’s ‘inner circle’ were told about the wedding and were sworn to secrecy;
• The bride and her mother organised the wedding in just two weeks after government restrictions were relaxed, so that her grandparents could attend before relocating to Balmoral for the summer;
• Beatrice walked from her father’s home Royal Lodge – where she had stayed the night before the wedding – to the nearby church and had only a single bridesmaid;
• Wolfie’s mother, Dara Huang, is not believed to have been present;
• The bride wore the wedding dress she had planned to show off back in May;
• Guests, including the Queen, stood socially-distanced in the church and had an outdoors reception at Royal Lodge.

Family friends insisted the secretive nature of the wedding was not down to Andrew’s issues over the Epstein scandal. 

The FBI wants to question him over his close friendship with the convicted paedophile, who killed himself while awaiting trial on further charges last summer.

Pressure on Andrew, 60, intensified following the arrest in the US of his close friend, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. 

But the sources said the secrecy was explained by Beatrice and Edo’s desire for a quiet, private ceremony and the fact they did not want to overshadow Sir Tom’s knighting at Windsor.

But Dario Mapelli Mozzi, Edo’s cousin once removed, told the Mail: ‘We heard it was postponed to next year but that was clearly to keep it secret. Maybe they did it now to be sure that the Queen could be there.

‘Or perhaps because of the problems with her father they didn’t want to go overboard with publicity in case anyone criticised them.’

Edo was previously engaged to architect Miss Huang for three years. They are said to have broken up just weeks before he and Beatrice started dating.

The small guest list included Princess Eugenie’s husband Jack, Edo’s mother Nikki Williams-Ellis and stepfather David, as well as his half-brother, Alby Shale, to whom he is extremely close.

Alby is a son by Nikki’s second marriage, to the late Tory grandee Christopher Shale, and is also the Duchess of York’s godson.

It is understood Edo’s father, Nikki’s first husband, the Olympic skier Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi, who holds British and Italian citizenship, was invited, but it is not clear whether he went. A source said they thought it ‘unlikely’ and the pair are ‘not close’.

Sources said it was impossible to invite other members of the Royal Family ‘because if you invite one, questions will be asked as to why you didn’t invite the others and there are just too many of them’.

An insider said that while it wasn’t the first time that the Queen and her husband have seen members of their family it was still the first family ‘event’ the elderly couple have attended in months.

Beatrice and Edo had planned to wed at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace on May 29 in front of 150 guests, followed by a reception in the garden at Buckingham Palace.

The couple, who spent lockdown together at the home of Edo’s mother and her husband in Oxfordshire, decided to just ‘sit back’ and wait to see how things went. 

Their only stipulation was that they did not want to have to wait too long to tie the knot – even if it had meant it was just the two of them – and that if they could have a small wedding then the Queen, 94 and Philip, 99, had to be there.

When the Government announced that from July 4 weddings with up to 30 socially-distanced guests would be permitted, Beatrice and Edo – with her doting mother taking charge of the arrangements – sprang into action. 

The 190-year-old All Saints Chapel, also called The Royal Chapel of All Saints or Queen Victoria’s Chapel, is Grade II listed. The Queen regularly attends Sunday service when she is in the area, as did her mother before her.

It has the bonus of being completely private – cut off from any members of the public and press – which meant that Andrew who has been keeping a low profile due to the Epstein scandal, would not have to be seen in public.

News of Beatrice’s wedding began to break only after a photographer spotted Philip and the Queen, resplendent in a turquoise coat and hat with flowers, being driven in their official car from Windsor Castle up the Long Walk and through the Great Park to the church.

Both the ceremony and a reception at Andrew’s home afterward were organised with strict social distancing in mind. Covid-19 guidelines say wedding ceremonies must be kept as short as possible with no food or drink and singing and playing of instruments to be avoided, so the family congregated in the garden.

The Queen was one of the first to leave the party at 11.45am in order to honour Captain Tom at the castle.

The newly-weds decided not to release the traditional wedding photograph until today to avoid overshadowing the knighthood ceremony.

One close family friend said Wolfie was a star turn, adding: ‘Wolfie has spent a lot of time with them and although Beatrice is, of course, hugely respectful that she is his step-mother and Dara is a wonderful mother, she does love Wolfie very deeply. Beatrice is a very sweet, very sensitive young woman.’

Another friend said the past year had been a ‘tremendously difficult one for the family’ due to the scrutiny over Andrew’s friendship with Epstein.

‘Those children have been so devastated by it all, so it was really nice to have this wedding away from the public eye,’ they said.

‘They were all there and Sarah kept the show on the road. Very, very few people were given any information about it.’