Prince William’s advice to Prince Harry about where he should get married made the duke snort, the royal’s biography revealed.
Harry asked his older brother for help deciding where to hold his wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018, but appeared unimpressed by the reply.
The Duke of Sussex was already engaged at the time and had been on a public tour of Britain with his wife-to-be, who was undertaking her very first royal jobs.
Harry suggested Westminster Abbey, where William and Princess Kate got married in 2011, and St Paul’s Cathedral, where King Charles III married Princess Diana in 1981.
“On our return from that trip I rang Willy,” Harry wrote, “sounded him out, asked his thoughts about where we might get married. I told him we were thinking of Westminster Abbey.”
“No good. We did it there,” William replied. “Right, right,” Harry said. “St. Paul’s?” William said: “Too grand. Plus Pa and Mummy did it there.”
“He suggested Tetbury,” Harry wrote. “I snorted. ‘Tetbury? The chapel near Highgrove? Seriously, Willy? How many does that place seat?'”
“Isn’t that what you said you wanted—a small, quiet wedding?” William replied. Harry wrote: “In fact we wanted to elope. Barefoot in Botswana, with maybe a friend officiating, that was our dream. But we were expected to share this moment with other people. It wasn’t up to us.”
Harry described how he had wanted a quick marriage to avoid giving the press and paparazzi time to “do their worst,” but found the palace had struggled to pick a date.
Needless to say, the couple got engaged on November 2017 and were married six months later at St George’s Chapel, in Windsor Castle, on May 19, 2018.
That was two months after the prince’s initial suggestion: “How about March? Alas, March was all booked. How about June? Sorry. Garter Day.
“At last they came to us with a date: May 2018. And they accepted our request for the location: St. George’s Chapel.”
It’s not entirely clear why Prince William felt Harry and Meghan could not return to one of the venues picked for previous royal weddings as Princess Eugenie married her husband Jack Brooksbank at St George’s Chapel five months later in October 2018.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
