Princess Diana spilled perfume all over her bridal gown, Prince Charles’ second wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was in attendance and more from the nuptials
Princess Diana and Prince Charles at their royal wedding in 1981. Photo: Anwar Hussein/Getty Images
The late Princess Diana and Prince Charles — who became King Charles III in September 2022 — were married on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London
Diana’s sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale (née Spencer), introduced the former couple in 1977. They began dating three years later after meeting once again.
Charles and Diana were married not long after. However, according to Diana’s astrologist Penny Thornton, the wedding almost didn’t happen. Thornton shared in ITV’s 2020 documentary The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess, claiming Diana revealed that Charles told his fiancée the night before the wedding that “he didn’t love her.”
Diana and Charles ultimately went through with the wedding. Per royal biographer Ingrid Seward’s 2023 book My Mother and I, it may have been Diana’s father, Earl Spencer, who changed her mind about calling off the wedding.
From altered dresses and wedding day jitters, here are eight secrets from the historic royal wedding that kicked off a 15-year tumultuous marriage before the pair divorced in 1996 — a year before Diana’s tragic car accident in 1997.
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Diana’s dress had to be altered
Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their wedding day in July 29, 1981.Tim Graham/Getty Images
Designer Elizabeth Emanuel recalled that the young bride-to-be morphed as the weeks elapsed before her wedding to then-Prince Charles, losing a notable amount of the weight she had when she first walked in.
“Most brides do lose weight,” Emanuel previously told PEOPLE. “So we weren’t that worried when she did. She ended up with a 23-inch waist from a 26- to 27-inch.”
Years later, Diana spoke publicly about her struggle with bulimia during the time of her wedding.
“The bulimia started the week after we got engaged (and would take nearly a decade to overcome),” Diana said in Andrew Morton’s book, Diana: Her True Story — in Her Own Words.
“My husband [Prince Charles] put his hand on my waistline and said: ‘Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?’ and that triggered off something in me. And the Camilla thing,” she said, referencing Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.
“I didn’t like myself; I was ashamed I couldn’t cope with the pressures,” Diana continued. “I had bulimia for a number of years, and that’s like a secret disease. It’s a repetitive pattern which is very destructive. It was my escape mechanism.”
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Diana spilled perfume on her wedding gown
Princess Diana on her wedding day.Lichfield/Getty Images
Diana walked down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral wearing one of her favorite scents: Quelques Fleurs. However, according to her makeup artist, it almost wore her.
Barbara Daly famously revealed that the young princess, then 20 years old, accidentally spilled some perfume on her dress as she tried to put some on her wrists after getting dressed in the world-famous bridal gown.
Daly said she told Diana to simply hold that spot on her dress as she was walking to make it seem like she was lifting the front of her dress so she didn’t step on it. Diana was even spotted trying to cover the spot where the perfume spilled with her hand as she approached the altar.
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Diana told her bridesmaids to “do your best”
Princess Diana, Prince Charles and the royal family on their wedding day.Tim Graham/Getty Images
Diana knew her dress’ 25-foot-long train was difficult to handle and let her young bridesmaids know it. Charles’ goddaughter, India Hicks, recounted the details when she and Diana’s niece Sarah Armstrong-Jones were in charge of guiding the gown down the aisle.
Hicks revealed to Harper’s Bazaar in 2018 that as Diana entered the cathedral, she told the girls, “Do your best.”
Hicks wrote, “We knew what that meant: If we pulled too much, straightening the material, her tiara and veil would slip. But if we didn’t pull enough, the effect of the train would be lost.”
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Diana had two wedding bouquets — because of the Queen
Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their wedding day in July 29, 1981.Anwar Hussein/Getty Images
Florist David Longman told Express in 2018 that after Queen Elizabeth lost the flowers during her own wedding, she started the tradition of having two identical bouquets made to prevent a similar mishap.
“We made two bouquets. The first one had to be delivered at 8 o’clock to Buckingham Palace. We had a police escort motorcyclist who took us all through the city to the Palace,” said Longman about Diana and Charles’ wedding. “Then we came back, and by that time, they had finished the second bouquet, and back we went again.”
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There were some wedding day jitters
Prince Charles and Princess Diana on their wedding day in July 29, 1981.David Jones- WPA Pool/Getty Images
Nerves got the best of Diana while she was saying her vows. She accidentally referred to her groom as “Philip Charles” rather than “Charles Philip.”
(To be fair, his full name is Prince Charles Philip Arthur George. With so many names to remember, anyone would slip up!)
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The dress featured a secret charm
Princess Diana and Prince Charles sitting on their wedding day in 1981. Anwar Hussein/WireImage
Although it wasn’t visible in photographs, there was a hidden good luck charm in Diana’s dress: an 18-carat gold horseshoe trinket studded with white diamonds.
“[The dress] was the fulfillment of her princess fantasy,” wrote biographer Tina Brown, per Vanity Fair. “She was insistent in her demand for its puffy sleeves and floating silk, its twenty-five-foot taffeta train, its nipped waist, and its antique lace embroidered with pearls and sequins.”
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They were (kind of) ready for rain
Princess Diana and Prince Charles in a royal carriage on their wedding day. REX/Shutterstock
In case of poor weather, Diana’s dress designer made a parasol featuring the same lace as the dress and hand-embroidered pearls and sequins.
However, the skies were clear for the big day.
“It was probably a good thing. It was made of such light material that it certainly wasn’t waterproof,” Emanuel told the Daily Mail in 2017. “It wouldn’t have done her much good!”
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Camilla was in attendance
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in 1979. TIM GRAHAM/Getty Images
Despite Charles and Camilla’s dating history, she still made the royal wedding’s guest list — likely due to her husband Andrew Parker Bowles’ role as the Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment.
According to the biography Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, Charles felt pressured into his marriage to Diana and was still torn about his love for the then-married Camilla — and even cried over it the night before his nuptials.
Charles and Camilla infamously had an affair during their respective marriages. They went public with their rekindled relationship after Diana’s death 1997.
The couple married in April 2005, and Camilla received the title of Duchess of Cornwall. After Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022, Charles became King Charles and bestowed the title of Queen Consort upon Camilla.
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