One of the big questions about the ceremony is--not only what will the bridal gown look like, but also WHICH ROYAL TIARA will Meghan choose? This inspired me to re-post some sections of two blog posts I wrote earlier this year, discussing the weddings of Queen Victoria, as well as Diana and Kate. As you will see, Victoria was somewhat of a rebel, choosing a crown of orange blossoms instead of diamonds. And Princess Diana, at the last moment, decided not to wear the tiara her future mother-in-law, the Queen, had loaned her, but instead to wear her own family's Spencer family crown. Good thing we commoners don't have to make those tough decisions!
Can't wait till next Saturday when we learn about Meghan's tiara and dress, as well as the other big question: how will Meghan's parents interact together, after all those years apart following a reportedly not-friendly divorce?
With Prince Harry’s engagement to
American actress Meghan Markle set to climax in a wedding in St. George’s
chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19th and then Fergie’s daughter Princess Eugenie’s recent engagement to marry
Jack Brooksbank in the same place in the Fall, royal brides seem to be much in
the news lately.
Some of my antique wedding photos are
of royal brides. One of them is this small carte de visite (above) of Queen Victoria when she was a 19-year-old
girl and ruler of Great Britain, marrying her first cousin, 20-year-old Prince
Albert of Saxe Colburg and Gotha in Germany.
The carte-de-visite photograph is a
process that was introduced in 1854 and became vastly popular until after the
turn of the century. the “CDV”s
as they are called, were simply paper photographs mounted on a small piece of
cardboard about the size of a calling card.
They were produced by the thousands and were very inexpensive and easy
to make in multiples—unlike the previous processes.
By the time of the Civil War in the
U.S., just about everyone was collecting in albums the CDVs of their favorite
actors, politicians, heroes, royals, entertainers, freaks (including Tom Thumb
as well as Barnum’s other stars) and family and friends—both living and dead. Let’s
face it, CDVs were our first selfies!
Queen Victoria and her family were
among the most popular subjects for CDVs.
In 1860 John Maryall, an American working in England, published 60,000
sets of his Royal Family album of CDVs. Victoria herself avidly collected the small
photos and put them in albums.
Back to the
CDV of Victoria and Albert as bride and groom.
I originally bought it because I was amused that someone acquired the
CDV in the 1860’s and valued it so much that she cut a bit off the bottom and
placed the photo in the kind of ornate frame and matte that was earlier used
for cased images like daguerreotypes and ambrotypes.
I took the
photo apart from the frame and matte (which is something I always do, because
you can find all sorts of things behind the image if it’s in a case: locks of hair, written identifications, dates,
love letters, poems).
By now you have realized, as I did when I took the thing apart—this is not a photograph! It’s taken from an engraving of the royal pair. And the artist, whoever he is, made them look a teensy bit better than they did in real life. And there’s one more thing wrong with the image—Victoria did not wear a real crown on her wedding day, but instead chose a simple crown of orange blossoms. She also had bunches of orange blossoms attached to her gown. Wearing not a diamond crown but a headpiece of orange blossoms was a revolutionary step for Victoria to make at her wedding, as was wearing all white.
FYI, because
I know you’re going to ask, Kate Middleton did wear a sort of crown at her
wedding in April of 2011; a diamond halo-style coronet, which someone said
was “as understated as a headband of
diamonds can be.” It was an heirloom
made by Cartier in 1936 and originally bought by King George VI for his wife—the
Queen Mother. It was loaned to Kate by
Queen Elizabeth and includes 739 brilliant diamonds and 149 batons.
(The next paragraph was wrong, as I soon found out!)
Princes Diana,
at her wedding on July 29, 1981, wore a much more visible and dramatic
crown—the Lover’s Knot tiara, which was made in 1914 using diamonds and pearls
from the royal family’s collection. It
was given to Diana by Queen Elizabeth II as a wedding present. Kate has
inherited it and has worn it on several occasions.
Royal Brides, Part II
Last week I
posted about Queen Victoria’s revolutionary wedding dress, which broke with
tradition in 1840 by being white and featuring, not a diamond crown, but simply
a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair. I also included two photos and
comments about the crowns worn by modern royal brides Princess Diana and Kate
Middleton. I posted a photo of Diana and
wrote: “Princess Diana, at her
wedding on July 29, 1981, wore a much more visible and dramatic crown—the
Lover’s Knot tiara, which was made in 1914 using diamonds and pearls from the
royal family’s collection.”
Turns
out I was completely wrong. As my sharp-eyed
daughter Eleni pointed out, that was not a photo of Diana in the Lovers Knot
tiara at her wedding, although it did become her favorite crown and the Queen
did loan it to her for the wedding. But
at the last minute Diana decided to get married in the Spencer Family crown,
shown here.
According to People Magazine, “Like all good royal pieces, the Spencer Tiara is
actually made up of other pieces of jewelry... The current version – which is
constructed with diamonds shaped into tulips and stars surrounded by attractive
scrolls – was probably finalized sometime in the ’30s. It has become a popular
wedding tiara for the Spencer family: Diana’s sisters – Lady Sarah and Jane,
Baroness Fellowes – both wore the sparkler for their wedding days and Victoria
Lockwood, who was the first wife of Diana’s brother Charles, the current Earl
of Spencer, wore it when she married into the famed aristocratic family in 1989
(when little Prince Harry served as a pageboy). However, Diana’s mother,
Frances, did not wear the tiara when she married into the Spencer family in 1954.”
(If you want to read my two "royal brides" posts in their entirety, here are the links:
http://arollingcrone.blogspot.com/2018/01/royal-brides-part-1-victoria-and-diana.html
http://arollingcrone.blogspot.com/2018/02/royal-brides-part-iidianas-tiara-and_6.html
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