3 Surprising Details From William and Kate’s Royal Wedding Prince Harry Revealed in ‘Spare’
As Prince William and Kate Middleton celebrate 12 years of marriage, revisit their 2011 royal wedding via Prince Harry’s Spare. In it, the Duke of Sussex shared some surprising details from his brother’s wedding day. From not being the best man to what he thought as the newlyweds walked down the aisle, learn what Harry had to say about the Prince and Princess of Wales’s wedding.
1. William and Kate wedding details in ‘Spare’: Harry claimed the palace lied about him being the best man
Harry stood next to William, or “Willy,” at Westminster Abbey, waiting for Kate to make her grand entrance on April 29, 2011. While he might’ve looked like the best man to millions of people watching on TV, Harry actually wasn’t.
“The public had been told that I was to be best man, but that was a bare-faced lie,” he said in Spare. Rather, the public “expected” it. So “the Palace saw no choice but to say that I was.”
Harry explained the “lie” did two things. First, it provided the best men — James Meade and Thomas van Straubenzee — “cover” from the “rabid press.” Second, it eased William’s fear about him delivering a best-man speech.
“Willy explained all this to me and I didn’t blink,” Harry recalled. “I understood. We even had a laugh about it, speculating about the inappropriate things I might’ve said in my speech.”
Harry also shared William wasn’t his best man when he married Meghan Markle in 2018. Instead, the job went to his “old mate Charlie.”
2. William and Kate wedding details in ‘Spare’: wedding eve cocktails made William ‘reek’
After he and a “tipsy” William “turned in early” the night before the wedding (William had had some drinks at dinner to settle his nerves), Harry found himself “shocked” at the state of his brother come morning.
William, he recalled, “looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink. His face was gaunt, his eyes red.” Only after they hopped in the car to head to the ceremony did Harry break the silence.
“You reek,” he told William, describing it as the “aftermath of last night’s rum.” Harry got a tiny smile from his soon-to-be-married brother when he “jokingly cracked a window, pinched my nose — offered him some mints.”
3. William and Kate wedding details in ‘Spare’: Harry saw it as ‘yet another farewell’
Another detail on William and Kate’s wedding Harry included in Spare were his thoughts as the newlyweds walked down the aisle.
“I recall Willy walking her [Kate] back up the aisle,” he said. “And as they disappeared through the door, into the carriage that would convey them to Buckingham Palace, into the eternal partnership they’d pledged, I recall thinking: Goodbye.”
“The brother I’d escorted into Westminster Abbey that morning was gone—forever. Who could deny it?”
“He’d never again be first and foremost Willy” riding “together across the Lesotho countryside with capes blowing behind us” or bunking in a “horsey-smelling cottage while learning to fly.”
“Who shall separate us?” Harry thought to himself. “Life, that’s who.”
In the wake of Spare’s January 2023 release, Harry will join William at their father, King Charles III’s coronation on May 6.
