Queen Elizabeth’s 15 Words of Advice for Charles and Camilla on Their Wedding Day
TL;DR:
- King Charles III and Camilla Parker Bowles married on April 9, 2005.
- According to a royal author, Queen Elizabeth said there wouldn’t “be enough” Welsh gold for a “third wedding,” in reference to rings.
- Queen Elizabeth attended a blessing after skipping King Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles’ civil wedding ceremony.
Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t at the wedding of King Charles III and Camilla Parker Bowles in April 2005. However, she didn’t let her son’s second marriage begin without some words of wisdom. What the late queen reportedly told King Charles and the queen consort on their wedding day. Plus, the bride’s wardrobe mishap that made her laugh.
Queen Elizabeth skipped Charles and Camilla’s civil wedding ceremony in April 2005
When King Charles remarried on April 9, 2005, the queen wasn’t at the ceremony like she’d been for his 1981 nuptials to Princess Diana. As head of the Church of England, which frowns upon divorce, she skipped the couple’s civil wedding ceremony at Windsor Guildhall.
“The venue was never the issue for the Queen,” a senior royal aide said at the time (via The Telegraph). “The civil nature of the service is the issue. She did not feel it was appropriate for her to attend.”
Instead, the queen and her late husband, Prince Philip, attended a religious blessing at St. George’s Chapel before hosting a reception.
Queen Elizabeth told King Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles there wasn’t ‘enough’ Welsh gold left ‘for a third wedding’
Per Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—The Truth and Turmoil, the queen had some choice words for her son and his new bride. Particularly as it related to the royal family’s tradition of Welsh gold wedding bands.
“There is very little of it left,” Brown claimed the queen told King Charles and Camilla (via The Telegraph). “There won’t be enough for a third wedding.”
Just another example of the queen’s wry humor? Or maybe simply stating the obvious. After all, royal wedding bands have been made from the queen’s personal collection of Welsh gold since her mother started the tradition in 1923 (via Reuters).
Queen Elizabeth had a ‘good sense of humor’ when Camilla Parker Bowles accidentally wore mismatched shoes on her wedding day
Even royal weddings don’t always go off without a hitch. Diana said the wrong name in her vows and Prince Harry struggled with Meghan Markle’s veil. The wedding of King Charles and Camilla wasn’t without a blunder or two, either.
In a pre-recorded tribute to the queen, Camilla recalled how her mother-in-law laughed at her wedding day mistake.
“I remember coming from here, Clarence House, to go to Windsor the day I got married when I probably wasn’t firing on all cylinders—quite nervous,” she recalled. “For some unknown reason, I put on a pair of shoes, and one had an inch heel and one had a two-inch heel. So, I mean, talk about hop-along!”
“There was nothing I could do,” Camilla continued. “I was halfway down in the car before I realized. And, [the queen] could see it, and she laughed about it and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ and she did have a good sense of humor.”
