ROYAL WEDDING

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25305, 3 October 1947, Page 2

ROYAL WEDDING

MEMORIES OF FORMER BRIDES The eagerly awaited wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten recalls memories of past Royal weddings, which were considered to be magnificent ceremonies and excited great public interest. Not all of these were celebrated at Westminster Abbey, for, from the reign of Richard 11, who died in 1400. until the twentieth century, no Royal wedding took place in the Abbey. The diminutive Queen Victoria, wearing a white satin dress .trimmed with orange blossom and a veil Honiton lace, was married to Prince Albert in 1840 at the Chapel Royal of St. James’ Palace. After the wedding a sprig of myrtle - from her bouquet was planted at Frogmore, Windsor where it flourished, and every Royal bride, or one who has married into Britain’s Royal Family, has since worn or carried at her wedding a sprig of this historic bush.

The next important bride after Queen Victoria to wear the myrtle was the Queen’s eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, who married the Crown Prince of Prussia. One of the loveliest brides seen in England was Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who was married at St. George’s chapel, Windsor, to the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII). 3*hat was in 1863. The bride, in dazzling white, glittering with diamonds, was' said to resemble a princess in a fairy tale. Like his grandmother (Queen Victoria), the Duke of York (later King George V) was married in the Chapel Royal, St. James’ Palace. His bride was Princess May of Teck, who, for her wedding, wore a dress of white satin with silver design of roses, shamrocks, and thistles, interwoven with orange blossom.

After the 1914-18 war King George V expressed a wish that Royal weddings should be celebrated in Westminster Abbey. So, after an interval of centuries, the Abbey was the scene of a Royal wedding when, in 1919, Princess Patricia, daughter of the Duke of Connaught, was married to Sir Alexander Ramsay.

In 1922 came the magnificent pageantry of the wedding of the Princess Royal to Lord Harewood. Princess Mary’s wedding gown of striped silver lame was elaborate.

A year later Lady Elizabeth BowesLyon and the Duke of York, now King George the Sixth, were married in th© Abbey. The bride wore the simplest gown that, it was stated, has ever been made for a Royal wedding. It was of chiffon moire. Eleven years passed before Westminster Abbey was used again for a Royal wedding, and then on November 29, 1934, the Duke of Kent was married there to Princess Marina of Greece. This was the first occasion that the British Broadcasting Corporation broadcast the service.