THE ROYAL WEDDING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 294, 9 November 1934, Page 11

THE ROYAL WEDDING

PRECEDENT OF 1874. DUKE OF EDINBURGH’S WEDDING. A precedent for the holding of a second service at a Royal marriage (which will take place when the Duke of Kent is married to Princess Marina) is provided by the wedding of the late Duke of Edinburgh, bi-other of King Edward and uncle of the present King, to the late Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia on January 23, 1874, in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. On that occasion, as a special correspondent described in a telegram which occupied four columns of the Times, London, the bride and bridegroom were first married according to the Greek rite in the Imperial Chapel, and again, immediately afterwards, in accordance with the Church of England service, read in the Alexander Hall by the Dean of Westminster (Dean Stanley), whose wife, Lady Augusta Stanley, was also present. The Duke of Connaught, then Prince Arthur, was best man to his brother, and during the Greek Church service he and a younger brother of the Grand Duchess held the marriage crowns over the heads of the bride and bridegroom. In the brilliant gathering in the chapel, with the Tsar and Tsaritsa and other members of the Russian Imperial family, were the Prince and Princess of Wales (afterwards King Edward and Queen Alexandra) and the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor and Empress Frederick). The choristers of the Imperial Chapel sang psalms in Russ in the course of the English marriage service. The first part of this service was read by the Dean of Westminster from the large blue velvet book used at the coronation of William IV. in .Westminster Abbey: the rest of the service from a small Prayer-Book which belonged to the Dean’s sister-in-law, Lady Mary Hamilton, and had an interesting history. At the marriage of George 111., In 1761, the Archbishop, then of failing sight, borrowed it for the sake of its large print. Thus the little book came to be used at-several Roval marriages, including that of King Edward when Prince of Wales. The Duke of Edinburgh and his bride signed their names in the register of the Chapel Royal. The register book itself was too precious to take from England, but a leaf was prepared which the bride and bridegroom and tbe Royal witnesses signed, and this was bound into the Chapel Royal volume. The register recites that the marriage was according to statute, having received the formal permission of the Queen under the Great feeah Dean Stanley read the whole ot the English service.