<p id=”par-1_49″><a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/tag/king-charles/?swcfpc=1″>King Charles</a> married his first wife, <a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/tag/princess-diana/?swcfpc=1″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Princess Diana</a>, in what was dubbed the “Wedding of the Century” back in 1981. The ceremony mirrored something out of a storybook and included the same glitz, glamour, and grand fashion as other royal weddings before it, but there was one glaring difference. </p>
<p id=”par-2_20″>It took place at a site that hadn’t hosted a royal wedding for hundreds of years: St. Paul’s Cathedral. </p>
<p id=”par-3_20″>So why did then-Prince Charles and Diana choose to get married there instead of the famed Westminster Abbey? </p>
<h2 class=”wp-block-heading” id=”h-the-reason-charles-and-diana-were-married-at-st-paul-s-not-westminster”>The reason Charles and Diana were married at St. Paul’s, not Westminster</h2>
<p id=”par-4_41″>The most famous royal wedding venue is Westminster Abbey, followed by St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle after both <a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/tag/prince-harry/?swcfpc=1″>Prince Harry</a> and <a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/tag/princess-eugenie/?swcfpc=1″>Princess Eugenie</a> had their weddings there. But St. Paul’s Cathedral isn’t a place where royals usually got married. </p>
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<p id=”par-5_25″>In fact, the last royal wedding held there before Charles and Diana’s was way back in 1501 when Arthur, Prince of Wales wed Catherine of Aragon.</p>
<p id=”par-6_25″>Most high-profile royals including <a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/tag/queen-elizabeth-ii/”>Queen Elizabeth </a><span style=”margin: 0px;padding: 0px”><a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/tag/queen-elizabeth-ii/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>II</a></span> and <a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/tag/princess-margaret/”>Princess Margaret</a>‘s were at Westminster Abbey. So why did Charles and Diana break with that tradition? </p>
<p id=”par-7_68″>According to <a href=”http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2062700_2062698_2062695,00.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Time</a>, that’s because this affair was so grand that they needed something larger than the Abbey, which seated 2,200 guests and decided on St. Paul’s because it seated 3,500. Some of those who made the guest list included members of other royal families like Grace Kelly of Monaco, as well as politicians and their spouses like then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan’s wife, Nancy Reagan. </p>
<p id=”par-8_36″>Thirty years later, Prince William and then-Kate Middleton tied the knot at Westminster Abbey over St. Paul’s because of the Abbey’s “staggering beauty, its 1,000 years of royal history and its relative intimacy despite its size.” </p>
<h2 class=”wp-block-heading” id=”h-camilla-was-a-guest-at-charles-and-diana-s-wedding”>Camilla was a guest at Charles and Diana’s wedding</h2>
<p id=”par-9_17″>Another guest who attended the “Wedding of the Century” was Charles’ former girlfriend, then-<a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/news/camilla-parker-bowles-was-fired-from-her-posh-job-before-she-married-prince-charles.html/”>Camilla Parker Bowles</a>. </p>
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It Wasn’t All Bad as Video Shows Moments King Charles and Princess Diana Couldn’t Have Looked Any Happier Together </a>
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<p id=”par-10_39″>Diana had known about their history and believed something was still going on between them. So as she walked down the aisle of the Cathedral to marry the future king, she was looking for Camilla the whole time. </p>
<p id=”par-11_50″>“I knew she was there, of course. I looked for her,” Diana said in her secretly recorded audio tapes to biographer Andrew Morton. “So walking down the aisle, I spotted Camilla, pale gray veiled pillbox hat, saw it all, her son Tom standing on a chair … you know — vivid memory.”</p>
<p id=”par-12_76″>In the documentary <em><a href=”https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26691600/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Charles & Camilla: King and Queen in Waiting</a></em>, former BBC coorespondant and friend of the late princess Jennie Bond, recalled, “Diana told me much later in one of our private conversations that she had felt like a lamb to the slaughter as she walked up the aisle, which is very sad. But I think she knew that things weren’t quite right. When she saw Camilla in the congregation, she was immediately uneasy about it.”</p>
<p id=”par-13_25″>Charles and Diana separated in 1992. Their divorce was finalized in 1996, one year before <a href=”https://www.cheatsheet.com/news/can-remember-when-princess-diana-died.html/?swcfpc=1″>the princess’s tragic death</a>. On April 9, 2005, Charles married Camilla.</p>