There really was no other Wedding of the Century. Neither in the XX nor in the XXI. Gossip magazines found her princess, Diana of Wales, bitten into protocol, tabloids, and a palace life from which she emerged in a hasty stampede that ended dramatically. All the aura of nostalgia that surrounds Lady Di increases when her wedding is evoked, which will be 40 years old this July 29.How was that wedding that has not equaled any other on the covers
For a London summer, that Wednesday was not bad. The pink weddings were followed in our country by the magazines of the hairdresserbut in the case of the Prince of Wales, TVE made the effort to open the morning broadcast (at that time, the First Chain opened at two in the afternoon).
The special was offered despite the fact that the Kings refused to be present at that family link.The British House decided that the princely couple would start their honeymoon in Gibraltar and the Spanish diplomacy, with all logic, protested. Carlos and Diana were going to take a tour of the Mediterranean, a sea full of ports so as not to bother.
Despite the Spanish ‘boycott’, TVE offered the Wedding of the Centuryfor an audience that was not used to turning on the television at nine in the morning. With the BBC signal they commented for our country two names of continuity of the public chain, Lola Martinez and Eduardo Sancho. Nothing to do with the deployments and long-shot dresses that morning shows have done since Maria Teresa Campos dictated rules of bridal style on the screen.
It was a bland narrative that of TVE, which carried out the deployment with squeamishness given the anger in Zarzuela. In the end, the Spanish public focused on the bride’s dress and on commenting at home on the looks of some guests, such as the plump king of Tonga, and the raised face of the bride’s father.
Summary of the wedding of Lady Diana and Charles of England, London, 1981
The Wedding of the Century then cost 57 million pounds to the British treasury, more than offset by the tourism that came to London. At today’s exchange rate, it would be around 150 million euros per print run . The event was a real motivation in favor of the monarchy and that is priceless.
The broadcast of the wedding was followed by 750 million viewers, more than a Champions League final, of which some 6 million were Spanish. The link was attended live by 3,500 guests and 600,000 onlookers gathered in the streets, from whom several hundred tons of waste had to be cleaned from early in the afternoon.
People had been camping out on the pavements near St Paul’s Cathedral for days before and the night before there was a party celebration, fireworks in Hyde Park before half a million people and bonfires in the gardens. The first ‘failure’ was lit by Charles of England, but the fire in his private life was beginning to fly . Diana at her entrance to the temple immediately saw the gray veil that hid the face of Camilla Parker Bowles.
1981 was being a bad year, horrible for the planet, with the assassination attempt on Reagan (his wife Nancy attended the wedding alone) or the attack on the Pope. Around here, beyond 23F and a bloody period of ETA (let’s never forget it),‘atypical pneumonia’ was lurking, and it was not a coronavirus but a scam in olive oil, to which industrial rapeseed oil was added.
Elizabeth II entertained 90 dignitaries from all over the world in Buckingham on the night of the 28th, with the absence of her cousins Juan Carlos and Sofia.Diana spent the night waiting at Clarence House from where her carriage and her taffeta dress with an almost 8 meter train by David Emmanuel left, a meringue that I liked then and that now is an attack on simplicity.
Lady Diana and her bike rides
The princess had an attack of bulimia and arrived with shattered nerves at the foot of the altar. “Look them in the eye and leave them dead”, she recommended her already unfaithful boyfriend in a note. The best thing Diana could do to calm her nerves was to ride the queen mother’s butler’s bicycle for a spin.
From the place of departure of the princess to the temple there were 5,000 police and soldiers along three kilometers, many of them in disguise, waiting for a threat from the IRA. While it was time to go out, Diana chose to watch TV, with the display that she was making of her wedding on the private channel ITV.
At ten o’clock in the morning the guests were in San Pablo and after half past ten the different members of the royal family began to arrive in eight carriages. The last one, the heir who entered the church with his brothers Andres and Eduardo. Diana arrived at almost half past eleven in her gilt carriage, wrinkled work, hand in hand with her father, the much talked about Earl Spencer . The princess herself later admitted how clumsy her father was.
The bride and groom made a mistake in the words of the vows, but around here, with our average level of English, nobody noticed.At noon the ceremony was completed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, and at half past twelve the new couple happily walked the road to the palace, the Wedding of the Century in its splendor even if it ended in disaster. Escorting the four-horse carriage was a cavalry commander, Andrew Parker Bowles.No need to add anything more.
The famous kiss in Buckingham after the greeting from the balcony was after one o’clock. Diana was happy, but it was all the dream of a summer afternoon too bright for London.After the agape that Don Juan Carlos missed, at four in the afternoon the bride and groom left by train for Hampshire, the same place of the wedding night of Elizabeth II and Philip of Edinburgh.The next day the plane was waiting for them in the direction of Penon.An arguable place to start a honeymoon that would end like the rosary of dawn. But how spread in the magazines (and in the Carnival of Cadiz) that Wedding of the Century.
