29 July 1981: Prince Charles Marries Lady Diana Spencer
On July 29, 1981, nearly a billion people around the world watched as Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, Prince of Wales, in a spectacular ceremony at St. Pauls Cathedral in London. Dubbed the wedding of the century, the event captured the romantic imagination of a global audience and introduced Diana to a life of intense public scrutiny that would define and ultimately consume her.
Diana Frances Spencer was just 20 years old when she walked down the cathedrals 650-foot aisle in a wedding dress that became instantly iconic. Designed by David and Elizabeth Emanuel, the gown featured a 25-foot train, the longest in royal wedding history, and was adorned with 10,000 pearls and sequins. An estimated 600,000 spectators lined the procession route from Buckingham Palace, while 750 million television viewers watched from home.
The fairy-tale wedding seemed to promise a storybook future. Diana, a kindergarten teachers aide from an aristocratic family, appeared to be the perfect match for the heir to the British throne. The couple had announced their engagement just five months earlier, and the world was eager to celebrate what seemed like a genuine love story in an age of royal marriages often arranged for political convenience.
Behind the scenes, however, trouble was already brewing. Charles, then 32, had been pressured into marriage by his family and was reportedly still emotionally attached to his former girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana later revealed that she had sensed the relationship was troubled even before the wedding, famously noting that there were three of us in this marriage.
The marriage produced two sons, Princes William and Harry, but deteriorated rapidly in the public eye during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The couples obvious unhappiness became tabloid fodder, culminating in their separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996. Dianas subsequent reinvention as a humanitarian icon, championing causes like landmine removal and AIDS awareness, cemented her status as the most famous woman in the world.
Dianas death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997, at age 36, provoked an unprecedented outpouring of public grief and permanently altered the relationship between the British monarchy and its people. The wedding that had promised a fairy tale ending instead became the prologue to one of the twentieth centurys most compelling and tragic royal dramas.
