Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s “Picture-Perfect” Royal Wedding “Set the Standard” for Ceremonies to Come

Rachel BurchfieldWed, July 29, 2026 at 6:01 PM UTC

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Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 royal wedding day.Credit: GettyThe Gist -

On July 29, 1981—exactly 45 years ago—Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer married at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The event looked “like something out of a movie,” Charles’s former butler Grant Harrold said.

Charles and Diana’s nuptials “set the standard” for royal weddings to come, he added.

From the outside looking in, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s July 29, 1981 royal wedding certainly seemed to be a fairytale.

Though we all now know the end of the story—spoiler alert: it wasn’t a fairytale—to the 600,000 people who lined the streets of London to catch a glimpse of the new Prince and Princess of Wales or to the 750 million people who watched on television, it sure appeared to be. There was Diana, arriving in a Glass Coach in a silk taffeta gown complete with a 25-foot train. And then there was Charles, clad in his Royal Navy commander’s uniform as he headed into St. Paul’s Cathedral and the 3,500 guests assembled to watch history be made.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 wedding day.Credit: Getty

“The dress, the setting, it was like something out of a movie,” Charles’s former royal butler Grant Harrold told Us. “Diana was a gorgeous young lady about to become a real-life princess. The whole world’s attention was captured. There’s been nothing like it since.”

It also upped the game for all royal weddings to come after it—from Prince William and Kate Middleton’s in 2011 to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s in 2018. Charles and Diana’s wedding “was the wedding of the century, and it set the standard of the picture-perfect royal wedding,” Harrold said. “It’s a historic day that people who lived it will never forget.”

Charles and Diana married 45 years ago exactly, and royal historian Marlene Koenig said that “Millions got up early or stayed away late into the night to watch.” The world’s eyes were on Diana’s wedding dress, designed by David and Elizabeth Emanuel, who were married at the time. Among the details of the gown were 10,000 mother-of-pearl sequins that were added to the silk taffeta and antique lace dress.

Princess Diana’s formal portrait in her wedding dress.Credit: Getty Images / Fox Photos / Hulton Archive

“She put a lot of trust in us,” Elizabeth told Us. “She was very friendly and very natural, and she had a lot of patience because she had to stand very still for fittings, and she would always chat with all the ladies who were sewing her dress. She was lovely.”

Diana’s wedding gown became “the fulfillment of her princess fantasy,” royal biographer Tina Brown said (per Vanity Fair).

After forgetting to kiss at the altar—both Charles and Diana were nervous and, if being honest, both had trepidation about getting married—the new Prince and Prince of Wales made up for it by kissing on the Buckingham Palace balcony to roaring cheers below.

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“We hadn’t really seen the royals show public displays of affection like that before,” Harrold explained. “They created an iconic tradition.” It has since been followed by both William and Kate and Harry and Meghan on their respective wedding days.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles kissing on their wedding day.Credit: Getty

As fairytale-ish as it appeared, Charles and Diana weren’t likely in love; in fact, they barely knew one another, having only met 13 times prior to saying “I do.” For Charles, “His main duty was to father a male heir and find a suitable bride,” royal biographer Andy Webb told Us. Diana, he said, seemed “ideal.”

“Apart from a few dinners and phone calls, Charles and Diana never truly got to know each other,” Koenig said. “They had nothing in common.” When they married, Charles was 32 years old; Diana had just turned 20 earlier that same month.

After the royal wedding, Diana “became a global superstar,” Harrold said. “She put a real focus on her family as well as the crown.” Royal biographer Simon Vigar told People that it was Diana who was the “biggest changemaker” amongst modern royal women.

Walking down the aisle, Diana said that she “was so nervous” that she “swore my knees would knock and make a noise.” While she later called her wedding day “the worst day of my life” and insisted she felt like “a lamb to the slaughter,” Diana entered the marriage with hope and optimism. Charles was moved by the occasion, too. He later told a cousin of his, “There were several times when I was perilously close to crying from the sheer joy of it all.”

Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer during their wedding ceremony.Credit: Getty Images

Sadly, whatever fairytale dust was present on Charles and Diana’s wedding day eventually faded away. As Diana put it, “I realized I had taken on an enormous role but had no idea what I was going into—but no idea.”

The marriage between Charles and Diana was rocky, complete with his-and-hers extramarital affairs throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, culminating in their separation in 1992 and divorce in 1996. The wedding, though, was magical. The world was already entranced by Diana on this day 45 years ago, but she’d soon catapult into the most famous woman in the world.

Diana “had turned out to be a bigger star than the system could handle,” royal historian Catherine Mayer told Peopleof the late Princess of Wales, who died in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997. “She had this huge ability to draw crowds. On the balcony or anywhere, she was the focus of attention.”

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