Meghan MarkleandPrince Harryhave Queen Victoria to thank for theirfairy-tale wedding carriage ride.
While it was expected for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex towave to well-wishers along the parade route,for the 20-year-old Victoria nearly two centuries ago, it was radical.
“Before this time, royal weddings had happened in the evening, behind closed palace doors, and the public had not been part of the occasion,” says Lucy Worsley, who helms the new PBS showVictoria & Albert: The Wedding,which premieres on January 13.
A scene fromVictoria & Albert: The Weddingon PBS.
“With [Prime Minister Lord] Melbourne’s guidance, she did it in daylight,” Worsley says of the “royal propaganda coup” surroundingVictoria’s 1840 wedding to Albert. “Melbourne made her travel to St. James’s Palace in a carriage so that everybody could see and cheer, and afterward she went with Albert back to Buckingham Palace. And then on the third trip they went from Buckingham Palace to Windsor – so everyone could do so again.”
Courtesy of Jacobo Garcia Fernandez/BBC Studios
Another innovation? Victoria’s white gown. “She needed to signal submission, that she was going to be good from now on; that she was going to be a wife — so she wore the simple white dress,” says Worsley. “It became the ancestor of a million big white wedding dresses that people wear to this day.”
Queen Victoria’s petticoat.Courtesy of Historic Royal Palaces
The PBS show comes as further celebrations of Victoria’s life are set for the looming 200th anniversary of her birthday on May 24, 1819. Later this year, a new show at Kensington Palace will celebrate her and include a petticoat that may have been what Victoria wore under her wedding dress. (It is also featured inVictoria & Albert: The Wedding.)
The commanding Victoria took the lead and “called Albert into her closet and told him they were going to get married. She had the whip over him.” Albert, on the other hand, was a romantic who used jewelry to say things he wasn’t able to verbalize.
Historic Royal Palaces
Universal History Archive/Getty
For the PBS show, Worsley and her team recreate the ceremony, the food, the clothes and the carriage ride. “We had an awful lot of fun with the food,” she says. “We recreated the wedding cake. It was nine feet around the circumference, it weighed nearly 300 lbs. and took four men to carry it up the stairs. And it was soaked in 21 gallons of French brandy.”
Victoria’s wedding breakfast wasn’t “a huge public feast, but a small group of relatives who gathered for the meal at the palace. That was to underline that we didn’t just have a queen but a royal family. It was a brand.”
source: people.com
