With the upcoming marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, I can only imagine that London is going to be awash of Royal Wedding paraphernalia when we are there visiting next month. I remember the fuss when Charles and Diana got married, and there’s a wonderful old Fred Astaire movie called Royal Wedding, leading up to the marriage of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. But is this phenomenon new? Is the crush to be the first to see the dress, and to know every detail, something unique to the age of the television? It seems not! Author Catherine Kullmann has something fascinating to tell us on her blog.
Royal Wedding Fever: The Royal Wedding of 1816 as seen through the Eyes of La Belle Assemblée
Born in 1796, Princess Charlotte of Wales was the only child and heir presumptive of the Prince Regent, later King George IV. With the direct line dependent on this single thread, and her father’s brothers either unwed or childless, the royal matchmakers were out in force as soon as she approached adulthood. In 1814 an initial engagement to the Prince of Orange, heir to the throne of the Netherlands, came to nothing but in its February 1816 issue, the popular ladies’ magazine, La Belle Assemblée, chose as the subject of its series Biographical Sketches of Illustrious and Distinguished Characters, a German princeling, Leopold George Christian, Prince of Saxe-Cobourg.
Riana Everly, Author 