Sad truth behind Meghan and Harry’s wedding picture
As Harry and Meghan mark seven years of marriage, there are new details about how badly things were going wrong before their big day.
Royals
Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News.
COMMENT
Even after all this time, it seemed unequivocally magical. If you’d pitched the idea in a Disney boardroom – an American actress with her own working copy of Gloria Steinem’s collected speeches and ripped jeans meets handsome, kinda lost British prince, great love ensues, he makes her royal – you would have been laughed out of there.
But seven years ago, that’s exactly what happened when the world gathered around TV sets and exhaled at the sheer bloody Cinderella-ness of it all.
What a crock.
When it comes to Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2018 wedding, we were all sold what, it is now clear, a sham.
On May 19, Meghan Markle walked down the aisle of St George’s Chapel in Windsor on then Prince Charles’ arm and into the history books.
Even now, in 2025, new details are still coming out about what a load of flimflam it all was.
The image of the royal family banding together to welcome the Californian into their midst, joyous at the addition of modernising zeal: Not real.
MORE:‘Lonely’: Insiders lift lid on Harry’s sad life
The collection of celebrities who filled the pews, like George and Amal Clooney, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy and Carey Mulligan, suggesting a plethora of starry royal friendships: Reportedly not real.
The bride’s choice to have the floral emblems of the 53 countries of the Commonwealth embroidered onto her five metre veil, a touching detail that suggested she was dead keen to spend a lifetime of dutifully plugging away at supporting the outfit: Over before it began.
Looking back, besides Harry and Meghan’s adoring, smitten love for one another which is still on display today, was there anything about May 19 that has not been shown up to be something of a ruse?
The royal family might be in the business of image but what took place on that spring day really takes the cake for an elaborate set piece of playacting.
The full extent of all this is still coming out.
MORE: Meghan reveals fake $20m pad amid ‘tone deaf’ jab
This weekend Diana, Princess of Wales’ biographer Andrew Morton revealed that back in 2016, within a week of Suits star Meghan being outed as Harry’s newest squeeze, things were going pear-shaped between them and the wider royal family.
Only a week after it was revealed he was dating the actress he ‘broke the code’ of the royal family, according to Morton.
On November 8, 2016 Harry put out an unprecedented, cymbal clash of a statement volubly condemning the “wave of abuse” Meghan was receiving from the press – only he did it while Charles was in the middle of a high-wire tour of the Middle East, thus blowing coverage of his father’s trip out of the water.
“That was something which broke with the code of the royals,” Morton told The Times.
“When a member of the royal family is abroad the focus is on them, not on the domestic royals. For Harry to give that fairly hysterical statement while his father was in the Middle East was seen as self-indulgent.”
From there, things hardly improved behind palace gates. As the duke would later scribble in his bestselling burn book slash memoir Spare, Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales took to Meghan with about as much enthusiasm as the late Queen would have to oat milk or manifesting or Candy Crush.
Hugs were not reciprocated. (Meghan’s attempt at a friendly embrace of William at their first meeting in 2016 “completely freaked him out,” Harry wrote.)
Lipgloss was, painfully, not shared.
Things really went from nippily chilled between Kate and Meghan to outright GHDs at 50 paces when it came to the issue of the bridesmaids dresses, the infamous incident, even all these years later, still being dissected and interpreted like Dead Sea Scrolls.
Versions vary. In 2019 it was reported that Meghan had made Kate cry; then the duchess did Oprah and said that actually it was her who had been left scrabbling for tissues, so to speak.
Ready for a new version?
Veteran royal biographer Tom Quinn recently released Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal
Servants with a whole new account.
A former member of palace staff told him: “Meghan said a few things she regretted and Kate said a few things she later regretted but it was all in the heat of the moment. Both women were crying their eyes out!”
All of this had happened, all the emotions and ‘freaking outs’ and tears and code-breaking before the first trumpeterer was warming up on May 19, 2018.
There is still more about that day that has been called into question.
Call it the Clooney Conundrum: Hollywood A-listers, on that day in May, took their seats alongside liver-spotted dukes and old Etonians called Bunter and Chucker, promising the glorious union of the worlds of Hollywood and the Holyroodhouse.
However in the years since then, many of the duke and duchess’ starry A-list friendships have blinked out.
The Clooneys were later revealed to have admitted to a fellow wedding guest they didn’t actually know the couple; David and Victoria Beckham were soon on no-speaks with the Sussexes and these days pal about with King Charles; and guest and reception DJ
Idris Elba last year joined forces with His Majesty for a King’s Trust event.
Others like Oscar nominee Mulligan and Mad Max’s Hardy have never been seen in the same postcode as the Sussexes since.
Zoom out and what the Sussexes’ wedding day stood for was promise – so much fat, juicy promise.
Of a monarchy revitalised by a passionate cool girl member who was champing at the bit to muck in and work for Crown Inc.
But was Meghan ever going to be happy with her royal lot? Would she, I wonder, have ever truly been content plugging away at hosting Association of Commonwealth Universities roundtables and giving speeches at dog’s homes and occasionally slipping the palace yoke to guest edit Vogue and to wear black nail polish?
Would she ever have been okay with tamping down her entrepreneurial and creative instincts? As far back as 2019, the Sussexes were in talks with billion-dollar US streaming service (the long since shuttered Quibi), the Telegraph has reported.
Also, as a royal staff member has told Quinn that “she expected a billionaire and she got a millionaire”.
To join the royal family is to acquiesce to being squeezed inside a prescribed box and being HAPPY to stay there until you get the palace call up to open the Chelsea Flower Show or whatnot.
Given what we now know of Meghan, her natural ambition (said with great admiration) and her hunger to put herself out there (even if the results are sometimes watching her make ice cubes) – was she always doomed when it came to her royal future?
Look back at those photos of May 19 and they have the same poignancy and heart tugging quality as seeing a shot of the Titanic tied up at the dock at Southampton.
On that day, everyone wanted us, the public, to believe something – that it could work out, that the royal family was jazzed to have inveterate hugger Meghan on board; that she was willing to subsume herself in aid of a hoary institution; that George Clooney actually has Harry’s mobile number.
On Monday, the duchess marked the day by sharing a shot of a pinboard full of sweet photos of Harry and their children, including of the tots as babies, with the head, “our love story”.
At least we can definitively say, seven years on, the Sussexes’ love for one another is the realest of real deals.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
More Coverage
Originally published as Sad truth behind Meghan and Harry’s wedding picture
Kate recycles Meghan and Harry’s wedding hat
Princess Catherine has made a surprising fashion statement, as she and Prince William get one over the Sussexes with a prestigious accolade.
Meghan shares never-before-seen photos
The Duchess of Sussex has celebrated her 7th wedding anniversary by sharing never-before-seen photos of her family.