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Originally published in the Guardian on 25 April 1963
Weddings, a wise elderly woman used to say, are essentially private affairs, at which all guests other than intimates are intruders. The crowds should go, rather, to funerals, where their presence may be a comfort to the bereaved. Heaven help, then, royal brides, whose romances are national property, whose marriages [provide] so many laboratory specimens for the Argus eyes of the television cameras.
And how ironic that those same cameras should both have created a private moment during the wedding of Princess Alexandra and Mr Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey yesterday and shared it with the watching thousands, while still leaving it inviolate. It came while the procession of the bride was forming at the West door. Trumpets had signalled her arrival. As their echoes diminished, the cameras rested on the waiting Princess.
She was still outside the ceremony; the narrow dress, as strictly simple as a nun's habit, made her look a little aloof. Standing there, grave. Byzantine, beautiful, the image she presented on the screen was that of an ikon, and when the long silence which she dominated was broken it was by the cool trebles of the Westminster choristers singing "Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee," as the procession moved up the nave.
Nothing could challenge the millinery – that peculiarly English blend of confectionery and horticulture and ornithology – of the women among the congregation. There were several cartwheels which would guarantee the wearers two square feet of space in any company.
A troop of foreign royal visitors were led into the South Lantern, then Princess Marina, in dull gold tissue, with a superb, upswept hat, made an elegant entry into the sacrarium, accompanied by the Duchess of Kent, in coral pink, and Prince Michael.
When the trumpets first crashed, it was for the arrival of the Queen, with the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales. She was in gauzy, drifting green, a complement to the primrose yellow of Princess Margaret, who sat behind her in the sacrarium.
The bride, when at last she came, on the arm of her brother, the Duke of Kent, was wearing faintest magnolia pink, highnecked and long-sleeved. Its severity was completely unadorned; the Princess's only jewellery was the diamond tiara, worn by her mother at her own wedding, holding in place a waterfall of veil which covered the whole length of her train. Her bouquet was equally simple, a posy of small flowers shading from white to cream.
