On Friday, October 12, 2018, wedding bells rang out from St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in the United Kingdom, as guests gathered for the wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank. The engagement was announced back in January, “The Duke and Duchess of York are delighted to announce the engagement of Princess Eugenie and Mr. Jack Brooksbank”, via the royal family’s official Twitter and Instagram. The statement also stated that Mr. Brooksbank proposed to the Princess in Nicaragua earlier that month.
The wedding took place at St. George’s Chapel, the same venue that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got married at. Eight-hundred guests attended the wedding, including more than forty members of the royal family. 1,200 members of the public were invited to partake in the festivities from within the Precincts of Windsor Castle.
Princess Eugenie broke from tradition for various aspects of her wedding. One of these traditions was choosing to have her sister, Princess Beatrice, as her maid of honor. Royals are customarily not allowed to hold this role in a wedding party. For example, Kate Middleton could not be her sister Pippa’s maid of honor. Similar to Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, Princess Eugenie chose to omit the promise to “obey” Jack from her vows.
The cake was designed by Sophie Cabot, a London-based cake designer. It was five tiers of red velvet and chocolate cake inspired by the colors of autumn. Traditionally, royal weddings feature a layered fruit cake. The weddings of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Princess Diana and Prince Charles, and Prince William and Kate Middleton all featured this style of cake. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle broke from tradition as well by having a lemon elderflower flavored cake with buttercream.
When Princess Eugenie stepped out onto the steps of St. George’s Chapel, the moment we all had been waiting for happened. We saw the dress. The dress was designed by Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos. Princess Eugenie did not wear a veil, another decision that goes against standard tradition. The dress was designed over the course of many fittings, layer by layer, specifically designed with a neckline that folds around the shoulders to a low back that showed the Princess’s scars from her corrective scoliosis surgery at age twelve. The dress also had symbols that are important to the bride such as ivy to represent the couple’s home, the York rose, a shamrock for Ireland, and a thistle for Scotland. A Greville Emerald Kokoshnik tiara was lent to Eugenie by the Queen and worn to complete the look.
Touching moments from the ceremony included beautiful performances by Andrea Bocelli, as well as Princess Beatrice reading a passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In this passage Nick Carraway describes Jay Gatsby’s smile;
“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point, it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Sometime before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.”
At the beginning of his sermon Dean of Windsor, the Right Reverend David Conner, said: “It was soon after she and Jack had first met that Princess Eugenie read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald” the pamphlet explained. “One particular passage in which Jay Gatsby is described reminded her immediately of Jack. She decided that she wanted to eventually let Jack know how much those words had brought him to mind. This is why they have a special place (as the second reading) in today’s wedding service.” After processing out of the chapel, the newly married couple kissed at the top of the stairs to the sound of cheers from the public. Afterward, they set out on the carriage procession through Windsor.
Many well wishes to Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank as they start this new chapter in their lives