May 19, 2018. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding day. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex wed at Windsor Castle. While Meghan later recalled feeling surprisingly calm after a pre-ceremony mimosa and croissant, Harry divulged what exactly had gone through his head on their wedding day in Spare. Ahead, what Harry thought to himself as Meghan walked down the aisle.
As Meghan walked down the aisle, halfway by herself then with King Charles III the rest of the way, a simple thought went through Harry’s head. He recalled the day of his royal wedding in his January 2023 memoir, Spare, and what was on his mind as he “stood at the altar and “watched Meg floating” toward him.
“As the soloist’s voice rang out above our heads I thought I’d chosen well,” Harry said, noting he’d personally selected “Eternal Source of Light Divine” for the procession. “Indeed, as Meg came nearer and nearer, I was giving thanks for all my choices.”
However, the now-38-year-old soon became aware of his nerves as the music filled St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. “Amazing that I could even hear the music over the sound of my own heartbeat as Meg stepped up, took my hand,” he recalled.
‘The past came rushing back’ to Harry as he and Meghan stood at their marriage ‘starting line’
Harry continued: “The present dissolved, the past came rushing back.” He recalled their many “first[s].” His and Meghan’s initial Instagram messages in July 2016, their “meeting at Soho House,” and saying ‘I love you,’ among others.
“And now here we were, the finishing line,” Harry said. “The starting line.” Despite little going “according to plan” in the lead-up to the wedding, Harry “reminded” himself “this was the plan. This. Love.”
Only when Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hands started shaking did Harry remember the cameras in the chapel.
As he and Meghan exchanged rings, made of a dwindling stock of Welsh gold as Queen Elizabeth II had told him, Harry likened his bride to the “last of the gold,” remarking, “That was how I felt about Meg.”
Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding wasn’t their ‘dream’
A Windsor Castle ceremony followed by afternoon and evening receptions with a big guest list and a TV broadcast wasn’t exactly what Harry and Meghan wanted for their wedding.
As Harry revealed in Spare, they’d “wanted to get married quickly” after becoming engaged in November 2017. Preferably in Botswana, the setting of their “dream wedding.”
Harry recalled telling his brother, Prince William, he and Meghan “wanted to explore” various options for their wedding. “Barefoot in Botswana, with maybe a friend officiating, that was our dream,” he said. “But we were expected to share this moment with other people. It wasn’t up to us.”
Previously, as Harry and Meghan discussed in their 2017 engagement interview and Netflix docuseries, they’d spent their third date in Botswana, camping out for five days “under the stars.”
Additionally, Harry sourced the center stone for Meghan’s engagement ring from the African country as a nod to their romantic getaway.
May 19, 2023, marked Harry and Meghan’s five-year wedding anniversary.
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