There can't be many families who have embarked on wedding planning without having, at the very least, a heated debate about some aspect of the Big Day. The venue is often the trickiest decision, simply because it is often hard to book the place of your dreams. This is obviously not such a problem if you are marrying into the royal family.
In 1858 Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Vicky, the Princess Royal, married Prince Frederick William of Prussia. They had been engaged for two years, since the princess was 14, a relationship cemented in the heather at Balmoral where the 24 year-old Fritz had proposed. Victoria was delighted because the young couple obviously cared for each other (and we must brush aside modern concerns about the wisdom of encouraging your 14-year-old’s relationship with a man ten years her senior). Conveniently, their union also fulfilled a useful political purpose in the wake of the Crimean War, uniting Britain and Prussia against misplaced Russian ambitions in Europe.
Punch Magazine composed a patriotic ode to the happy couple.
Victoria and Albert were determined that the wedding could not take place before Vicky was 17, so their engagement was a long, and for a while, secret one. Early in 1856, rumours of the union appeared in the press, however, and neither English nor Prussian commentators were overwhelmed with happiness at the prospect. The Times sniffly dismissed the Prussian royal family as ‘a paltry German dynasty’. The official announcement did not occur until May 1857, at which point the Prussians issued the ultimate insult, by suggesting that the marriage take place in Berlin. Lytton Strachey, the Queen’s biographer, noted that the Queen was ‘speechless with indignation.’
On paper, however, she let rip, emphatically, imperiously, and slightly hysterically. She asked the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, to inform the German Ambassador
‘not to ENTERTAIN the POSSIBILITY of such a question . . . The Queen NEVER could consent to it, both for public and for private reasons, and the assumption of its being TOO MUCH for a Prince Royal of Prussia to come over to marry the Princess Royal of Great Britain IN England is too ABSURD to say the least. The Queen must say that there never was even the shadow of a doubt on Prince Frederick William's part, as to where the marriage should take place. . . .Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian Princes, it is not EVERY day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question must be considered as settled and closed.’
And that was that. The wedding took place on 25th January 1858 in the comparatively small Chapel Royal of St James Palace, but it was accompanied by great public festivities – illuminations, state concerts, immense crowds and general rejoicings. Incidentally, the bride and bridegroom left the church to a glorious, but then little-known recessional, Opus 61, by the German composer Felix Mendelssohn. Since Vicky’s nuptials, it has become known as the ‘Wedding March’ and few weddings are complete without it.
