Diamond Tiara Tournament: Girls of Great Britain and Ireland vs Iveagh

This one’s a battle of two of Queen Mary’s favorite tiaras!

One of the most classic and beautiful tiaras in the British collection, Queen Mary received this one as a wedding present in 1893. And although it is an all-diamond tiara today, it was originally topped by fourteen large pearls. Mary later had those pearls replaced with diamonds and used the pearls on her new Lover’s Knot Tiara. Mary gave the tiara to her granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, as a wedding present, and it’s still one of the Queen’s most-worn tiaras today.

This lovely kokoshnik-style tiara was given to Queen Mary as a wedding present by Lord and Lady Iveagh in 1893. It’s one of the only pieces of wedding-gift jewelry that she never significantly altered; with its beautiful, balanced shape, she didn’t really need to. Mary bequeathed the tiara to her daughter-in-law, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. Today, it’s still worn by Alice’s daughter-in-law, Birgitte, and it was also a wedding tiara for Alice’s granddaughter, Lady Rose Gilman.