The Court Jeweller

Sparkling Royal Jewels From Around the World

5 Royal Wedding Traditions

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The wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden, June 2010 (Torsten Laursen/Getty Images)
Royal weddings around the world are full of traditions, from tiaras and rings to veils and flowers. Here’s a look at five traditions observed by royal brides, both past and present!

Nathalie of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg wears the Khedive of Egypt Tiara (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images); Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie of Luxembourg wears the Lannoy Tiara (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
Family Tiaras
Some royal families even have a tiara that has become a dedicated “wedding tiara” for the women of the family. In Denmark, all three of Queen Ingrid’s daughters wore the Khedive of Egypt Tiara on their wedding days. The tiara was an inheritance from Ingrid’s late mother, Princess Margaret of Connaught. The next generation of Ingrid’s descendants, including princesses from Greece and Germany, have also worn the Khedive Tiara for their weddings. 
In Japan, both Empress Michiko and Empress Masako wore the glittering Crown Princely Wedding Tiara when they married into the imperial family. The diadem, which has a coordinating necklace, was reportedly made using diamonds that belonged to an earlier empress. Now that Masako has become the nation’s empress, the crown princely tiara has been passed to her sister-in-law, Crown Princess Kiko. Britain doesn’t have a dedicated family wedding tiara, but two generations of Windsor brides wore Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara at the altar. When Queen Elizabeth II married in 1947, the tiara’s frame snapped just before she left for Westminster Abbey and had to be hastily repaired. Decades later, her only daughter, Princess Anne, also chose to be married in the tiara — but that marriage was not ultimately a success. No royal brides have donned the tiara since.
Some lucky “commoner” brides even borrow tiaras from their own family vaults for their royal weddings. Diana, Princess of Wales famously borrowed the Spencer Tiara for her wedding in 1981. Three decades later, Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie of Luxembourg, who was born a Belgian countess, borrowed the Lannoy Tiara from her family for her nuptials.
Anne-Marie of Greece wears Margaret of Connaught’s veil (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images); Crown Princess Mary of Denmark wears Margaret of Connaught’s veil (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Heirloom Veils
Tiaras aren’t the only items passed from royal bride to royal bride. Some families even have traditional veils worn by their brides. The Danish royal family are the owners of the grand lace bridal veil of Princess Margaret of Connaught, the British princess who married into the Swedish royal family and became the mother of Queen Ingrid of Denmark. Ingrid’s daughters all wore the Connaught veil, and in 2004, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark even generously loaned it to her new daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Mary, to wear at her wedding.
The Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding ring, April 2011 (ANDREW MILLIGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Golden Rings
The simple golden wedding rings worn by British royal brides have a lovely patriotic provenance. They’re made from rare Welsh gold, some of which was sourced from the Clogau St. David’s mine. The Queen Mother, the Queen, Princess Margaret, the Princess Royal, Diana, Princess of Wales, Sarah, Duchess of York, the Countess of Wessex, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duchess of Cambridge, and the Duchess of Sussex have all worn wedding rings made of Welsh gold.
Grand Duchess Alexandra of Mecklenburg-Schwerin wears Queen Charlotte’s Nuptial Crown; Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia wears the Imperial Wedding Crown; Princess Margaretha of Sweden wears the Gärdslösa wedding crown (Wikimedia Commons)
Bridal Crowns
In some religious traditions, women wear special bridal crowns — not tiaras, but teeny crowns — at the altar when they marry. One of the most famous royal nuptial crowns resides in Hanover. Made for Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom, the tiny diamond crown was part of the British royal collection until the Hanoverian royal family won it in a lawsuit in the 1850s. Since then, it’s been worn by numerous Hanoverian brides, including Princess Alexandra of Hanover, who wore it to marry the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1904. The Russian imperial family also used a crown as part of the elaborate regalia worn by imperial brides, placing it behind the famous pointed imperial wedding tiara.
In Scandinavia, many churches have their own bridal crowns, which were (and in some cases, still are) loaned out to brides who marry in that particular church. In 1964, when Princess Margaretha of Sweden married John Ambler in the Gärdslösa Church on the island of Öland, she borrowed the church’s distinctive bridal crown to wear with her wedding dress. The bridal tiara favored by several other Swedish royal brides, the Cameo Tiara, conveniently shares some design similarities with a traditional Swedish bridal crown.
Princess Margaretha of Denmark wears a myrtle crown (Wikimedia Commons); Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden wears a sprig of myrtle in her bridal tiara (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
Sprigs of Myrtle
In 1845, Prince Albert’s grandmother gave Queen Victoria a posy of flowers that included sprigs of myrtle. Some of that myrtle was successfully propagated on the grounds of Osborne House, and Queen Victoria’s daughters began incorporating it into their bridal bouquets. (Very appropriately: myrtle represents love and innocence in the language of flowers.) Victoria even sent some of the Osborne myrtle to Russia for the wedding of her son, Prince Alfred, to Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna in 1874. The tradition has carried on to the present generation, with the Duchess of Cambridge and the Duchess of Sussex each carrying bouquets that included myrtle from Osborne.
When Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Margaret of Connaught, married the future King of Sweden in 1905, Victoria sent a cutting of Osborne myrtle along with her to her new Scandinavian home. The plant was successfully reestablished on the grounds of Sofiero Palace, the new couple’s summer home. Myrtle was already a popular part of the wedding traditions of Sweden, with many brides fashioning their bridal crowns out of the plant. (Princess Margaretha, Princess Martha, and Princess Astrid of Sweden all wore myrtle crowns for their weddings.) Margaret’s descendants began using the Sofiero myrtle in their wedding bouquets and in their hair, too. A close inspection of many of the tiaras of Sweden’s royal brides reveals a small sprig of green myrtle tucked in near their veils.

Did you follow any of these traditions at your own weddings?

The Edinburgh Wedding Bracelet

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In honor of the Duke of Edinburgh’s 98th birthday, which he celebrated privately yesterday, we’ve got a look at one of the jewels he introduced into the royal vaults: the Edinburgh Wedding Bracelet.

Elizabeth and Philip pose for their engagement photos, 1947

When Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten — or, as he was formerly known, His Royal Highness Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark — proposed to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom in the 1940s, he had to find a way to present his bride with jewels appropriate for a future queen while earning a sailor’s paycheck.

Princess Alice wears the now-dismantled tiara

Help came in the form of a diamond tiara owned by his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg. She offered him a grand diamond and aquamarine tiara that had been one of her own wedding presents, a gift from her uncle and aunt, the late Emperor Nicholas II and Emperor Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. Alice had kept the Romanov tiara for years, long after she regularly wore gala jewels, and she handed it over to her son to have it dismantled. Some of the stones were used to create Princess Elizabeth’s engagement ring, while others were used to make the piece we’re discussing today: the diamond bracelet he offered his new wife as a wedding present.

The Queen wears the bracelet to the Royal Film Performance in Leicester Square, 1952 (Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Philip went to a London-based jewelry firm, Philip Antrobus Ltd., to create the new diamond pieces in 1947. The engagement ring claimed a three-carat brilliant, plus several smaller stones; the new bracelet also includes three large brilliant-cut diamonds. The bracelet’s design is geometric, almost Art Deco-inspired. It features three large, square links connected by vertical sections. Like the engagement ring, the bracelet is set in platinum.

The Queen wears the bracelet as she opens parliament in Ottawa, October 1957 (ARNOLD SACHS/AFP/Getty Images)

From the start, Elizabeth chose the new bracelet for significant white-tie events. She has also worn it for numerous portraits throughout her reign, from the earliest images to photographs taken to mark her Diamond Jubilee in 2012. It can sometimes be a little challenging to spot the bracelet in photographs, as the Queen’s collection includes a number of diamond bracelets of a similar shape and size to this one, including Queen Mary’s chain link bracelets and the diamond and gold bracelet that belonged to Queen Victoria.

The Queen wears the bracelet during the American state visit in 2003 (JOHN STILLWELL/AFP/Getty Images)

But while those other pieces have major historical and family importance, the sentimental value of the Edinburgh Wedding Bracelet is pretty hard to deny. It’s no wonder that it has remained a staple in the Queen’s jewelry box for nearly seventy years.

Kate wears the bracelet for the Chinese state banquet, October 2015 (Dominic Lipinski – WPA Pool /Getty Images)

In 2015, the Queen loaned the bracelet to another member of the family: the Duchess of Cambridge. She debuted it on her left wrist at a state banquet given in honor of the President of China. The loan was a significant one — the sentimental bracelet had never been worn in public by anyone but the Queen. For the banquet, Kate paired it with another diamond bracelet made from a choker necklace that had belonged to Queen Mary.

Kate wears the bracelet to the BAFTAs in London, February 2017 (DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)

Kate has continued to wear the wedding bracelet regularly since that initial loan. I can’t blame her: if my husband’s grandmother offered me the chance to wear a bracelet set with Romanov diamonds that had been a wedding gift from her husband, I’d wear it literally everywhere.

Note: this is an updated version of an earlier post.