When us common folk tie the knot, we usually have our wedding parties composed of our nearest
and dearest - it allows our inner control freak to round up all our friends and family,
make them wear ridiculous costumes, and rehearse them like we're directing a high school musical.
Well, one high-profile bride who tied the knot not so long ago had a wedding in which
her equally famous sister-in-law was not asked to be a member of the wedding party, and ever
since then, we've been wondering why Meghan Markle didn't ask Duchess of Cambridge Kate
Middleton to be one of her bridesmaids, if not her matron of honor.
Meghan's own family, after all, didn't offer any likely candidates, as she's on the outs
with her only half-sister.
So why was Kate merely a guest at the wedding, rather than attending the bride?
Was it because you just don't ask a senior royal to dress up in a poofy monstrosity?
Or was Kate's exclusion from the wedding party the spoiler that would have given us a clue
that Megxit was on the way?
As it turns out, the real reason why Kate wasn't included in the wedding party was just
that royals do things differently than the rest of us.
An expert on British and European royalty who spoke with Town & Country prior to Meghan
and Harry's wedding revealed that it's not customary for royal weddings to feature grown
women as bridal attendants.
According to Marlene Koenig:
"Most royal brides do not have adult bridesmaids.
It would be unusual for a royal bride to have a woman in her late 30s as a maid or matron
of honor."
While Kate Middleton did have her sister Pippa serve as a bridesmaid at her wedding to Prince
William, this was considered unusual.
As Kate and Meghan weren't all that well-acquainted before Meghan married into the family, they
didn't have the kind of relationship that would have been worth breaching protocol for.
Kate's and Meghan's granny-in-law, known to the rest of us as Elizabeth the Second, did
have a number of adult women in her own wedding party.
She married Prince Phillip back in 1947, however, when Great Britain was still struggling its
way out of wartime devastation.
Royal weddings for the past 60 years have, with the sole exception of Pippa, featured
bridal attendants no older than their early teens.
Meghan did not have to forego bridesmaids altogether at her wedding, however.
CNN reported that she had six of them.
The oldest, at the venerable age of 7, was Meghan's goddaughter Rylan Litt.
Another little Litt, 6-year-old Remi, also accompanied Meghan down the aisle, as did
4-year-old Ivy Mulroney, daughter of Meghan's BFF Jessica Mulroney, 3-year-old Princess
Charlotte, Prince Harry's 3-year-old goddaughter Florence van Cutsem, and the baby of the bunch,
2-year-old Zalie Warren.
A few lucky little boys made the cut as wedding party members, too, serving as page boys.
Brian and John Mulroney, Ivy's twin brothers, were the oldest at 7.
Next came Harry's godson Jasper Dyer at age 6, and the youngest was the future king, and
Harry's nephew, Prince George.
The boys looked handsome in dark uniforms, while the girls were pretty in puffy-sleeved
silk.
A TV audience of millions said "aww!" at their adorableness and somehow everybody managed
not to trip on the bridal train, or otherwise mess up the picture-perfect wedding.
The stress of life in the royal fishbowl was famously hard on Meghan, who'd been used to
a different kind of spotlight in her career as an actress.
However, she and Kate Middleton actually did enjoy a rather close relationship before Meghan
and Harry stepped down from their role as royals.
"The decision that I have made for my wife and I to step back is not one I make lightly.
It was so many months of talks."
But when the two women, along with their princely hubbies, were reunited for the Commonwealth
Service at Westminster Abbey in March of 2020, their post-Megxit public interaction appeared
to be somewhat strained.
The Daily Mail reported that Kate, in particular, was very upset by Prince Harry's and Meghan
Markle's departure for Canada, describing her as being, quote "very sad" over how things
turned out.
Still, once the two couples grow used to the new situation, perhaps in time they might
become closer again, even though they are geographically thousands of miles apart.
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