Meghan Markle Planned Her Dream Wedding When She Was 14—Here's How It Compared to Her Royal Nuptials
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Meghan Markle might have planned and executed a royal wedding, but getting married in front of the Queen of England wasn't how she imagined her nuptials would unfold as a young girl. On the latest episode of her podcast, Archetypes, the Duchess of Sussex revealed that she actually planned her dream wedding as a teenager.
"When I was 14, I planned my wedding," she said. "Not my actual wedding—that would've been a bit harder to imagine." The wedding she did envision—decades before meeting her husband Prince Harry—was part of a project assigned to her during her years at Catholic school. Markle took this task very seriously. "I remember every little thing about it," she said. "I wanted it to be at the Bel Air Hotel, there was a swan lake, and I wanted the cake to be from Hansen's bakery."
She even knew the exact dress she wanted to wear during her nuptials. "Oh my goodness, the dress was strapless and pouffy and I'd seen it in a bridal magazine," she said, adding that she even bought the magazine in the hopes that it would earn her a higher grade on the project (she got an A).
While her childhood daydream sounds like a picturesque backdrop for saying "I do," it is quite different from how her actual wedding day turned out. Rather than being held at the Bel Air Hotel, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex wed at St. George's Chapel in Windsor, surrounded by hundreds of people in 2018 during a televised event.
Other details that differed from Markle's youthful fantasy? Her wedding dress, for one. She traded in the strapless, pouffy gown for a timeless Givenchy number, featuring clean lines and a bateau neckline that perfectly framed her shoulders. The cake was also different from what she envisioned as a child. Rather than being from Hansen's, Markle and Prince Harry opted for a stunning lemon elderflower cake decorated with fresh flowers, made by London-based baker Claire Ptak.
