Princess Diana Told Former Butler That Her Wedding to Prince Charles Was One Family Member's "Proudest Day"—But Not Hers

Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer on July 29, 1981, and 45 years later, the world is still fascinated by the wedding of the century. The televised ceremony drew in 750 million royal watchers around the world, and everything from her romantic, ruffled wedding dress to her flowers were copied by ‘80s brides for years to come. But even though the world fell in love with Charles and Diana, the bride wasn’t feeling quite as jubilant as the hundreds of thousands of people who lined the streets of London that day.

Speaking on behalf of SpeakOut, Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell tells Marie Claire that despite her fairytale wedding and the promise of being the future Queen, it was her father, the 8th Earl Spencer, who relished walking down the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral that day.

“Diana said to me, ‘Have you seen the footage, Paul, of me walking down the aisle?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’ve watched it many times,’” Burrell says. “She was with her father, and she said, ‘It was my father’s proudest day.’ I thought that was very odd, that it wasn’t her proudest day.”

Burrell continues that Diana was worried about seeing Camilla Parker Bowles as she walked down the aisle. “She said, ‘Do you see me looking from side to side?’ She said, ‘I was looking for her. I knew she’d be there. And she was on the fourth row at my wedding.’”

It's unsurprising that Diana—who later called her wedding day “the worst day of my life”—had nerves as she entered St Paul's Cathedral. In the 2020 documentary, The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess, her friend Penny Thornton revealed that Charles made a surprising confession to his future bride the night before they walked down the aisle.

“One of the most shocking things that Diana told me was that the night before the wedding, Charles told her that he didn’t love her,” Thornton said. “I think Charles didn’t want to go into the wedding on a false premise. He wanted to square it with her, and it was devastating for Diana.”

Diana “didn’t want to go through” with the marriage after their conversation, with Thornton adding that her friend “thought about not attending.”

Speaking about The King's mindset, Burrell says marriage isn't the same for the Royal Family as it is for the rest of the public.

“You’ve got to look through the lens of the time and not now,” Burrell tells Marie Claire. “Times have changed. Back then, he was being hounded by his family to find a bride. He was becoming an old bachelor, and his job was to find a bride and produce an heir and a spare.”

Burrell says that the now-King might have been “very attracted” to his wife, but at the end of the day, his ”duty to the country was to provide children. It wasn’t about love.”