A Modern Royal Wedding: Princess Margaret Marries Antony Armstrong Jones

Princes Margaret and Antony Armstrong Jones with their wedding entourage. Image from Getty Images.

On May 6, 1960, Princess Margaret Rose married Antony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey, in what was considered the first modern royal wedding. A grand “staged” affair, it was the “first great royal spectacle since the Coronation,” Royal Biographer Sarah Bradford writes.

In some ways, Armstrong-Jones had his hands on the wedding. Normal Hartnell, the royal couturier renowned for creating “heavily embroidered grand occasion gown”, was under strict instruction from the bridegroom to keep the bride’s gown simple. It was a “simple v-necked long-sleeved, tight waste, enormous skirted creation of white organza.” Even the veil was a simple affair. The only glittering object in her wedding outfit was the Poltimore tiara, which the princess acquired for her wedding for £5,000. The groom wore a morning dress, a first for a royal groom, who usually wears the customary uniform. The couple, Aronson wrote, looked “strikingly attractive.”

Prince Philip escorted his sister-in-law to the altar. Nine-year old Princess Anne was one of the child bridesmaids. The other beautifully-dressed bridesmaids included Angela Nevill, Rose Nevill, Catherine Vesey, Sarah Lowther, Virginia Fitzroy, Annabel Rhodes, and Marilyn Wills.  

More than two thousand guests attended the ceremony. Among the bridegroom’s invitees were his landlord, William Glenton, his house-cleaner Betty Peabody, and the postman from his father’s Welsh village. His mother, the Countess of Rosse was seated opposite the Royal Family. Her beauty was noted by women reporters who praised her as “the most beautiful single figure of the occasion” next to Princess Margaret.

Noticeably out of sight were the royal cousins from other kingdoms. Apparently, it was a little uncomfortable for the relatives in Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Greece, and Germany to see cousin Margaret given away to a lowly photographer. Only Queen Ingrid of Denmark, whose mother was a British princess, showed up.

“The truth was that, for all their populist, bicycling images,” Theo Aronson explains, “many of the royal families of Europe still regarded themselves—as did Princess Marina—as part of the exclusive clan; princesses married princes, not photographers.”

When all the expenses were summed, the wedding bill reached £26,000. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother partly footed the cost; the Macmillan government also chipped in. This event of international scale, after all, diffused a feel-good factor to the public. It was the first royal wedding to be televised and the last on which all women wore completely formal, floor-length dress.

About 150,000 people lined the streets of London where the royal entourage passed by just to catch a glimpse of the couple. It saw the biggest crowd gather in London since theQueen’s coronation in 1953. After the wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace, the couple proceeded to the royal yacht Britannia, for their honeymoon in the Caribbean.