Princess Diana Called Her Wedding Day the “Worst Day of My Life”

• Though it was the fairytale wedding seen around the world, Princess Diana later said that her July 29, 1981 wedding day to Prince Charles was the “worst day of my life.”
• Diana—then Lady Diana Spencer before her marriage—tried to back out of the wedding numerous times, but was convinced otherwise, hoping that her relationship with Charles would improve after they exchanged vows, and that his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles would dissipate.
• The night before their wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Charles allegedly told Diana that he didn’t love her, and Diana confronted Charles about cufflinks he received from Camilla while on their honeymoon.

A woman’s wedding day should at least crack the top 10 list of the best days of her life, right? Or at least not be at the absolute bottom? The latter, unfortunately, was true for Princess Diana, who married Prince Charles on this day 44 years ago.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 wedding day.

Getty

Charles and Diana’s wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London almost didn’t happen at all, according to royal biographer Ingrid Seward in her book My Mother and I. It was Diana’s father, Earl Spencer, who helped convince her that she should go through with it after all following an incident that happened about a month before the wedding—her soon-to-be brother-in-law Prince Andrew’s 21st birthday at Windsor Castle, when Diana (then Lady Diana Spencer) hoped to dance with her soon-to-be husband. Instead of dancing with Diana, Charles instead “spent the entire evening dutifully working the room and making sure he spoke with as many people as possible,” according to Seward. (Ironically, Elton John—who would one day sing at Diana’s 1997 funeral—was the entertainment that evening.)

Per an excerpt shared by People, Seward wrote that “Diana was in despair. Her fiancé had been away in America for most of the previous week, yet he clearly had no desire to dance with her. Feeling emotionally drained, she threw herself into dancing frantically with one man after another—and finally just dancing by herself.”

After the party in June 1981, Diana made her way to her family’s ancestral home, Althorp, in Northamptonshire by 5:30 a.m., feeling “distraught, flustered, angry, and had no intention of ever going back,” Seward wrote. “As far as Diana was concerned, the royal wedding was off.”

Lady Diana Spencer on March 9, 1981.

Getty

But when she told her father this, “he was appalled,” Seward continued. “After calming her down, he pointed out it would be an act of gross discourtesy to break off her engagement to the future king so close to the wedding. And, anyway, wasn’t it what she’d always wanted? Didn’t she remember him telling her that she should only marry a man she loved—and her form reply, ‘That is what I’m doing’? Diana wasn’t immediately convinced.”

Yet, after “gusts of tears and spells of indecision,” Diana agreed that the wedding should go on: “She couldn’t deny that she still wanted to be the Princess of Wales,” Seward added. “And, at 19, she was young enough to still believe in happy endings, despite what her instincts had told her on that terrible night.”

Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their July 29, 1981 wedding day.

Getty Images

The hits kept coming, though. Charles allegedly told Diana the night before their wedding that he didn’t love her, according to what a friend of Diana’s said in ITV’s 2020 documentary The Diana Interview: Revenge of a Princess, which focused on her now controversial interview on BBC’s Panorama in 1995.

“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,” Penny Thornton told the program. “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.”

“She didn’t want to go through with the wedding at that point,” Thornton continued. “She thought about not attending the wedding.”

Princess Diana and Prince Charles leaving St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Getty Images

She did, of course, ultimately marry Charles—but later called July 29, 1981 the “worst day of my life.” A documentary, called Diana: In Her Own Words, used audio from a series of interviews she conducted in 1991 to tell the story of the People’s Princess; ahead of her wedding, just like she’d spoken to her father about her reservations, she also did so with her two older sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes.

“I went upstairs, had lunch with my sisters who were there, and I said, ‘I can’t marry him. I can’t do this. This is absolutely unbelievable,’” Diana said. “And they were wonderful and said, ‘Well, bad luck, Duch. Your face is on the tea towel, so you’re too late to chicken out.’”

Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles announcing their engagement.

Getty

One of Diana’s chief holdups? His relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, who was actually in attendance at their wedding. On their honeymoon, Diana confronted Charles about Camilla—specifically a pair of cufflinks Camilla had given Charles with two Cs entwined. 

“So I said, ‘Camilla gave you those, didn’t she?’” Diana said. “He said, ‘Yes, so what’s wrong? They’re a present from a friend.’ And boy, did we have a row. Jealousy, total jealousy.”

Prince Charles and Princess Diana on their honeymoon.

Getty

“And it was such a good idea, the two Cs,” she added. “But it wasn’t that clever.”

Diana told her biographer Andrew Morton that, on their wedding day, “I remember being so in love with my husband that I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I just absolutely thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. He was going to look after me.”