It hasn’t been all weird and weirder news for Britain’s royal family in recent months.
Scandal tends to get the bolder type, but joyous occasions make headlines too, and Princess Beatrice is getting ready to marry real estate developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. They announced their engagement in September after about a year of dating—and, as it turned out, just weeks before Prince Harry and Meghan Marklerevealed how unhappy they’d been with the British press, and the situation spiraled from there.
Considering all that’s been going on, including two divorces in the family, it will certainly be nice for the queen to see an unequivocally happy occasion coming up on the calendar.
But while Beatrice’s wedding day was never going to be the global event that Harry and Meghan’s nuptials were, the eldest daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York is planning a considerably more private event than her sister Princess Eugenie‘s royal wedding was less than two years ago. And she has her reasons.
In October, a source told People that, while Beatrice and Eugenie are very close, “Beatrice is more reserved and discreet. She holds back more, she is very polite, very well-educated but more formal and quiet in her personalty, so I think it will be a very different wedding to Eugenie.”
Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank wed at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, after which the queen hosted a cocktail reception at Windsor Castle ahead of the evening party thrown by the bride’s parents at the Duke of York’s official home, Royal Lodge.
But as the weeks went by, no further details about Beatrice’s big day were forthcoming—not even the date. A source told E! News last month, after so much time had passed between the engagement announcement and any further details, that “some of the plans” were “under review.”
Princess Eugenie/Buckingham Palace via Getty Images
At last, the outline of the plan was announced a few weeks ago: Beatrice and Edoardo will tie the knot on May 29 in the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace in London, the ceremony to be followed by a garden reception at Buckingham Palace hosted by the queen.
The 31-year-old, who had swapped her heels for trainers by the time she strolled out of the hotel after-party following Kate Middleton and Prince William‘s wedding in 2011, may then direct her guests to another location where guests can dance the night away, but expect that to be even more strictly VIP than the palace soiree.
But while as a granddaughter of the queen she’s still getting the royal treatment, there were indeed some things about the celebration that had to be reassessed in light of what’s been going on with her father, Prince Andrew.
The Duke of York was forced to step down from his royal duties in November, more fallout from his disastrous interview with BBC Newsnight about disgraced businessman Jeffrey Epstein, whom he considered a friend and continued to associate with, even after Epstein spent 13 months in prison starting in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from minors.
Andrew’s friendship with Epstein dogged him to varying degrees for the past decade, but he came under renewed fire after Epstein died in an apparent suicide last August in jail while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
During the tone-deaf sit-down, Andrew again denied the claims of Virginia Giuffre (née Roberts), who alleges that Epstein forced her to have sex with the Duke of York when she was still a minor. The duke said he didn’t remember ever meeting her, despite the existence of a photo purportedly taken in 2001 that shows Andrew with his arm around her waist. Roberts appeared on the BBC’s Panorama weeks later and held fast to her story.
Talking to Britain’s Times, a palace source described Andrew’s interview as “one of the single worst PR moves in recent history.”
And it came just in time to plan his firstborn daughter’s wedding—which, whether Beatrice envisioned anything splashier or not, is going to have to be more low-key than Eugenie’s was.
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“Everyone right now is concerned about Bea,” a source told Entertainment Tonight in December. “Poor Bea. She deserves to have the wedding she wants and the public is going to go nuts.”
Later that month, Andrew was not at Beatrice and Edoardo’s engagement party at London’s Chiltern Firehouse, while Eugenie and their mother, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, were. (The party also went on as scheduled, despite rumors that it might be postponed or canceled altogether.)
Sarah’s been divorced from Andrew since 1996 but they have lived together for more than a decade (as friends, keeping separate bedrooms), and—with nothing left to lose in the tabloid department, having received more attention than most in her day—the duchess popularly known as Fergie remains her ex-husband’s most stalwart public supporter.
“It is so rare to meet people that are able to speak from their hearts with honesty and pure real truth, that remain steadfast and strong to their beliefs,” she wrote on Instagram the day before his Newsnight interview aired. “Andrew is a true and real gentleman and is stoically steadfast to not only his duty but also his kindness and goodness of always seeing the best in people. I am deeply supportive and proud of this giant of a principled man, that dares to put his shoulder to the wind and stands firm with his sense of honour and truth.
“For so many years he has gone about his duties for Great Britain and The Monarch. It is time for Andrew to stand firm now, and that he has, and I am with him every step of the way and that is my honour. We have always walked tall and strong, he for me and me for him. We are the best examples of joint parenting, with both our girls and I go back to my three C’s .. Communicate Compromise Compassion.”
Still, there are limits.
Sarah refrained from posting again until New Year’s Day, when she wrote, “As the sun goes down on 2019, I look to the mountains for strength and wisdom to guide us all into a magical and enlightened road ahead…Happy New Year for 2020. So much love in abundance.”
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But while she didn’t elaborate as much as in recent years when she wished Andrew a simple happy birthday on Instagram on Feb. 19, she still went for it, and Eugenie wished her father a happy birthday on Instagram as well. Not all of the comments were of the “you’re protecting a bad person” variety, and many were actually quite supportive, but even The Royal Family’s post, featuring a photo of Andrew as a baby, was treated to its share of backlash.
Beatrice, meanwhile, is not on social media.
Back in August, after Epstein died and Andrew’s name was again front-and-center as one of the deceased’s most high-profile pals, a source told The Sun that Beatrice and Eugenie “are very close to their father and are being very supportive.”
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With everything that’s come to pass since, that support could have gone by the wayside—especially since Eugenie had to indefinitely postpone plans to launch a podcast about the scourge of global sex-trafficking and Beatrice, an executive at a software and data firm, is in charge of a program that supports women in leadership positions—but it appears that the the family-first approach endures.
Beatrice and Edoardo and Eugenie and Jack joined the Christmas festivities with the queen at Sandringham, as did their father, who walked alongside brother Prince Charles on the annual stroll from the house to nearby St. Mary Magdalene Church.
The woman behind the Instagram account Royal Replies by Kris, which posts every bit of correspondence received from members of the royal family, proudly shared a photo this week of Sarah, Andrew, Beatrice and Eugenie that the Duchess of York’s office mailed to her on Jan. 4, part of a thank-you package for the Christmas card she sent.
Beatrice and Edoardo were also among the small group who attended a 60th birthday party for Andrew at Royal Lodge on Feb. 19. More fanfare was originally planned to mark the milestone nationwide, Andrew having been the first child born to a reigning monarch in 103 years, but was ultimately toned all the way down.
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Though it will still be pretty grand by non-royal standards, Beatrice’s wedding has been toned down, too.
“The date was changed two times to adjust [to the unfolding scandal],” a source told People recently. “It will be smaller than the original plan.”
It was highly unlikely that Beatrice’s ceremony was ever going to be televised, considering Eugenie’s wasn’t, but Eugenie and Jack did have a carriage procession afterward—and Beatrice and Edoardo are opting out of that very public moment. (Since a segment of the public was not happy about taxpayer money going toward sky-high security costs for William and Harry’s weddings, or even the lesser cost for Eugenie’s, you can bet they’re keeping an extra close eye on the bill for this one.)
Andrew is planning to walk his daughter down the aisle, the source shared, and the Duke of York “will probably give a toast at the reception like any father of the bride. They will try to normalize this as much as possible.”
What’s still unclear is who else will be there, aside from the bride’s immediate family. The queen, who has been seen riding horses around the grounds of Windsor Castle and attending church with her son several times since the scandal blew up, is likely going to be there, but these days Beatrice’s grandfather, 98-year-old Prince Philip, waits to see how he feels the morning of big events in lieu of committing ahead of time. He did make it to Eugenie’s wedding in October 2018, and was there to see Lady Gabriella Windsor, daughter of the queen’s cousin Prince Michael of Kent, tie the knot last May.
Sarah enthusiastically helped Eugenie with her wedding preparations and is there for whatever Beatrice needs as well. And thanks to a recent change in British law, the mother of the bride will now be able to sign her daughter’s wedding certificate if they so choose. Previously, only fathers’ signatures were allowed.
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But the calligrapher’s ink on the invitations may not even be dry yet and already the wait is on to see if Harry and Meghan, now splitting time between Canada and the U.K., attend.
Harry has historically been very close to Beatrice and Eugenie (who was one of the first family members to meet Meghan back in 2016), and he made sure that their mother—who was not in the palace’s good graces when William and Kate’s nuptials took place in 2011—was invited to his wedding on May 19, 2018. Meghan was showing the slightest hint of a baby bump when Eugenie got married later that year.
Of course the couple sometimes known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be invited, but all eyes will be on the RSVP.