The Royal Bridal Bouquet: From Wedding Accessory to Royal Remembrance

Abstract

This article presents the first detailed exploration and discussion of the history of the royal bridal bouquet in Britain. First introduced in Victorian days, it was in the early 1920s, and then again from 1947 onwards, that the royal bridal bouquet was imbued with an additional significance far beyond its original meaning and which it retains until the present day: after the wedding, it is laid on the grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, in commemoration of all the war dead. This article explores the origins of this royal tradition, discussing its meaning and further implications. In this context, the article briefly looks also at the overall link between the military and royal weddings in Britain – exploring in particular the issue of bridegrooms marrying in uniform; the royal bridal bouquet as a female, floral tribute adds another important component to this military link. The article thus contributes a significant detail to the wide literature on war commemoration and also the monarchy in the twentieth century. It emerges that the royal bridal bouquet in Britain is a significant detail that takes the occasions of royal weddings beyond their original meaning by adding the aspect of royal remembrance. While this is not prominently seen in any other monarchy, it testifies to British royalty’s wide-ranging instinct for and application of ceremonial events and gestures as a means of enhancing the monarchy’s appeal and its bond with the people.

On 4 November 2020, Queen Elizabeth II went to Westminster Abbey to pay tribute at the grave of the Unknown Warrior — on the centenary of his burial, which had taken place on Armistice Day, 11 November 1920. The occasion was, of course, widely reported, but the single most noted aspect of the Queen’s visit — which took place at the time of the coronavirus pandemic — was that the Queen was, for the first time, seen wearing a nose-mouth-covering in public. The attention on this fact almost seemed to overshadow the reason why the Queen had actually come to the Abbey: she had come to commemorate the fallen of all the wars, with a moment of remembrance and the laying down of a floral tribute on the grave of the Unknown Warrior. Yet, the floral tribute that was placed onto the grave was not a wreath of poppies, as is the tribute that the monarch lays at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday every year: instead, it was a bouquet of flowers — and the choice of this bouquet had great significance, with references to a bridal tradition reaching back to Queen Victoria. As was reported at the time, the Queen’s bouquet was ‘of white and lilac orchids, myrtle and greens, created by a Palace florist and modelled on the one she carried on her wedding day’ (fig. 1 — compare also fig. 6, below).¹ The reference to the Queen’s wedding bouquet was emphasised in various reports and was undoubtedly significant: whether intentionally or not, it located this tribute in the long line of royal bridal tributes to the war-fallen that have been part of royal weddings for now over a hundred years.

Figure 1 Queen Elizabeth inspects a bouquet of flowers placed on her behalf at the grave of the Unknown Warrior by her Equerry, Lieutenant Colonel Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah, during a ceremony in London’s Westminster Abbey to mark the centenary of the burial of the Unknown Warrior, in Britain November 4, 2020.

(Alamy Image/ © Aaron Chown/Pool via REUTERS)

This article will shed some light on the so far neglected history of bridal bouquets at British royal weddings, by providing the first historical overview of this accessory. Leading on from that, it can be observed that at royal weddings since the First World War, the bridal bouquet has been endowed with the additional purpose or function of expressing royal remembrance. There has, of course, been much research on how the fallen soldiers, other personnel, and civilians who died in wars have been commemorated, especially since the end of the First World War.² The role that the royal family in particular played in this war commemoration has recently been discussed in a dedicated volume by Heather Jones.³ Yet, the use of royal bridal bouquets as one specific and especially personal way of such commemoration has not previously been considered and is here explored for the first time, by examining contemporary accounts and newspaper reports, as well as the available visual sources.

Military Weddings

Before delving into the history of the royal bridal bouquet it may be instructive to look at one aspect of the general character of British royal weddings. The fact that royal weddings have a military connection today seems very much expected and has become so ‘established’ that it is usually not even noted. However, it has been only from the late eighteenth century onward that bridegrooms at royal weddings have worn military uniform, thus turning these weddings also into what is called ‘military’ weddings. The wedding of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany to Princess Frederica of Prussia on 23 November 1791 seems to be the earliest for which it is documented that the bridegroom wore a military uniform. In this case, there were two ceremonies — one in the bride’s homeland, in Berlin, and one in London. Both occasions were held simply in the palace apartments, not in a chapel or church. At the Berlin ceremony, the bridegroom was reported to have worn ‘the English uniform’, and in London he equally was ‘in his regimentals’.⁴ In this case, the bridegroom’s choice to wear uniform reflected the well-known military character of the Prussian court, which had been established by the ‘Soldier King’ (Soldatenkönig) Frederick William I and especially his successor Frederick the Great, who had died a mere five years previously.⁵

In 1816, at the dynastically important wedding of Princess Charlotte of Wales to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in the Council Chamber at Carlton House (the Prince Regent’s London residence), it was noted that the bridegroom wore ‘full British uniform’, decorated with the various insignia of his orders of knighthood.⁶ Not only did this follow the 1791 precedent; furthermore, in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, the wearing of military uniform may have become more generally acceptable at court functions.

However, it was not until 1840, at the wedding of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, that for the first time the bridegroom at a royal wedding wore uniform in chapel — with his choice of a British uniform emphasising the Prince’s loyalty to his new home-country.⁷ Since then, almost all bridegrooms at royal weddings have worn uniform.⁸ This emphasised, of course, that the respective bride was also becoming a soldier’s wife. As will be seen, after the First World War, the military link at royal weddings was further strengthened through the bridal bouquet, allowing the female partner to shape royal tradition, as much as the male.

The Tradition of the Royal Bridal Bouquet

The tradition of the royal wedding bouquet — or indeed the custom of wedding bouquets in general — has not previously been discussed. Flowers as a sign of new beginnings are associated with brides in many cultures of the world and the tradition of brides carrying a bouquet of flowers in Britain goes back at least to the early-modern period. As Rosemary O’Day has shown, ‘English brides customarily completed their outfits with garlands of flowers and carried floral bouquets’, and she highlights that these flowers ‘had symbolic significance, indicating that marriage brought an end to strife and that the wife and husband would have particular virtues’, indicated by the respective flowers.⁹ For royalty, however, wedding traditions were different, so it is important to examine the emerging trend of when bridal bouquets were introduced at British royal weddings as well as the significance of their contents.¹⁰

The practice of the bride at a royal wedding carrying a bouquet of flowers is comparatively recent and seems not to have begun before the mid-Victorian period. Judging by the surviving evidence of paintings and reports, floral ornaments were not very prominent — if at all present — on royal brides in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. In 1840, Queen Victoria was famously clothed all in white, starting a new universal dress tradition, but apart from a wreath made of orange blossoms on her head, her outfit displayed no floral ornament.¹¹ At least since the wedding of her eldest daughter Princess Victoria to Prince Frederick William of Prussia in 1858, however, royal brides have had flowers prominently decorating their dresses as well as flowers in (or on) their hair. Furthermore, in the well-known painting of the 1858 wedding by John Phillip, one can see that the bride also had a wedding bouquet — which she has put on the altar rails in front of her, while her bridesmaids hold similar bouquets (fig. 2).

Figure 2 The Marriage of Victoria, Princess Royal, 25 January 1858, John Phillip, 1860

(Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2022)

Her younger sister Alice appears not to have had a bouquet at her wedding to Prince Louis of Hesse at Osborne House in 1862. In the next year, however, when the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) married Princess Alexandra of Denmark in March 1863, the bride again carried a special bouquet — and this was now given more prominence through a dedicated article in the Times.¹² This article detailed that the bridal bouquet for both the 1858 and the 1863 wedding had been created by ‘Mr. James Veitch, jun., of the Royal Exotic Nursery, King’s-road [sic], Chelsea’ and it explained:

It was of the most beautiful description, being composed of orange blossoms, white rose buds, rare orchideous flowers, and sprigs of myrtle, with a trimming of Honiton lace. The myrtle was, by express command of Her Majesty, sent from Osborne, and was taken from plants reared from the sprigs used in the bridal bouquet which Mr Veitch had the honour to present to her Royal Highness the Princess Royal. It is, we understand, Her Majesty’s desire to have myrtle plants raised and kept in the gardens at Osborne from each of the bridal bouquets of the Royal family in remembrance of these auspicious events.

Beginning with Queen Victoria’s own wedding, and then especially at the weddings of her two eldest children, in 1858 and 1863, there was an ever-increasing interest by the public in all the details of these events — or, such interest is at least indicated by the more and more extensive reporting on all the various aspects of these occasions. The sheer interest in a relatively minor detail such as the bridal bouquet might possibly contribute to what some historians have termed the ‘feminisation of the monarchy’, beginning in the late-Georgian era.¹³

Yet, bouquets for royal brides had apparently not quite become a fixture and over the following decades reports of their presence were at times contradictory. On 12 June 1866, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Queen Victoria’s cousin, married Prince Francis of Teck in a very popular and much reported wedding at St Anne’s Church in Kew.¹⁴ The accounts of this wedding do not mention her carrying flowers, but an American report of the ceremony that generally included details not found in other accounts refers to the ‘bridal bouquet’. Then, a few weeks later, when Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Helena married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg on 5 July at the Private Chapel in Windsor Castle, no pictorial or documentary evidence indicates that she carried a bouquet. Five years later, however, in 1871, when her sister Princess Louise married John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne, at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, at least one report casually referred to her bouquet by observing that for the joining of hands, the bride ‘holding a bouquet, could not get off her glove’.¹⁵ By 1874 the bridal bouquet had clearly become so important at British royal weddings, that Queen Victoria especially sent one to St Petersburg for the wedding of her son Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, to Princess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia. The Times explained meaningfully:

The bouquet held by the bride at the English service was from the Queen, and was put into the Grand Duchess’s hands a few moments before the entry into the Alexander Hall. It contained sprigs of myrtle from a tree at Osborne, from which were plucked sprigs for the Princess Royal’s bouquet then years ago.¹⁶

Similarly, in 1879, at the wedding of their brother Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, to Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia, reports referred to the bridal bouquet being carried during the ceremony. The writer in the Times observed that the bride ‘had a bouquet of white flowers in her hand’, noting that when she reached the steps to the altar ‘her bridegroom took her bouquet, which he handed to one of the bridesmaids, and the couple knelt before the altar’ — while another correspondent similarly recorded that the bridegroom ‘took from his bride with tender gracefulness her bouquet and handed it to his best man’, the Prince of Wales.¹⁷ Three years later, at the 1882 wedding of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, to Princess Helen of Waldeck and Pyrmont, the correspondent of the Irish Times strangely emphasised that the princess ‘wore a veil and a wreath of orange flowers and myrtle, but carried no bouquet’.¹⁸ Another journalist, however, referred very decidedly to the bride carrying flowers on her way down the aisle: ‘She was evidently almost sinking to the floor from nervousness, and the whole way up the nave she kept her face buried in her bouquet, and never lifted it.’¹⁹

Indeed, in the official painting of the 1882 wedding, the bride is seen carrying a bouquet when the couple is about to leave the chapel (fig. 3). The picture also shows that the carrying of flowers was not restricted to the bride and her bridesmaids, as several other women and girls are holding bouquets. The correspondent of the Scotsman moreover recorded that Queen Victoria herself, on her way from the upper castle to the service in St George’s Chapel, sitting in her carriage ‘carried a bouquet’.²⁰

Figure 3 The Marriage of the Duke of Albany, 27th April 1882, Sir James Dromgole Linton, 1885

(Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2022)

The last wedding of one of Queen Victoria’s children was that of her youngest child, Princess Beatrice, who married Prince Henry of Battenberg on 23 July 1885 at Whippingham Church near Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. For the arrival of the bride the correspondent of The Times recorded that she ‘carried a bouquet composed of rare white exotics’, while her ten bridesmaids were ‘carrying bouquets of stephanotis’.²¹ A few years later, at the latest, a bridal bouquet appears to have become part of the expected wedding paraphernalia. At the wedding of Princess Louise, daughter of the Prince of Wales, in 1889, The Times reported that the bride ‘carried too, as of course, a bouquet of orange flowers’, and it emphasised the irrelevance of further details by subsuming that ‘there is here little room for description other than technical, since every bride has the appearance of a vision of pure white’.²²

The latter two reports of the 1885 and 1889 weddings are particularly interesting also for the details on the actual flowers chosen for the bouquets. Apart from the always present myrtle — taken from Queen Victoria’s tree at Osborne, as seen above — and from the preference for orange blossoms and/or flowers that had been part of the Queen’s wedding wreath, there does not seem to have been much additional meaning attached to the particular choice of flowers for a royal bridal bouquet in the Victorian era: they were (and still are) not flowers with a decidedly ‘British’ connotation — nor referring to the country of a foreign princess’s origin.

The late-Victorian and Edwardian royal weddings carried the custom of the bridal bouquet into the new century. In 1893, when the Queen’s grandson Prince George of Wales, Duke of York (later George V) married Princess Mary of Teck, one writer who had been present at the ceremony observed that the bride ‘carried in her hand a large bouquet, full of materials for half-a-dozen garlands’.²³ Then, three years later, the Prince’s sister Princess Maud also had a bouquet of flowers at her wedding to Prince Charles of Denmark (later Haakon VII of Norway).²⁴ Over the previous decades, more or less elaborate decoration with flowers had become part and parcel of the bridal appearance at royal weddings: flowers scattered in patterns around the dresses and a wreath of flowers in the hair, together with a bouquet to carry. Bridal bouquets were very prominent at the weddings of Princess Alice of Albany (daughter of Prince Leopold) to Prince Alexander of Teck (later Earl of Athlone) and that of Princess Margaret of Connaught (daughter of Prince Arthur) to Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden and Norway (later Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden) in 1904 and 1905, respectively. At the 1904 wedding, the bridal bouquet was possibly given some additional meaning. One report’s wording evokes the impression that the bride did not arrive with her bouquet, but that it was a present from the bridegroom, presented at the end of the ceremony:

The final blessing was then pronounced, and as the happy couple turned from the altar Prince Alexander presented his bride with a magnificent bouquet of white blooms, which had been handed to him by the Duke of Teck.²⁵

At the wedding in the following year, however, the reports described that the bride from the start ‘carried a bouquet of lilies’, that she had ‘a simple bunch of Virgin Mary lilies in her hand’.²⁶ The way in which the bridal bouquet was mentioned in all these reports indicates that it was a fixture of the bridal outfit. Its particular meaning was not emphasised and it was not imbued with the gravity of symbolism — apart from that it was traditional and contained sprigs of the same plant — generally myrtle and orange blossom — as the bouquets of previous royal brides.

After the First World War: Military Resonances

It is well known that the First World War brought notable changes to the character and appearance of the monarchy and that the post-1917 royal family (after it had changed its dynastic name to ‘Windsor’) enhanced its efforts to appear more patriotic. The royal family’s attempt at appealing to more people through increased public ritual has been much discussed, especially by David Cannadine and research following his lead.²⁷ Yet, the initiating of this change in the overall appearance of the monarchy may not actually have been necessitated by the war but may already have been intended earlier. As Matthew Glencross has summarised, ‘when war was declared in 1914, the British monarchy was already going through a period of re-invention under George V, one which had started in 1910’; and he suggests that ‘the war needs to be understood as a catalyst; something which may have changed the pace, but not the direction, of the changes promoted by George V from his accession on’.²⁸

In any case, it is intriguing that these changes to the public appearance of the monarchy had a particular effect on royal marriages and weddings: on the most general level, there were such distinct signs as marrying fellow-Britons rather than foreign princes or princesses, the detailed discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article but will deserve a dedicated detailed study. In particular, however, the way in which royal weddings were celebrated also changed: they became bigger, more public occasions — which was most evident in the change to the grander and more central venue of Westminster Abbey.²⁹ At the same time, the particular detail of the bridal bouquet obtained a new, added significance: whereas it had hitherto been merely a marker of the bride’s youthfulness, and a means of linking her with the tradition of royal brides going back to Queen Victoria, it was to take on a powerful symbolism far exceeding any previous connotations.

The first royal wedding after the war, and the first at Westminster Abbey, was that of the King’s cousin Princess Patricia of Connaught to Sir Alexander Ramsay in February 1919. Princess Patricia at the time was a very popular member of the royal family, with Vogue magazine enthusiastically describing her as ‘the favourite among English princesses’.³⁰ Her father had been Governor General of Canada until 1916 and she had particular links with the Canadian troops: she was Colonel of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, one of the three regular infantry regiments of the Canadian Army and which bears her name to the present day. For her wedding, it was by her ‘special wish’ that ‘the Guard of Honour was composed of men of “her own” Canadian regiment’.³¹ More importantly, at least in the context of this study, Princess Patricia was reported to have carried a bridal bouquet, which the Washington Post for instance explained to have been presented by the regiment and ‘tied with the regimental colors’.³² It is, however, not quite clear whether she had the bouquet on her arrival and entrance into the Abbey, as reported by the Washington Post, or whether she received it only towards the end, as reported for the 1905 wedding, or even not at all: in photographs of the bride’s arrival and of the bridal couple’s leaving, Princess Patricia does not carry a bouquet but something like a little book, probably a copy of the Prayer Book (see fig. 4). Moreover, a drawing reproduced in The Sphere shows the bridal procession going up the aisle; and although the bridesmaids are carrying bouquets, the bride herself does not carry a bouquet but in this image also a little book.³³

Figure 4 Photographs showing Princess Patricia of Connaught arriving for her wedding at Westminster Abbey with her father (above) and leaving with her husband after the ceremony (below), published in ‘The Wedding Princess Patricia: to and from the Abbey’, The Illustrated London News, 8 March 1919

(Author’s collection)

Whether Princess Patricia indeed had a bridal bouquet, as detailed in the Washington Post, or whether she was just reported to have had one: the reference to the regimental colours on the ribbon of the bridal bouquet — real or just reported — would have been a strong marker strengthening the link of members of the royal family with the armed forces even in such a minor, yet very personal detail as a wedding bouquet. In any case, it was at the next royal wedding, in 1922, that the royal bridal bouquet was to achieve yet another, even more meaningful role and function — and a significance that stretched distinctly beyond the ceremony of the wedding itself.

A Princess’s Tribute: The Roots of Royal Floral Commemoration

In February 1922, Princess Mary — only daughter of George V and Queen Mary — married Henry, Viscount Lascelles. Following the precedent set in 1919, the wedding was a grand ceremony in Westminster Abbey. One of the most memorable moments of this wedding occurred after the service, on the way back to Buckingham Palace: the carriage procession halted at the Cenotaph in Whitehall and Princess Mary offered her bridal bouquet to be laid down there. Most sources described the scene with much gravitas, like the Weekly Irish Times:

Amid tumultuous acclamation the coach proceeded slowly along Whitehall. Before the Centotaph [sic] it stopped, and an incident occurred which thrilled all and brought a lump in the throats of many. Viscount Lascelles saluted the monument gravely, and Princess Mary handed to the Sergeant-Major of the Guards on duty the wedding bouquet to lay at the base of the monument. The Sergeant-Major reverently placed it in the centre of the other floral tributes.³⁴

The correspondent of The Bystander judged that this scene was the ‘most touching incident of the Royal wedding’, and like many other reports the writer welcomed the Princess’s bouquet-laying as a ‘happy inspiration’ that had not been scheduled in the official programme.³⁵ Indeed, the magazine’s caption under the photo of the Princess handing over her bouquet reads with much pathos:

At a time when any woman would be forgiven for being entirely absorbed by her own happiness a few minutes after her wedding, the Princess took a wonderful opportunity in expressing her thought for others in her action pictured above.

There does not seem to be any documentation of premeditation of this short act. Yet, as the following will show, it would appear that it was a well-planned and calculated gesture: unfortunately, it cannot be said who might first have suggested it. It is notable that Princess Mary according to the reports did not actually have a bouquet when she arrived at the Abbey and on her way to the altar. One observer noted expressly that at her arrival Princess Mary ‘unlike the majority of brides, carries no bouquet in her hand’.³⁶ Indeed, four days before the wedding, one of the correspondents of The Times had recorded: ‘Sometimes, as in Princess Mary’s case, the bride will choose her favourite flower for her bridesmaids and dispense with a bouquet herself […].’³⁷

In two separate accounts of the eventual ceremony, the Times distinctly mentioned the ‘bouquets of pink sweet peas’ of the bridesmaids during the entrance procession, but it did not refer to a bridal bouquet.³⁸ None of the few known pictures of the bride’s way to, and arrival at the Abbey shows a bouquet either. Indeed, as in 1919 for the wedding of Princess Patricia, one of the illustrations of Princess Mary’s wedding indicates distinctly that the bride did not arrive with a bouquet: the Illustrated London News in its special wedding issue reproduced a drawing by Stephen Spurrier made ‘from sketches made in the Abbey by our Special Artist’, showing the Princess being led up the aisle of the Abbey by her father George V.³⁹ In this picture, the princess-bride — like Princess Patricia in 1919 — is carrying what looks like a little book, again probably a copy of the Prayer Book. Her only floral ornament is some flowers hanging down at the front of her gown, while the bridesmaids behind her clearly carry bouquets of flowers in their hands.

Overall, the fact that Princess Mary did not carry a bouquet when she arrived for her wedding in 1922 might match with the bride’s receiving her bouquet possibly only at the end of the ceremony at the 1905 and 1919 weddings, as mentioned above. It does not seem to be known whether Princess Mary actually received a bouquet at the end of the service, but she must have taken some bouquet into the carriage when leaving the Abbey. While the pictures of the scene at the Cenotaph appear to show the Princess offering a full bouquet (fig. 5),⁴⁰ according to the Times correspondents, she gave merely ‘flowers from her bouquet’ or ‘a piece of her bouquet’.⁴¹ In this context it is intriguing that the Illustrated London News wrote more neutrally — if more vaguely — of a mere ‘bunch of flowers’, without reference to a possible actual bridal bouquet.⁴²

Figure 5 Photographs from the return procession after the wedding of Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles, including the laying of Princess Mary’s bridal bouquet at the Cenotaph, published in ‘The Return from the Abbey. Scenes along the Route Back to the Palace’, The Sphere LXXXVIII:1154, 4 March 1922.

(Author’s collection)

Figure 6 Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh. Wedding photograph taken at Buckingham Palace after the wedding ceremony. Baron (Sterling Henry Nahum), 20 November 1947

(Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2022)

It is clear that Princess Mary must have taken the flowers on her ride back from the Abbey. Then, with the carriage stopping at the right place by the Cenotaph, a footman climbing down from the carriage to open the door, and especially with the officer at the Cenotaph going to the carriage to receive the bouquet, the whole gesture appears to have been at least somewhat pre-arranged, if not even rehearsed. The reason for introducing this short ceremony is not known. However, similar to Princess Patricia’s accepting a regimental bouquet as her bridal bouquet in 1919, Princess Mary’s use of her bouquet in 1922 rings with the aforementioned efforts of the royal family at the time to appear more patriotic and closer to the people. In this overall atmosphere, Princess Mary’s laying her bridal bouquet at the Cenotaph in 1922 may well have been part of the royal family’s wider strategy of linking the monarchy to the commemoration of First World War, of identifying itself with this great national effort. A good precedent for the Princess’s tribute could have come from her own mother, Queen Mary. In 1916, for instance, the Queen had laid flowers at one of the many local memorial shrines in Hackney, and Heather Jones has highlighted the strong symbolism in this gesture that was the other way round to the usual procedure — when it was normally the Queen who was presented with flowers, rather than she that gave them.⁴³

In this context, however, it is worth remembering that the King’s aunt, Princess Beatrice, who had lost a son in the war, had been refused the opportunity to lay a wreath at the unveiling of the permanent Cenotaph in 1920. As Jones summarised, George V had then been of the opinion that ladies should not take part at this ceremony.⁴⁴ It would thus appear that the perception two years later had changed. Princess Mary offering her bridal bouquet added a clear feminine component — in fact, with its bridal context even more feminine than Princess Beatrice’s wreath would have been. As Jones has observed, after the war kingship was ‘about channelling public mourning in democratic ways — honouring the lowliest of soldiers as highly as a fallen general’.⁴⁵ This became beautifully clear when, even on the supposedly ‘happiest day of her life’ a royal princess stopped her procession to remember the fallen soldiers.

Yet, a more direct reason for the offering of the bouquet by Princess Mary in 1922 could have been the slight awkwardness of the wedding procession passing the Cenotaph on so joyful an occasion as a wedding. The report in The Times explained:

During the progress of the procession to Westminster Abbey there was a very obvious atmosphere of uncertainty as to what attitude it would be proper for the spectators to assume when the procession passed so sacred a place. The cheering was earnest, but it was not robust. / On the return journey, however, when the crowd were rewarded by a sight of bride and bridegroom together, the problem was solved by Princess Mary herself.⁴⁶

It must be noted that the Cenotaph had not yet been there at the time of Princess Patricia’s wedding in February 1919 and therefore it had then not presented an obstacle: it was erected only in November of that year, on the first anniversary of Armistice Day — first as a temporary structure, followed by the current stone monument in 1920. In this sense then, the laying of the bridal bouquet in 1922 would have been somewhat accidental, perhaps without much intended effect.

Princess Mary’s gesture of offering her bridal bouquet at the Cenotaph was never repeated. Nonetheless, as David Reeds has argued, Princess Mary’s wedding had set ‘many precedents’ and as the prime example he refers to the laying of her bridal bouquet.⁴⁷ The Princess’s short act of remembrance can probably be seen as the inspiration for a new royal tradition. However, it was the variated repeat of this gesture at the royal wedding in the next year, 1923, that was altogether more striking — if not more meaningful — and eventually established a new royal tradition that has been followed until the present day.

1923: Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and a Spontaneous Gesture

On 26 April 1923, Prince Albert, second son of George V, married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey (later George VI and Queen Elizabeth). At this wedding, the bride’s action suggest that she must have had a bouquet when she arrived at the Abbey, or at least was given one at her arrival: it is well known that she did not wait to place her bridal bouquet on the Cenotaph after the service, but instead, in a rather more striking gesture, laid it onto the Unknown Warrior’s grave in Westminster Abbey prior to the service, before she walked down the aisle. In one version of the story, upon entering the Abbey her procession had come to a halt because one of the clergy had fainted.⁴⁸ Whilst she waited to enter the Abbey, to walk down the aisle Lady Elizabeth put her bridal bouquet down on the grave. It has been meaningfully suggested that she was ‘perhaps remembering’ her own brother Fergus, who had been killed at the battle of Loos in 1915.⁴⁹ Indeed, her official biographer, William Shawcross, distinctly suggests that ‘People speculated’ this afterwards.⁵⁰

It is not known whether it had been planned that the bride would place her bouquet at the Cenotaph, as Princess Mary had done in the previous year. The change of place for the bouquet, however, was very meaningful in several respects. First of all, relocating the laying of the bouquet away from the Cenotaph to the Abbey moved this tribute away from a very public, indeed open-air, war memorial space to a more restricted, if not more exclusive, in-door space — into the ‘royal’ Abbey church of Westminster. With all its royal connotations, from centuries of coronations and royal funerals, Westminster Abbey was in many respects the prime location for a royal bridal tribute to the war fallen. Jones has interpreted that, with the grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, the tomb of the fallen combatant was honoured like that of a member of the royal family itself:

In this way the monarchy interacted directly in a new symbolic with the war dead: it incorporated them into the royal sphere by granting the Unknown Soldier pseudo-royal familial status and, by proxy, other war dead too, thereby making the royal family guardians of the fallen.⁵¹

Not only had the Unknown Warrior been buried among kings and queens, but with the laying of the bridal bouquet the living royals commemorated him and all his comrades in the very church where they celebrated the great events of their lives, of the monarchy, and of the nation.

Jones’s interpretation that the royal family honoured the Unknown Warrior like a family member is in this case particularly poignant.⁵² When the future Duchess of York laid her bouquet on the grave of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey, this was in a way a much more personal gesture, and tribute, than when Princess Mary had put hers on the Cenotaph — which is just a memorial monument, an empty tomb, not an actual graveside, thus without the link to a ‘real’ (if anonymous) person. The added component that Lady Elizabeth’s brother himself had fallen in the war made her gesture in a way especially personal: being the ‘Unknown’ soldier, a soldier without known identity, this could — at least symbolically, and ideologically in the broadest sense — have been her own brother Fergus. As Adrian Gregory has put it, the Abbey tomb of the Unknown Warrior ‘provided a surrogate body for those who could not hope to ever see the body of the family member lost’.⁵³

Moreover, changing this tribute from the rather plain, outdoor Cenotaph to the inside of the magnificent Abbey church also heightened the religious aspect of commemorating the war fallen.⁵⁴ By its sheer location, the grave evokes a Christian context and tightens the association with Christian remembrance. For royalty then, this matches with, and emphasises the link of the monarchy with the church.

Finally, as Jones has observed, the inauguration ceremony of the permanent Cenotaph in 1920 ‘was to be a masculine imperial and military moment’ that stood ‘in contrast’ to the following burial service of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey, ‘at which grieving mothers predominated’.⁵⁵ In this line of interpretation, the move of laying the royal bridal bouquet in the Abbey rather than at the Cenotaph was a logical consequence. In a slightly varied form, beginning almost twenty-five years later, Lady Elizabeth’s gesture of a royal bride offering her bridal bouquet at the grave of the Unknown Warrior eventually became part of the royal wedding ritual, a new royal tradition for key female members of the family.

1947: The Future Queen and a New Tradition

On 20 November 1947, Princess Elizabeth (Now Elizabeth II) married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, in Westminster Abbey and set the modern tradition for the use of royal bridal bouquets. Once again, a royal bridal bouquet found its place on the grave of the Unknown Warrior. It has been argued that the Princess Elizabeth had wanted to follow her mother’s example and leave her bridal bouquet on the grave of the Unknown Warrior while in the Abbey — but that she eventually forgot to do so and therefore later sent it to the Abbey from Buckingham Palace.⁵⁶ Indeed, the Princess is still seen with the bouquet in the wedding photographs (fig. 6), and she sent the bouquet only after these had been taken.

Whether or not Princess Elizabeth intentionally chose not to leave her bouquet behind in the Abbey, she was apparently the first royal bride to send her bouquet to the Abbey after her wedding, following the taking of the official photographs at the palace. There had been two other, senior royal weddings since 1923: in 1934, Prince George, Duke of Kent, had married Princess Marina of Greece at Westminster Abbey and in 1935, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, had married Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott at the Private Chapel at Buckingham Palace. As the photographs of these events show, both brides had a bouquet which they still held during the appearance on the Palace balcony after the weddings. Yet, there is no evidence that either of them had their bouquet afterwards sent to the Abbey.

In 1947, with the Second World War only two years distant, the commemorative impact of the Princess’s bouquet placed on the Unknown Warrior’s grave had a significance very similar to that of her mother’s bouquet in 1923. As in 1923, the bride had a more personal experience of life lost in the war: not only had the bridegroom fought actively in the war (from October 1940 onwards in the Mediterranean Fleet and then in the Pacific, engaged in various battles and fighting action), but her own uncle Prince George, Duke of Kent (at whose wedding in 1934 she had been a bridesmaid), had died in an RAF plane crash in Scotland during a mission in 1942. In addition, following her eighteenth birthday in 1944, Princess Elizabeth herself had famously served in the war, as it were, in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British Army.

Princess Elizabeth’s example of 1947 started a new royal tradition. It is not quite sure whether her sister Princess Margaret sent her bouquet to the Abbey after her wedding in 1960 — at least this was neither prominently reported nor caught in a photograph. Yet, the Queen’s daughter, Princess Anne in 1973, and afterwards the brides of her sons, as well as practically all her married grandchildren after their weddings have sent their bouquets to the Abbey to be placed on the grave of the Unknown Warrior.⁵⁷ Notably, this tradition has been followed regardless of whether the actual wedding took place at the Abbey or at another place. In 1981, the bouquet of Diana, Princess of Wales, who had married Prince Charles at St Paul’s Cathedral was afterwards sent to the Abbey — and so was that of Sophie, Countess of Wessex, who had married Prince Edward at St George’s Chapel, Windsor in 1999. More recently this was followed by the Duchess of Sussex and by Princess Eugenie after their respective weddings at St George’s — and by Princess Beatrice, who married at the Royal Chapel of All Saints, Royal Lodge, Windsor, in 2020.

The bridal bouquets placed on the Unknown Warrior’s grave usually remain there for some time to allow people from the public to file past and see them. They are not accompanied by a special guard of honour but left on their own, as it were, enhancing the effect of a more modest and personal tribute. Overall, the placing of the bridal bouquet on the grave of the Unknown Warrior much heightened — and still heightens — the already strong connection between royal weddings and the armed services.

Evolving Traditions and Changing Meanings

While the bridal bouquet at royal weddings, like that at non-royal weddings, was originally probably intended as a reference to the bride’s youth and purity, and a symbol of the beginning of a new life for the couple, since the First World War the bouquet of royal brides has taken on an additional meaning. The military connection, the link between royalty and the armed forces, was already very much present in the regimental colours that adorned Princess Patricia’s bouquet in 1919, which then contributed a clear — if subdued — counterpart to the khaki uniforms worn by many of the men. Since there was then no physical focus point of remembrance — with neither the Cenotaph nor the grave of the Unknown Warrior yet existing — the display of the regimental colours on the bridal bouquet was at this wedding the only visible sign of association with, and remembering of the soldiers who had fought, and died, in the war. Although this may have been implied by reports referring to the regimental colours, this interpretation seems not to have been spelled out explicitly. In a distinct step further, the aspect of a bridal tribute as an act of royal remembrance of the fallen became much more apparent with Princess Mary’s offering of her bouquet at the Cenotaph in 1922 and then with the bride’s placing her bouquet directly onto the grave in 1923. Notably, in 1923, the bride, Lady Elizabeth, put the bouquet down before the wedding — that is, when she was not yet a princess by marriage. At the royal weddings since, the bride has sent the bouquet to the Abbey only after the wedding — that is, after she had become a princess (if she was not a princess by birth anyway, as in 1947 and 1973).

Royal brides offering their bridal bouquet was not a direct act of remembrance in itself — such as the annual ceremonies up and down the country around Remembrance Sunday. Rather, the offering of the royal bridal bouquet branched out from another, completely un-related tradition. Yet, this may have all but strengthened its impact: a royal bride offering her bridal bouquet was not per se part of the organised protocol to show the royal family participating in the official acts of remembrance. On the contrary, this gesture showed that the royal family constantly remembered and honoured the war fallen, even at a completely unrelated ceremony, when the dead were not the focal point of attention in any way.

More generally, the offering of the royal bridal bouquet is almost a tribute by the monarchy itself; being laid down by a royal princess, or by a future princess — and in the case of 1923 and 1947 even by a future queen consort and a future reigning queen, respectively — the laying of the bouquet honours all those who fought and died in the defence of the country. Arguably, this effect was strongest in 1923, when the bride laid the bouquet herself — while in 1922 she had at least been a witness to the laying down. The strong impact of this very personal sign of royal remembrance by royal brides in the first decades of the twentieth century can probably not be overestimated. Adrian Gregory has explained that

Britain during the 1920s and 1930s was a country with millions of its population trying to come to terms with the death of loved ones, particularly in the case of parents trying to deal with severe emotional shock and lasting grief.⁵⁸

In the overall atmosphere of grief and mourning at the time — which was probably just as prevalent in 1947 — any sign of royal remembrance would have come as a much appreciated and welcome gesture.

At the wedding of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, to Sarah Ferguson in July 1986, there was a renewed connection to the war-dead as the Prince had actively fought in the Falklands War in 1982. The same applied to the wedding of Prince Henry of Wales and Meghan Markle in May 2018, with the Prince having been on active service with the troops in Iraq. Nevertheless, in recent decades, notwithstanding that Britain is still continuously involved in military conflicts around the globe, public memories of the wars and their commemoration have overall become less prominent. Thus, even though the placing of the bridal bouquet on the tomb of the Unknown Warrior could have had a heightened meaning in the context of recent warfare, especially at the royal weddings since the turn of the millennium with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, this gesture has become observed more out of tradition and it has not received much attention in public reporting.

The tradition of the royal bridal bouquet as a symbol of remembrance is also a reminder that almost all ceremonies and their details have several layers of meaning. While royal weddings clearly have a private, family aspect which they combine with an occasion of state, a detail such as the laying of the bridal bouquet shows that there can be yet more components to them. Royal ceremonies once more emerge as multi-layered, meaningful occasions. In respect to the bridal bouquet, it may be interesting to note that no other monarchy has so prominently imbued it with as much additional meaning as the British monarchy has. No royal bride in another country, nor any other ‘prominent’ bride, has followed the British precedent and used the bridal bouquet for a tribute to the war dead in such a strong and much noted gesture.

As initially seen, the 1923/1947 gesture of placing the bridal bouquet on the grave of the Unknown Warrior was mirrored in November 2020, when Elizabeth II went to Westminster Abbey and placed a bouquet of flowers on the grave. In relation to the Queen’s visit, it was afterwards reported that ‘It was Her Majesty’s idea to stage the small private service on the eve of lockdown after she was advised not to attend scaled-down events to commemorate the centenary of the Cenotaph and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior on 11 November because of the coronavirus pandemic’.⁵⁹ According to an unnamed source, the Queen ‘was keen that the centenary was marked appropriately’ and a ‘simple but deeply personal act reflecting a tradition started by her mother 97 years ago felt the right thing to do’.⁶⁰ As seen above, while the late Queen Mother can be said to have begun the tradition of placing the bridal bouquet on the grave in 1923 — refining the gesture of Princess Mary in 1922 — this was not immediately followed by the next royal brides. It was apparently only Elizabeth II herself who as Princess Elizabeth at her wedding in 1947 imitated the gesture and thus established the tradition — observed until the present day — of royal brides sending their bouquet to the be laid on the grave of the Unknown Soldier. In November 2020, the Queen’s ‘personal’ tribute, through the floral reference in the actual bouquet, very much reflected and recalled all the royal bridal tributes that had taken place since 1923 (or actually 1922). No other country — in particular no other monarchy — seems to display such a prominent, dynastically-linked and yet personal sign of commemoration of the war-fallen from the head of state and his or her family. This gesture then underlines the special bond between the British monarchy and the military and general commemorative culture. Overall then, this gesture is another example of the British monarchy’s manifold ways of appealing to and interacting with society in a deeply symbolic way with a strong sentimental component. The bunch of flowers that first appeared at weddings as recalling a bride’s youth and virtues, the bridal bouquet, has taken on an additional meaning as a royal tribute to all those who have given their life for monarch and country.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthias Range

Matthias Range

Matthias Range studied Art History and Musicology at the Philipps-University Marburg/Lahn (Germany), before obtaining a DPhil in music at Oxford University in 2009. This was followed by a postdoctoral position in early-modern history at Oxford Brookes University and he currently works for the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. He has published widely in the areas of music and history, and the focus of his interdisciplinary research is sacred music and religious culture, with a particular interest in the history of the British monarchy: his study on Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations was published in 2012, followed by a book on British Royal and State Funerals in 2016. A similar, two-volume study on British Royal Weddings is currently in production.

Notes

1 See, for instance, Emily Nash, ‘The Queen Leads Remembrance Tribute in a Historic Private Service’, Hello! no. 1661, 16 November 2020, pp. 54-60, here p. 56. For the bouquet having been ‘based on Her Majesty’s own wedding bouquet in 1947’ see also ‘The Centenary of the Grave of the Unknown Warrior’, Royal Website, https://www.royal.uk/centenary-grave-unknown-warrior-and-cenotaph (accessed 20 November 2020).

2 For two broader such studies on this see Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995; reprint in ‘Canto Classics edition’ 2014); and Jessica Meyer (ed.), British Popular Culture and the First World War (Leiden, 2008).

3 Heather Jones, For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War, ‘Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare’ (Cambridge, 2021), esp. part II which is all on memorialising the War. For a more general study on the relationship between the monarchy and the army see the essays in Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham and Michael D. Kandiah (eds), The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present: ‘Long to Reign Over Us’? (London, 2016).

4 See ‘Ceremonial of the Duke of York’s Marriage’, Gentleman’s Magazine 61, part 2 (1791), pp. 1057-8.

5 For the ‘fashion for wearing uniform at court’ see Philip Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac 1760–1830’, Past & Present 96 (1982), pp. 103-32, the Berlin court especially p. 111.

6 ‘The Nuptials of the Princess Charlotte of Wales and the Prince of Saxe-Cobourg’, The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1816 (1817), pp. 57-60, here p. 60.

7 Prominently shown in the various illustrations of the wedding.

8 The very few exceptions include, for instance, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, in 1999.

9 Rosemary O’Day, Women’s Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies (London and New York, 2014), p. 30. She refers, as an example, to a sermon by a Buckinghamshire rector from 1607. For ‘the practice of strewing the bridal bedchamber with flowers and herbs’ see Sasha Roberts, ‘“Let Me the Curtains Draw”: The Dramatic and Symbolic Properties of the Bed in Shakespearean Tragedy’, in Jonathan Gil Harris and Natasha Korda (eds), Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 153-74, here p. 163.

10 For a more detailed study of the ceremonies at royal weddings up to the early twentieth century see the author’s British Royal Weddings: From the Stuarts to the Early Twentieth Century (Turnhout, forthcoming).

11 See the description of a later jewellery item in the Royal Collection (RCIN 65305) based on this wedding wreath: description online at https://www.rct.uk/collection/65305 (accessed 4 January 2022).

12 ‘The Princess Alexandra’s Bridal Bouquet’, Times 24503, 11 March 1863, p. 12.

13 See especially Clarissa Campbell Orr, ‘The Feminization of the Monarchy 1780–1910: Royal Masculinity and Female Empowerment’, in Andrzej Olechnowicz (ed.), The Monarchy and the British Nation, 1780 to the Present (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 76-107. Campbell Orr refers heavily to an idea by David Cannadine who had written that ‘being a constitutional monarch in twentieth-century Britain’ was an ‘emasculated job’, without actually using the term ‘feminisation’.

14 ‘Marriage of The Princess Mary of Cambridge’, The Albion, A Journal of News, Politics and Literature 44:26 (30 June 1866), p. 308.

15 ‘Marriage of the Princess Louise and Marquis of Lorn [sic]’, Scotsman, 22 March 1871, p. 2, section by the second correspondent: ‘The Scene in the Chapel’.

16 ‘The Marriage of The Duke of Edinburgh’, ‘(From our special Correspondent.)’, Times 27908, 24 January 1874, p. 9.

17 ‘Marriage of the Duke of Connaught’, Times 29515, 14 March 1879, p. 10; and ‘The Marriage of H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught, K.G., and H.R.H. Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia’, The London Reader of Literature, Science, Art and General Information 32:830 (29 March 1879), pp. 524-6, here p. 525.

18 ‘The Royal Wedding: The Ceremony at Windsor’, Irish Times, 28 April 1882, p. 5. This account is overall rather confounded, jumping back and forth chronologically, and hence somewhat unreliable.

19 ‘Scrutator’, ‘At the Wedding’, Truth XI:279 (May 1882), pp. 612-13, here p. 613.

20 ‘The Royal Marriage’, Scotsman, 28 April 1882, p. 5, under ‘ANOTHER ACCOUNT’.

21 ‘The Royal Wedding’, Times 31507, 24 July 1885, p. 5. Princess Beatrice carrying a big bouquet of white flowers can also be seen in Richard Caton Woodville’s painting of the wedding ceremony: ‘The Marriage of Princess Beatrice, 23rd July 1885’, oil on canvas, signed and dated 1886. The Royal Collection, RCIN 404480, visible online at https://www.rct.uk/collection/404480 (accessed 4 January 2022).

22 ‘The Royal Wedding’, Times 32763, 29 July 1889, p. 10.

23 Moulvie Rafiüddin Ahmad, ‘The Royal Marriage: From an Oriental Point of View’, The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly 6 (July 1893), pp. 447-58, here p. 452. (For the author’s being present at the ceremony see p. 447).

24 See, for instance, the report in ‘Marriage of the Princess Maud of Wales’, Manchester Guardian, 23 July 1896, p. 5.

25 ‘Royal Wedding at Windsor: The King Gives Away the Bride’, Weekly Irish Times, 20 February 1904, p. 16. The very detailed account of the bride’s appearance on her arrival does mention a bouquet.

26 ‘The Royal Wedding: Impressive Ceremonial / Splendid Reception of the Bridal Party’, Scotsman, 16 June 1905, p. 5; and ‘The Royal Marriage’, Times 37735, 16 June 1905, p. 6.

27 For the change in the ceremonial approach see still David Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the “Invention of Tradition”, c. 1820–1977’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983, reprint 2002), pp. 101-64.

28 Matthew Glencross, ‘A Cause of Tension? The Leadership of King George V: Visiting the Western Front’, in Matthew Glencross and Judith Rowbotham (eds), Monarchies and the Great War (London, 2018), pp. 153-90, here p. 156. Glencross refers to his own ‘George V and the New Royal House’, in Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham and Michael D. Kandiah (eds), The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present: ‘Long to Reign Over Us'? (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016), pp. 33-56.

29 For a more detailed study of these changes in royal weddings see the author’s British Royal Weddings: The House of Windsor (Turnout: forthcoming). This includes also more details of the ceremonies at the weddings that are discussed in the following.

30 ‘London Sees the Wedding of a Favourite Princess’, Vogue 53:8, 15 April 1919, p. 39. For the Princess’s popularity in Canada see also George Aston, His Royal Highness, the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn; a Life and Intimate Study (London, 1929), p. 283.

31 Aston, His Royal Highness, p. 318.

32 ‘3,000 at Wedding of Princess “Pat”’, Washington Post, 28 February 1919, p. 4.

33 ‘The Royal Wedding in Westminster Abbey’, The Sphere: The Illustrated Newspaper for the Home, LXXVI, no. 998 (8 March 1919), pp. 208-9.

34 ‘Princess Mary’s Wedding. Scene of Splendour in the Abbey. Popular Rejoicing’, Weekly Irish Times, 4 March 1922, p. 1.

35 ‘Who, When, & Where’, The Bystander LXXIII: 953, 8 March 1922, p. 533.

36 Boyd Cable, ‘In the Abbey. February 28, 1922. An Impression’, in ‘Supplement’ to The Queen: Princess Mary’s Wedding Number cli:3923, 4 March 1922, pp. ii–iv, here p. iv.

37 ‘The Woman’s View: Wedding Flowers and Favours’, ‘(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)’, Times 42964, Friday, 24 February 1922, p. 13. The wedding was on 28 February.

38 ‘The Marriage Service: Splendour and Dignity’, Times 42968, 1 March 1922, p. 2; ‘Memorable Incidents of the Wedding Day: Sun and Colour (By a Woman Correspondent)’, Times 42968, 1 March 1922, p. iii.

39 Stephen Spurrier, ‘The Central Figure of the Wedding Ceremony in Westminster Abbey: The Bride and Her Procession’, Illustrated London News, vol. 160, Issue 4324: The Wedding of Princess Mary (Special Number), 4 March 1922, pp. 298-99.

40 ‘The Return from the Abbey. Scenes Along the Route Back to the Palace’, The Sphere LXXXVIII:1154 4 March 1922, p. 244b.

41 ‘The Royal Wedding: A Nation’s Joy’; and ‘The Wedding Bells’, Times 42968, 1 March 1922, p. 4. For photographs of the scene see ‘The New Royal Family Circle’, Graphic CV:2727, 4 March 1922, p. 258; and Sphere LXXXVIII:1154, 4 March 1922, p. 244b (as in Figure 5) — the same in Art Souvenir of The Royal Wedding: A Complete Pictorial Record (London, [1924]).

42 ‘Memorable Incidents of the Wedding Day’; Illustrated London News 4324, 4 March 1922, p. 317.

43 Jones, For King and Country, pp. 353-4.

44 Jones, For King and Country, p. 345.

45 Heather Jones, ‘The Nature of Kingship in First World War Britain’, in Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham and Michael D. Kandiah (eds), The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present: ‘Long to Reign Over Us’? (London, 2016), pp. 195-216, here p. 210. On Princess Mary’s laying her bouquet see also p. 377.

46 ‘The Wedding Bells’, Times 42968, 1 March 1922, p. iv.

47 David Reed, ‘“What a Lovely Frock”: Royal Weddings and the Illustrated Press in the Pre-Television Age’, The Court Historian 8 (2003), pp. 41-50, here p. 50.

48 See William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth: The Queen Mother. The Official Biography (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 177.

49 Debrett’s: A Modern Royal Marriage, foreword by Julian Fellowes (London, 2011), p. 30. See also ‘Royal Wedding Bouquet Returned to Abbey’, article on the website of Westminster Abbey (1 May 2011: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-news/royal-wedding-bouquet#i12123, accessed 11 November 2020).

50 Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, p. 177. No ‘people’ are named, however.

51 Jones, For King and Country, pp. 375-6, quotation on p. 376.

52 See Jones, pp. 377-78.

53 Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946 (London, 2014; first edition 1994), p. 23.

54 For George V’s initial reluctance to take part at the secular ceremony at the Cenotaph see Jones, For King and Country, pp. 372-75. For the Abbey ceremony see also David Cannadine, ‘Imperial Zenith to Worldwide Communion: 1901–2002’, in David Cannadine (ed.), Westminster Abbey: A Church in History (London, 2019), pp. 315-61, esp. pp. 330-33.

55 Jones, For King and Country, p. 345.

56 Josy Argy and Wendy Riches, Britain’s Royal Brides (London, 1977; first edition 1975), p. 73.

57 For this and the following see the short video clip (part of a Twitter post) with original footage of the named bouquets on the grave in the Abbey, available at ‘The Centenary of the Grave of the Unknown Warrior’, Royal Website, https://www.royal.uk/centenary-grave-unknown-warrior-and-cenotaph (accessed 20 November 2020).

58 Gregory, The Silence of Memory, p. 23.

59 Nash, ‘The Queen Leads Remembrance Tribute’, p. 54.

60 Ibid., p. 60. This might refer to the dean of Westminster Abbey whom Nash quotes in the passage after this.