Throughout British history, royal weddings have been extravagant affairs full of pomp and grandeur, but there has been one major exception to this tradition.
Hundreds of miles away from the Royal Family, King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were married in a low-key wedding ceremony 88 years ago today.
It was highly unusual, taking place in the shadow of Edward’s abdication crisis, less than a month after the coronation of King George VI.
The wedding was hastily planned, taking place a month and a day after Wallis’s divorce from Ernest Simpson was finalised.
Straying further from tradition, Wallis opted for a long, finger-hugging white wedding dress in the style of the period while Edward wore a civilian suit instead of a military uniform.
Despite the opulent setting of the wedding in the Chateau de Cande in France, the couple looked far from happy in their official pictures.
Royal photographer Cecil Beaton, who was behind the camera for the event, remarked that Edward had an ‘essentially sad’ look in his eyes.
Meanwhile, royal author Jane Marguerite Tippett, in The Lost Memoir Of Edward VIII, wrote that Wallis and Edward looked back on the wedding without much fondness.
Hundreds of miles away from the Royal Family, King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were married in France in a low-key wedding ceremony 88 years ago today
Despite the opulent setting of the wedding in the Chateau de Cande in France, the couple looked far from happy in their official pictures
The Duke and Duchess are seen on their wedding day alongside Edward’s best man, Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe (right) and businessman Hermann Rogers, whom Wallis later had an affair with
In the memoir it was revealed that Wallis said that preparations for the wedding ‘were not very gay’.
Which is unsurprising considering the royal wedding was in stark contrast to those before it, taking place in a small ceremony with no one from the Royal Family present.
Among the guests were Edward’s best man, Major Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, along with his chauffeur and equerry.
Businessman Hermann Rogers, whom Wallis fell in love with and had hoped to marry, also attended.
Reverend J.A. Jardine officiated in defiance of Church of England rules surrounding divorcees with living former spouses. He was later defrocked and would go on to open the tacky ‘Windsor Cathedral’ in Hollywood.
Edward had also been left furious by King George’s refusal to grant Wallis the status of Her Royal Highness.
He bitterly joked that it was a ‘nice wedding present’.
When his mother, Queen Mary, did not send him an actual gift, he told her that he was ‘bitterly hurt and disappointed that you virtually ignored the most important event in my life.’
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor walk down steps at the Chateau de Cande on their wedding day
The royal wedding was in stark contrast to those before it, consisting of a small ceremony with no one from the Royal Family present
Wallis in 1936. The Duchess played an important role in one of the greatest royal controversies of the 20th century
A Faberge box that was sent as a gift by his younger brother Prince George, the Duke of Kent, was rejected by Edward, on the basis that his sibling had not shown any desire to deviate from the family’s official stance towards him.
Edward and Wallis’s wedding venue was owned by millionaire Charles Bedaux, who was later frowned upon by the British and French intelligence services.
The chateau boasted modern comforts that included a pipe organ costing $40,000 and a $15,000 telephone system.
On the day itself, Wallis wore a blue wedding gown which she twinned with silk gloves made from the same material and a straw hat.
She also wore an impressive diamond and sapphire brooch alongside a glittering sapphire wristband and earrings.
Her second divorce – from shipbroker Ernest Aldrich Simpson – had been finalised only a month earlier.
The Duke had originally wanted a royal chaplain to officiate at his wedding, but this desire was rapidly torpedoed by his brother, the King.
His second choice had been the Reverend Martin Andrews, who presided over a parish in the Duchy of Cornwall.
Edward and Wallis’s wedding venue was owned by millionaire Charles Bedaux, who was later frowned upon by the British and French intelligence services
The couple looked less than jolly in the official photos that were taken to mark their wedding
In the end he had little choice but to go with Reverend Jardine, who was described as ‘turbulent’ by Edward’s biographer Philip Ziegler and later stripped of his duties.
Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang – who had been instrumental in sealing Edward’s abdication – described Jardine as a ‘seeker of notoriety’.
He questioned how Edward – who had been King of England just months before – could have ‘lost his dignity’ to the extent that he asked ‘a man of this sort to celebrate his marriage’.
Jardine officiated in defiance of the Church of England, which until 2002 would not perform weddings of rulers to divorcees who had living former spouses.
While Edward believed that in Jardine he had chosen well, this idea was somewhat punctured by the priest’s subsequent tour of the United States, where he revealed all about the ceremony.
The altar was what Ziegler described as a ‘bogus renaissance chest adorned with plum caryatids’.
Beaton took official photographs of the couple after they tied the knot.
In his diary he described Edward’s expression when his photo was taken as ‘essentially sad, tragic eyes belied by impertinent tilt of nose.’
The Daily Mail covered the marriage of the Duke of Windsor extensively
He added that the former King had ‘common hands – like a mechanic – weather-beaten and rather scaly and one thumbnail is disfigured.’
Beaton had talked to Wallis at length and decided that she was a ‘strong force’, and ‘intelligent within her vast limitations’.
‘She has obviously a tremendous admiration for the Duke and considers him one of the greatest brains… of our times.
‘She admires his character, his vitality and is determined to love him, though I feel she is not in love with him.’
As well as his best man, chauffeur and equerry, guests also included the Duke’s hairdresser Charles Topper and Mrs Buchanan Merryman, Wallis’s aunt.
The service itself was composed of a French civil ceremony and then an Anglican counterpart conducted by Reverend Jardine was carried out ten minutes later.
In both versions, Wallis promised to obey her husband.
Incredibly, the Duke failed to kiss his bride in either the civil or religious ceremony, although there were tears in his eyes when he put Wallis’s ring on her finger.
Wallis and Edward dancing at a party in New York. The jet-setting couple were known for travelling around the world
Despite the controversy that surrounded the wedding at the time, the Duke and Duchess received more than 3,000 telegrams and 30,000 letters of good wishes after their wedding.
In a statement, the Duke said: ‘The Duchess and I would like to thank all those who have so kindly sent us presents and good wishes on the occasion of our wedding.
‘We shall never forget their friendly messages, which mean so much to us on this day.’
Following their wedding the couple eventually settled in France in the so-called Villa Windsor on the outskirts of Paris. Here they led the life of the idle rich, attending parties in France and America and going on lavish holidays with close friends.
Though she lacked the status of an actual queen, it was the kind of high life that American Duchess had always sought.
But when the Duke died aged 77 in 1972, Wallis was left alone, bereft of the man who had worshipped her.
The Queen, with whom she had had minimal contact in the decades since her husband’s abdication, hosted her at Buckingham Palace when she arrived for his funeral.
The two had previously met when Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip visited the Duke in Paris in his final days.
Wallis was buried next to her husband at the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore. The burial was attended by only the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and Princess Diana and eight of Wallis’s aides and friends
It was a sign of the Queen’s willingness to put differences to one side for the sake of the greater good.
When Wallis died over a decade later, her funeral service at Windsor’s St George’s Chapel was attended by senior royals including the Queen, Prince Philip and the Queen Mother.
Her name was not mentioned during the service.
The service lasted for less than half an hour and, in scenes strikingly similar to her wedding, it was stripped of nearly all the pomp and ceremony that usually marks a royal death.
