Princess Beatrice, daughter of the beleaguered Prince Andrew, will marry her fiancé, property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, on Friday, May 29 in London.
The wedding will likely be the last big royal wedding for at least a decade, since Beatrice is the final member of her generation of siblings and cousins to get married. Despite this, however, it is unlikely to be televised as domestic public opinion has turned against the Yorks following Prince Andrew’s role in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Beatrice and “Edo,” a property developer who has a 2-year-old child from another relationship, got engaged in Italy in September 2019.
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A statement issued on behalf of Beatrice said: “Her Majesty The Queen has kindly given permission for the ceremony to take place at The Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. The ceremony will be followed by a private reception, given by The Queen, in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.”
The venue for Beatrice’s wedding has become something of a political football following the public disgrace of her father Prince Andrew, and the lavish nuptials of her younger sister Eugenie in 2018.
Andrew demanded Eugenie be given a wedding equal in splendor to that of Harry and Meghan, and Eugenie was duly wedded to her bartender boyfriend, Jack Brooksbank, at the same church as Harry and Meghan, St. George’s Chapel in Windsor.
Controversially, Eugenie also asked to have an open-top carriage ride around Windsor, modeled on that enjoyed by Harry and Meghan after their wedding.
The Yorks were annoyed when the wedding was not screened by the BBC, but managed to persuade the U.K.’s primary commercial network, ITV, to broadcast the ceremony.
Andrew and Sarah have long insisted that as the only “blood princesses” of their generation, their daughters should be treated with more deference and respect within the family than princesses by marriage Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, and their demands around Eugenie’s wedding were perhaps the ultimate expression of that.
It was assumed at the time that Eugenie’s wedding was setting a template for when her elder sister married, however Andrew’s very public fall from grace put paid to such lofty ambitions.
As the storm clouds of the Epstein scandal swirled, Beatrice was said to have downgraded her plans and asked instead to be married at a London venue.
The Chapel Royal is probably a fair compromise.
Many royal weddings have taken place in the chapel, including that of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg in February 1840. Their eldest daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal, was also married there in 1858 to Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, later the German Emperor Friedrich III. In 1893, the Duke of York and Princess Victoria Mary of Teck (later King George V and Queen Mary) were married in the same building.
Prince George was baptized at the Chapel Royal on Oct. 23, 2013, in a ceremony attended by four generations of the royal family, including the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge.
