The Truth About Princess Beatrice's Unusual Wedding

We've just had another royal wedding! Did you even know? If not, that's okay, nobody else did, either, at least not until after the fact. The royal who wed without all the pomp and circumstance and general three-ring circus hoopla we've come to expect when any Windsor ties the knot was Princess Beatrice, who has been engaged to fiancé Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi since September, according to CNN.

People reports that the wedding had originally been planned for May 29, but the pandemic got in the way. The princess and her Count Charming had to join the ranks of other celebs like J Lo and A-Rod and Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, not to mention countless other non-famous folks, in putting their nuptials on hold. But they finally decided that things were safe enough that they wouldn't be putting their quarantining elderly relatives (one of whom is the world's longest-reigning monarch) at risk if they held a small ceremony.

A statement from Buckingham Palace (via People) announced that "The private wedding ceremony of Princess Beatrice and Mr. Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi took place at 11 a.m. on Friday 17th July at The Royal Chapel of All Saints at Royal Lodge, Windsor," which is reported to be just a short drive from the palace. In attendance were about 20 people in all, including her majesty Queen Elizabeth II (known to the bride as granny) as well as the Duke of Edinburgh (aka Prince Philip, or grandpa). The bride's father Prince Andrew was also said to be in attendance, despite his wanting to keep a low profile due to the ongoing fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. (CNN reports that he'd recently taken down his official website.)

Unfortunately, the Queen had to cut short her attendance, as she needed to rush back to the castle in order to preside at the knighting ceremony of Captain Tom Moore, the 100-year-old WWII veteran who walked 100 laps of his garden while quarantining and raised over $40 million for healthcare workers (via Reuters). Despite the fact that the Queen was not present for the entire ceremony, the Palace declared that the wedding nevertheless "took place in accordance with all relevant Government Guidelines." Good to know.

So what did we miss since Princess Beatrice's wedding was a small, private, and un-televised one, instead of the larger event we'd all been anticipating? Well, for one thing, People reports that the May wedding, which had been scheduled to take place in St. James Palace's Chapel Royal, wouldn't have been all that circus-like, after all. Evidently the couple both prefer to keep things somewhat low-key, so for one thing they would have passed on the horse-drawn carriage ride.

The guest list would no doubt have been somewhat larger, although not huge -– Hello! reports the chapel seats just 150. In comparison, the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry had 600 guests, while Beatrice's sister, Princess Eugenie, invited 800 guests to her wedding. Prince William and Kate Middleton's nuptials were the craziest in recent memory, however, with 1,900 invitees all crammed into Westminster Abbey. For the math-averse, that's over 12 times the number that would have attended Beatrice's wedding as originally planned, and nearly 100 times larger than the ceremony that took place earlier today.

Princess Beatrice, who still retains her title, remains 9^th in line to the throne (at least until George, Charlotte, Louis, and/or Archie are joined by any future royal siblings). She also gains a new title now, and may be known as Contessa or, better yet, Nobile Donna (a sobriquet that makes her sound like the title of an opera) as her father-in-law is Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi (via Tatler). In addition to inheriting his father's title, Beatrice's new hubby is also first in line for the nine-bedroom palazzo, the Villa Mapelli Mozzi, which is about an hour outside Milan.

Not only is Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi Italian nobility, but he has also made seriously big bucks (over $800 million and counting) in the property development biz. He also brings a ready-made family into the marriage, as he's the father of a son with his former fiancée, the American architect Dara Huang. The little boy, who goes by the name of Woolfy (though he was christened Christopher), is "very much part of [the couple's] life," as a friend of Beatrice told People, adding "Beatrice is already showing that she's a fantastic step-mummy." (No, not THAT kind of mummy.) Woolfy would have been a pageboy had his daddy's wedding ceremony taken place as originally planned, so we missed out on all that cuteness, but there will probably be many adorable photo ops to come now that he's the Queen's step-great-grandson.